From Theater Sets To Veterans’ Healing Circles: How David O’Fallon Crafted A Life Through Cultural Organizing and Story

Bill Cleveland: 00:00:05

David O'Fallon builds things, theater sets, theater companies, 12 foot puppets, visionary art schools for teen artists and community musicians, transformational theater programs for veterans from the Afghanistan and Vietnam wars, and more. The through line for David's wonderfully twisty journey are a couple of simple but powerful questions.

What is the story you want to tell and how can it be shaped and shared with your community?

Bill Cleveland: 00:00:34

Which, of course are also the central questions we ask all of our guests. Please know that this episode contains descriptions of war that include violence and psychological trauma.

We endeavor to do our best to engage these hard stories with care and respect. Please also be aware that there's a lot of hope, healing and optimism contained herein. We hope you will join us whenever you are willing and able.

Bill Cleveland: 00:01:02

This is Change the Story, Change the.

Bill Cleveland: 00:01:05

World, a chronicle of art and community transformation. I'm Bill Cleveland. Part one Relations.

Bill Cleveland: 00:01:16

So I'll just begin with the foundation setting, which is your work spans many decades, as does mine, and over that time you have done many things and however you want to describe it, describe your work in the world.

David O'Fallon: 00:01:35

Yeah, thank you. It's a great question.

I think my work in the world is trying to be a person who actively imagines and creates the narratives that keep us together and take us forward, rather than those that just tell us how screwed up everything is, how bad off we are and why we can't get along. So the bottom line has always been looking for connections and relationships and bridge building in every setting that I've been in.

Bill Cleveland: 00:02:06

What would be a concrete version of that?

David O'Fallon: 00:02:10

I'll give a couple of stories that go with that.

So I am in graduate school at Temple University in Philadelphia and my wife Ann and I are living at the corner of Broad and Allegheny, which if anybody knows Philly, that's North Phil. And at some point I discover. So I'm appreciative of the work we're doing at Temple.

I went there to work with a particular guy, Arthur Wagner, who had a way of looking at theater because my background is in theater creating and acting and directing. But I walked down Broad street one day to discover the Freedom Theater, which is an all black theater company.

And I walked down the basement steps to discover the director of the theater, the guy who was keeping it all together. And I basically said, is there anything at all that I can do here?

Because I don't want only to be within the confines of Temple University and academia. And he looked me up and down, this kind of younger then white guy and said, maybe. Can you build stuff? And I said, yeah, I Can build sets and stuff.

So I sawed lumber and built sets. And then they had me involved in improvisations where I always got to be the Philly cop because the white cops were white guys.

And they said, we kind of like you, but you're not mean enough to be a Philly cop. I ended up being in shows and directing shows at the Freedom Theater in Philadelphia as the only white guy involved.

After a while, Ann and I moved up to Germantown, a little further north, and we're going to church called the First United Methodist Church of Germantown. We invited in black theater companies to co create productions with the First United Methodist Church of Germantown.

So connecting, bridge, building, people, working together. The point was working together by creating work, doing theater, building things, sharing stories, collaborating. That was the work.

It's always been the work, if you will. So that's one concrete example.

Bill Cleveland: 00:04:29

Yeah. So actually, I have a question to you about work. We live in an increasingly abstract world. Not just abstract in concepts and ideas, but also in.

Even in the means by which we communicate and the way in which we disseminate our stories.

And the reason I'm asking you this question is because I've had similar experiences of recognizing that the closer you are to literally putting the shovel in the soil together, the closer you can come to the combination of trust and truth that is essential for any relationship to get built. Is that your sense? Is that a core belief that you have in your work?

David O'Fallon: 00:05:12

I think it is. And I think one of the most powerful technologies we have, Bill, is to actually be in the presence of another person.

And to your point about abstractions, we could go on about how many friends you have on Facebook, how many things you posted on YouTube, how many hits on Instagram, and so on. It takes a different kind of courage to be in the room with the person, sharing your story or listening carefully, looking somebody in the eye.

There's a physical presence that you must deal with. And that's, for me, always been the power, particularly of theater, but of many other art forms in which you have to be present to each other.

So that's the kind of courage.

And I think hanging out in the performing arts world, which is my home base, led to other things, different groups and encounter groups of one kind or another that asked for a similar kind of courage, of a physical presence with each other and being open to another person.

Bill Cleveland: 00:06:19

There's something akin to what I would call old school spiritual practice in what you describe literally a congregation or a group of people being together, the laying on of hands, the the sense of brotherhood and sisterhood that humans needed in order to survive for most of human history.

David O'Fallon: 00:06:41

And we still need it. And I'll share another story about these connections, and this is a very tangible story.

So I recently left being president of the Minnesota Humanities Center. And so when I took the position, they said, what is your definition of the humanities?

