Tag: change agents

Posted in 100,000 Poets, Musicians, Artists and Activists for Change, General Interest, Writers' Fourth Wednesday, Writing

THE MIGHTY PEN: poets and writers as change agents

Posted on by Jamie Dedes
The Patchwork Scribble Factory back in the early '80s when we still used typewriters, printed manuscripts and sent them by snail mail.
The Patchwork Scribble Factory back in the ’70s when we still used typewriters, typed manuscripts and submitted them by snail mail after making photocopies.

Writers, poets and other artists are often the change agents in a world that seeks the balance of reason to counter violence, injustice or stagnation.

On Saturday, 27 September, 100,000 Poets (and Writers, Musicians, Artists and Activists) will join in cities and towns around the world to explore and inspire positive changes for issues of human rights, poverty, hunger, climate, and peace-making. You can learn more about that effort and see what’s happening in your area by linking HERE.

The Bardo Group is hosting a virtual event as a vehicle to facilitate blogger participation and also for those who may not live near an off-line event or who may be homebound. Tomorrow, we are jump-starting our participation with our traditional Writers’ First Wednesday prompt. Novelist, poet and writing coach, Victoria C. Slotto will host Got Change? and you are invited to share your thoughts and work by linking in through Mister Linky or by leaving comments or links in the comment section.

Please join us on The Bardo Group blog tomorrow for Victoria’s Writers’ Fourth Wednesday.

Details on our virtual participation with 100,000 Poets for Change event are HERE.

© 2014, photograph, Jamie Dedes, All rights reserved

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Photo on 2014-03-31 at 17.16 #3unnamed-18JAMIE DEDES (The Poet by Day)~ I started blogging shortly after I retired as a way to maintain my sanity and to stay connected to the arts and the artful despite being mostly homebound. My Facebook pages are: Jamie Dedes (Arts and Humanities) and Simply Living, Living Simply.

With the help and support of talented bloggers and readers, I founded The Bardo Group because I feel that blogging offers a means to see one another in our simple humanity, as brothers and sisters and not as “other.” I am the poetry liaison and a member of the Core Team. Terri Stewart (Beguine Again) is in the lead position and the Beguine Again collaborative and The Bardo Group are coordinating a consolidation of the two groups.

“Good work, like good talk or any other form of worthwhile human relationship, depends upon being able to assume an extended shared world.” Stefan Collini (b. 1947), English Literary Critic and Professor of English Literature at Cambridge

Posted in animals/animal welfare/interspecies connections, Corina L. Ravenscraft, Environment/Deep Ecology/Climate Change, Nature, Story Telling, Photo Story, Video

The Power of Collective Creativity

Posted on by dragonkatet

As creative individuals, it’s rewarding when we can use our skills to make something that “speaks” to others. Whether it’s the written word, the visual arts, music or performance arts, “The Arts” have always been a way to make powerful statements about politics, religion, war, the environment. It’s a way to make your own opinion known about these and other things that usually embody a very personal, individual set of beliefs or values. It has been said that any “successful” piece of art is one that evokes an emotional response (be it good or bad).

image borrowed from http://www.edutopia.org/arts-music-curriculum-child-development

image borrowed from http://www.edutopia.org/arts-music-curriculum-child-development

Throughout history, there are scads of examples of “The Arts” changing the world in some way. I’m not just talking about changing the “Art World”, though there are plenty of examples of that, too. But consider things like cave paintings. Once discovered, they completely changed the way that modern mankind viewed our cave-dwelling ancestors! Or how about Shakespeare and his influence of adding around 1700 words to the English language, or his play “Othello” which brought the idea of inter-racial love to the forefront of peoples’ minds?

image borrowed from http://www.durbeckarchive.com/plays.htm

image borrowed from http://www.durbeckarchive.com/plays.htm

The song “Imagine” by John Lennon became something of a “global” anthem for peace, because anyone, anywhere could relate to the desire of human beings for peace instead of war. The photograph of the young, naked Vietnamese girl running away from a napalm attack in the 1970′s shocked enough people to significantly swell the anti-Vietnam movement here in America.

image borrowed from http://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/worldnews/asia/vietnam/7735854/Vietnam-War-girl-in-the-picture-reunited-with-journalist-who-saved-her-life.html

image borrowed from http://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/worldnews/asia/vietnam/7735854/Vietnam-War-girl-in-the-picture-reunited-with-journalist-who-saved-her-life.html

I’m sure you can think of numerous examples, but the point is that Art has POWER.

Now take that creative energy and then multiply it, with many artists working for the same cause…and the possibilities are astounding! I’d like to share a video I recently watched from here regarding the POWER of a “Collective Creative Conscience”. It gave me hope and inspiration that we CAN (and DO) change the world in better ways than we ever thought possible! Enjoy! :)



– Corina L. Ravenscraft

© 2013, essay and portrait (below), Corina Ravenscraft, All rights reserved

Corina-1CORINA L. RAVENSCRAFT (Dragon’s Dreams) ~ is an old friend of The Bardo Group and a new member of the Core Team. She is a poet and writer, artist and librarian who has been charming us through her blog since 2000, longer than any blogger in our little blogging community.  In the her engaging “about” on her blog HERE, Corina says, “I’m not a materialistic person, because I’ve learned that it’s not the “things” in life which really count, but the people you connect with, whose lives you touch or who touch yours. I don’t take anyone or anything for granted because I know from experience that it can all disappear in the blink of a cosmic eye.  People and animals are so much more important (and interesting!) to me than any kind of material possessions.”