The CANVAS Compendium: Dispatches from the New Jewish Renaissance
In our divisive moment, it can be easy to feel discouraged. So many seem committed to exploiting our differences rather than finding common cause. Fortunately, we’re also seeing people and organizations looking to create avenues of communication and healing, especially in the arts and culture community. We’re seeing, in fact, that art is one of the most powerful ways of creating empathy and tolerance, of expressing points of view that some might otherwise have closed their ears to.
This idea—art and culture as a means of building bridges, rather than burning them—is the inspiration behind Artists for Understanding, a new federal initiative enlisting cultural creatives to “foster dialogue, connection, empathy and changemaking in communities.”
Artists for Understanding has grown out of a multi-stage process directly involving stakeholders from American communities targeted by bias and prejudice—listening sessions with community leaders, convenings to discuss methods of action, and finally an envoy program that will send artists to the places where communication and healing is needed.
The program, modeled on the State Department’s Arts Envoy program, has been developed in coordination with the White House, the President’s Committee on the Arts and the Humanities (PCAH), the National Endowment for the Arts (NEA), the Institute of Museum and Library Services (IMLS), and the National Endowment for the Humanities (NEH).
Its work builds on earlier initiatives like the National Strategy to Counter Antisemitism, the National Strategy to Counter Islamophobia and Related Forms of Bias and Discrimination, and United We Stand: Connecting Through Culture.
In 2023 and early 2024, Artists for Understanding hosted virtual listening sessions for artists and cultural leaders to discuss fighting bias and discrimination against American Jews, Arabs, Muslims, Sikhs, South Asians, and other groups. The sessions revealed the necessity of storytelling from marginalized communities and of facilitating collaboration across cultural divides, as well as providing other educational opportunities that explore the nuances of race, religion, ethnicity, and prejudice in America.
The next step has been to organize convenings in communities where tensions have been particularly fraught—New York City, Dearborn, Minneapolis, San Jose, Houston, and Denver. These convenings, which will be held throughout 2024, will be an opportunity for practitioners to discuss the best ways to use art and culture for the promotion of tolerance.
The final step will be the envoy program, with artist receiving support and training in using arts as a means of promoting communication, understanding, and tolerance.
Artists for Understanding is led by the indefatigable Carla Dirlikov, Senior Advisor and Envoy for Cultural Exchange. Dirlikov is herself an accomplished singer, having studied singing and vocal performance at the Conservatoire National de Paris, the University of Michigan, and the
Schulich School of Music of McGill University.
Dirlikov has also enjoyed a parallel career in government service. She earned several certificates in Public Service from the Harvard Kennedy School; in 2021 she was an Advanced Leadership Initiative Fellow at Harvard University; from 2021 to 2023 she was a Social Innovation and Change Initiative Fellow at the Harvard Kennedy School Center for Public Leadership.
We spoke to Dirlikov about the intersection of art and public service and her work with Artists for Understanding.
Carla Dirlikov has enjoyed parallel careers in the arts and public service. Photo: Flaminia Fanale.
You’ve had an interesting career, both as a singer and in public service.
I worked as a professional singer for over 20 years. That’s my training and background, and I’m still active. My favorite role is Carmen. I’ve sung the title role over a hundred times in twelve countries.
My home is New York City, but I moved to DC when I was called to join the Biden Administration in a newly created role, as Senior Advisor and Envoy for Cultural Exchange at the National Endowment for the Arts. I was excited to join, because I am a public school kid from Ypsilanti, Michigan who benefited a lot from public programs. We were the kids who people thought would never go anywhere, but we had an amazing choral program at our public high school. We sang at the Vatican, at the Cathedral of Notre Dame, and at the White House.
When I went for my undergraduate degree at the University of Michigan, I benefited from scholarships and assistance from organizations like the Rotary Club and the Kiwanis Club. The community stepped up for me, which is one reason I was driven to do public service.
My father is Bulgarian and my mother is Mexican, and I am the firstborn American in my family. English was my third language. From a very young age they wanted to serve this idea of the American Dream, of becoming something. These ideas behind democracy, such as respect for diverse opinions, tolerance, and public service, that’s something I was raised with.
Tell us more about your work in public service.
I’ve had the privilege of working as an Arts Envoy for the State Department since 2005—this was right out of grad school, on a contractual basis. So I’ve long been interested in cultural diplomacy. I think I got on some folks’ radar when I did a fellowship at Harvard’s Belfer Center for Science and International Affairs on the future of cultural diplomacy. I also wrote a few op-eds on the subject which helped.
I was also a member of the Turnaround Arts Program, which was run out of the President’s Committee on Arts and the Humanities (PCAH). The idea was helping to turn around low-performing schools by infusing curricula with a robust arts component. Each school had fairy godmother or fairy godfather artist; I was in two schools, one in California and one in Florida. This program, which began as a pilot of PCAH in a handful of schools, has grown and is now housed at the Kennedy Center for the Performing Arts. I absolutely loved my experience in this program as I got to witness firsthand the power of the arts to change people’s lives.
Tell us about Artists for Understanding.
Artists for Understanding was created out of a desire to come together through what we have in common. The arts and the humanities play important roles in that. Right now there’s a lot of divisiveness and bifurcation. We’re a country of many different peoples. But we’re all human, and humanizing the other is something arts can do very well.
It was born out of the Biden Administration’s United We Stand Summit in the Fall of 2022. People were brought together to discuss ways of combating hate, and one result was the National Strategy to Counter Antisemitism.
What role can arts and humanities play in combating hate?
I prefer to think of the flip side, the positive way of framing it, which is how arts and communities can remind us of what we have in common. The arts and the humanities include our national and local museums and libraries that help us understand and respect each other, understand and celebrate our differences, and safeguard democracy. It’s a way of getting us all on the same page and involving people like leading artists, writers, chefs, fashion designers.
You started the program with listening sessions.
Yes. We started off the record, to provide safe spaces for dialogue between different communities, to learn what the needs are and how we can collectively brainstorm what arts and humanities can do. We wanted to invite them into the conversation, to learn what works and to hear the challenges.
From there we identified six locations where we wanted to have our convenings. For example, Dearborn, in my home state of Michigan, has a large Arab-American population. Minneapolis we found is important for its role in the murder of George Floyd of course, and there is also a large Native American community.
I’m looking forward to the convenings because every conversation has taught me something. There’s a lot of work to do on nuance, on terms, on identity. Kendell Pinkney speaks beautifully about nuance and identity, about belonging to multiple groups and how to avoid oversimplification or binary thinking. So we’ve been working hard to have respectful conversations and to listen actively, to host and foster a conversation where everyone can have a voice and learn. [Rabbi Kendell Pinkney runs the Workshop, a CANVAS Network grantee.—Ed.]
How can you ensure you will reach people beyond the affected groups, or that there will be communication between people from different groups?
That’s why our early conversations were highly curated in terms of people. We wanted people whom we knew would be respectful and come in with the right ethos. I don’t ever want a situation where people are going to feel uncomfortable or are siloed.
I make a point of not being political. We create space for us to talk about how arts and humanities can be an answer to problems the country is facing, and we stay focused on that.
What are you looking forward to?
I’m really looking forward to the convenings and the conversations and ideas that come out of them. I’m also really looking forward to the arts envoy program, when we take what we learn and select artists who will get a year of funding and training to continue the work, to utilize arts and culture in positive ways in affected communities.
Learn more about Artists for Understanding here and its illustrious spokespeople here.
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