And I said, I don't have one, and I won't spend any time on it because that's big academic question. I said, I'm coming to you, the Humanities center, because I really care about how we get along in the world and how do we connect with each other.

But here's the concrete example of that. My first board meeting, this is Minnesota. So it's November, so it's cold.

And a young woman walks into the boardroom in a puffy winter coat with her arms crossed in front of her and says, yeah, I like, I'm all for the Humanities center. And I get it. We should speak for those who have been marginalized and left out, and we should make sure that every voice gets heard.

But I want to know, new president, what do you think about the veterans voice? And I said, absolutely. We are in the longest war in our history, and it's fought by the fewest number of people.

And she took off her puffy winter coat and she said, okay, I'm going to stay on the board. That was a woman named Corinda Horton, who's a combat veteran from Desert Storm.

Bill Cleveland: 00:08:01

Wow.

David O'Fallon: 00:08:03

And we went on then to create a Veterans Voices program at the center by first meeting with veterans to say, is there anything that we can do that would actually matter to you? Because there's a thousand veterans programs. And they basically said, in various ways, we want to be treated as a full human.

One of them said to me, one more person says, thanks for your service. I'm gonna deck them because they have no idea. They have no idea what you asked me to do.

And I want to be very personal because this is a story that I carry with me. So we were having the usual kind of meeting that Bill, you've been through large pieces of post it notes on the wall and markers.

And it's a designing, thinking, planning meeting in a conference room. And they're all veterans except one or two of us.

And one of the guys in the corner, a man, heavily tattooed, is bouncing around and swaying back and forth. And people go over to him and say, you doing okay? How you doing? And he says, yeah, yeah, I'm okay. I'm here, I'm okay.

That was Day one, day two, we always had a good breakfast. So I walk into the breakfast meeting the next morning, and Richard is there. And I say, hey, Schmidti, which was his sort of nickname. Schmidti.

I stick out my hand. I'm really glad you're here. I didn't know if you'd be coming back. He says, I'm not shaking your hand.

And he gave me this bear hug that I thought would crack my spine. And he said, he's an Afghanistan combat vet who was medved out. And he said, you never go into battle without your battle buddy. Never.

And I'm back now, and I got different battles, and now the humanities are my battle buddy, and I trust what you're doing here. And that program grew and grew with an authenticity, and I hired veterans to run it. And there were still people.

I think there might still be people at the Humanities center who don't get it. Why are we connecting the humanities with veterans?

But if you've been in a room with men and women who've been not all in combat, but just in service in this almost invisible war that's still going on as you and I are talking today, and they're not seen as fully human or they're thanked once with a flyover at a football game or something, the power of literature, of storytelling, of theater, of music, of creation is unbelievable. It's deep and it's strong, and it's essential. You want to go back to basics.

You asked about story, and in some ways, these men and women live the power of story.

Bill Cleveland: 00:10:53

So, David, talk about some of the specific aspects of that program that got designed with veterans.

David O'Fallon: 00:11:00

A couple things happened in the program.

The key one is probably that we created a particular approach to theater in which these men and women helped to tell and shape their own story with an arc to it. Like, why did you join up? Where were you? What was going on? What were the promises made to you when you signed up? And then what did you go through?

What did you experience? And now you're out, and what has that been like? How has the transition been?

And they perform in the black box at the Guthrie and in sites and cities around Minnesota, each telling their own stories. So they're not, quote, unquote, acting. They're saying, this is my story.

And one man, I'll just use his first name, Richard, told the story of being in combat in Afghanistan, and the convoys could only run at night, and they're out running at night. And he's in an armored vehicle. He's manning a 50 caliber machine gun. And it's after curfew, so no civilian should be on the road.

But there's a car behind the convoy. So Richard tells his crew chief, there's a guy back there, headlights. And the guy says, basically, give him a little warning shot. He did.

And the car just kept coming. Well, give him another one. The car just kept coming. Richard said, what am I gonna do? And the guy said, take him out.

So Richard did, and the car flipped over, went into the ditch. The convoy stopped, and it was a mom and dad and two kids trying to get home. Perfume.

Now, Richard had never told that story until he's telling it in public here in a theater, coached in understanding people sitting there. Richard said, I came home and I stood on the 3rd Avenue bridge over the Mississippi with a six pack just thinking, to hell with it. I got nothing.

What am I here for? But he said, I'm here tonight. So I obviously didn't do that.

Then after all the stories have been told and each person is now standing on the stage, you can imagine there's six vets there. Some go back to the Vietnam era. Some are right now men and women. And so the man in the audience near the end says, what do you want from us?

What can we do? And Richard says, I want you to think about what you're asking us to do. So there's another connection made.

And Richard just got married a week or so ago.

Bill Cleveland: 00:13:44

Wow. What a wonderful thing.

David O'Fallon: 00:13:46

Yeah, I'm really happy to say.

And his life hasn't been easy, and Schmitty's life hasn't been easy, and we're not making it easy for him, even though there's all kinds of public praise for veterans and so forth. But again, connections, relationship. And being in the room with Corinda Horton from Desert Storm or Richard and Schmitty from the war. Right now.

Bill Cleveland: 00:14:16

Part two, original stories.

Bill Cleveland: 00:14:20

So one of the things that has really marked your entire life is this relationship to theater and performance. And you just described a powerful moment. What is it about theater, the practice, its history, people's involvement in it?

Professionals, non professionals?

What is it about theater that is deep enough for people like the veterans you just described to employ it, use it, take it seriously, and obviously benefit from it? What's going on there?

David O'Fallon: 00:14:58

I think there's a bunch of things, and I think they're important to where we are right now as a culture and a climate as well. And in that particular instance, what was powerful were men and women shaping their own story, coming to grips with their own personal narrative.

And then Having the courage, and it took a lot of courage to put that out there in public. I think almost every woman had a story of sexual exploitation or being challenged so to share that in public.

So the point is, I am shaping my own life through shaping this story. As a young man, I was lucky to get into academic theater early. I was teaching in college when I was like two years out of college.

But I was always drawn to the creation of original work.

And that's one thing that took me up to northern Vermont work with Bread and Puppet theater, which was a formative experience, because that's all original work. It's being created on the spot with Peter Schuman and the gang up there.

And I think the challenge has always been to discover the way that theater can articulate the stories of people who might not be represented. The 44th time that you performed Twelfth Night or how many Hamlets have you seen? And I love that. I go to those plays. They're powerful.

But for me, the performance has always been part and parcel with whose story is being told, in what venue? How can it be shared? How can we shape it?

And that, of course, led me back to Minneapolis to a job where I helped found a theater that is still going 45 years later. That always is creating original work.

Every story that we do is coming up from, you could say below or from the side or some other way, sometimes informed by other works, but most often about people trying to speak their own story into the great noise of our time.

Bill Cleveland: 00:16:59

That company with the 45 year track record is the world renowned Heart of the Beast puppet and Mask theater, whose work is very much influenced by Bread and Puppet and whose annual May Day parade and festival is a beloved Twin Cities institution.

Bill Cleveland: 00:17:14

Most people aren't really familiar with theater. That is tapping into the stories of the communities in which the theater is being made.

What is that in particular, when in fact you are, as theater makers, both witness and steward of an evolving and sometimes very tenuous community story.

David O'Fallon: 00:17:39

Yeah, and let's expand this beyond theater for a moment because whether you are the mural makers in Philadelphia, which has this incredible mural tradition, those are all original. They're not copying somebody else's work.

Whether they've got Martin Luther King on the wall or Frederick Douglass on the wall or the neighborhood kids on the wall, the murals in Philly are original work. And here's one thing they have in common with theater. They're created by groups.

They're created by people who are putting their own story up in public in incredibly vibrant ways. There's A giant, one of Dr. J icons and images of who we are and what we could be and can be.

So there's always a sense of a community deciding to shape its story and to put it out in public.

I think the incredible growth of spoken word artists of every kind and every culture blooming across the world from Philly and the Bronx and so forth, has taken off. Those are original stories. Those are men and women shaping and telling their own story. For me, that's also theater. That's all theater.

And it's still a struggle to get some of this into larger venues or bigger purposes, but it's really taken off. So I think the struggle has always been who gets to tell your story. Do you believe you can tell your own story?

And a lot of people start out by saying, I got nothing to say. I got no story tell. I don't do anything. Who am I?

So that's where all of us who tried to work in the arts world have had to create the vessels, if you will, and the structures of support and the encouragement so that, in fact, a person can say, I got this poem I wrote. I've been keeping it underneath my underwear drawer. Maybe I'll say it out loud. And they do, and they discover a voice.

And that word or that phrase is almost overused these days. Who has voice and who has agency? It means, let's make it real again.

It means a person, an individual person, a Schmidtie standing up and saying, I got a story to tell. Let me tell you. Yeah.

Bill Cleveland: 00:19:57

As the name of this podcast is Change the story, Change the world. Exactly. There are probably many people hear that and think that's kind of hyperbolic and grandiose. And actually, I don't use that assertion lightly.

My experience, obviously, in a lot of different places, prison being seminal among them, have exposed me to episode after episode of individuals and groups who have tapped into what you've just described. Not in search of changing the story, but at the end of the day, finding at least the beginning of new chapters.

David O'Fallon: 00:20:45

Yes.

Bill Cleveland: 00:20:47

Number one, is that something that you've experienced? In number two, are there any particular stories or anecdotes that reflect that change? Obviously.

The veterans you talked about, any others that really rise up for you?

David O'Fallon: 00:21:01

I first want to affirm, if you will, the thesis of your work, because I believe that very strongly. And let's make it personal again.

You can ask a person, what is the story you're telling about yourself, which is, what do you believe in about yourself? And can we help shape or just listen to that or Bring it out. That's story number one. And then who tells stories about you?

Men have been telling stories about women for a long time, and that's beginning to erupt and be challenged. And I think that's incredible. It's not just the MeToo movement. It's a whole way of thinking.

An example of that for me was, gosh, I think it wasn't until, I don't know, late 70s or early 80s that universities created women's studies programs, because until men were the experts on women. Try that. But that was real. So you change the story that, for example, women get to tell and shape their own story.

And many things now have begun to change because of that. Whose story counts? How do you talk about history?

We have right now, for example, in Minnesota, to make this very clear, at the Minnesota Humanities center, we started people acknowledging in every single public gathering. This is a simple phrase, but it changes the story.

Before we begin our meeting tonight, let's acknowledge that we are standing here on Dakota land, that people lived here for hundreds and hundreds of years before your Irish, German, Swedish, Norwegian, great, great grandparents showed up. There were people here, and it's their land, and mostly we took it from them. That's a simple thing, but it's concrete. It changes the story.

Whose land are you on? You're on Dakota land. Big controversy here. And in concrete terms of changing the story, there was a lake here named Lake Calhoun. John C.

ake named after him? From the: 1860

So the lake was just changed to Lake Biddy Makaska, which is the original Ojibwe name. And the ancestors of the people who lived on the edge of that lake, Cloudman's Village, and the site is still there. Came back for the naming.

inconvenience. My address is: 4421

God damn it, I'm gonna have to change, you know. And you went, yeah, gee, what an inconvenience. Do that. Get over it. But the controversy is there.

So, yes, simple things, changing a name, how we name things, telling a different story, begin to change the way people look at each other and behave and respond to each other, though those are just great examples, simple ones, but they really matter. When you go to a Public gathering. Somebody says, let's remember, we're standing here on Dakota land. A lot of people go, oh.

And then they want to know more.

Bill Cleveland: 00:24:35

Telling the truth.

The kind of theater you talk about making, this idea of First Voice, that the people who are telling the story are inches away from where the story took place and are, in fact, the people who suffer the consequences or the celebration of whatever the story is, which is very different from venerable pieces that were created hundreds of years ago, which have equal value.

But I guess a question I have is that when in fact you're engaging First Voice, how does that affect the theater itself, the way the theater is made, how it's presented, its accountability even?

David O'Fallon: 00:25:24

Yeah, I think those are good questions, Bill.

And I think the short answer is it affects where it is performed, gets to tell the story and write it, perform it, share, affects what you think the aesthetics of the theater might be. Do you judge something because it's technically really perfect, or do you judge it because it's strong and clear and you can connect with it?

Or all of the above. So I think all these things are still evolving.

The theater was not always what we see on a stage someplace, whether you go Broadway or Seattle Rep or wherever. And it's often had many forms, community based, or what I think Peter Brook called rough theater. People creating it and sharing it.

Yes, it changes the work of the theater.

There's a great theater here called 10,000 Things, which performs to your own experience, often in prisons, often in halfway houses or church basements or community settings.

One of the best versions of Henry IV, part one and two, I've ever seen was done by 10,000 things, but in this incredibly alive, somewhat loose, almost storytelling way by people that you. Sometimes. You wouldn't see their bodies on other stages. Right. So it's challenging, I think, how we think about these things.

And I want to use that to bridge into. To go back to what is the work that we're involved in right now and to your change the story, change the world idea.

The fact is, the world is changing, and we have dominant stories right now, some of which are being told by genuinely evil people that denigrate others, that build walls and shut people out and hurt children in cages along the border because they're not seeing fit to enter our country. Who's telling that story? Who gets to tell that story? And there are many voices trying to tell another different story.

And I'm gonna be very blunt right here. I think those who are wishing and working to create a nation that's based on Patriarchal white nationalism, they will fail. That world is impossible.

But they can do a great deal of harm as they push that narrative, as they use lies to push it. Oh, no, we're here for everybody. We want to make the nation secure. We're being told lies and we know it.

So the importance of these first voices, these voices that are being left out, whether it's a veteran or whether it's somebody coming up through a variety of smaller theaters or spoken word performances, is essential. We need to change the dominant lying story that's oppressing and, in fact, murdering many other people. That's the work.

That's why this is important work. Whatever scale you can do it. One to one, two to one, one to a million, whatever you can do.

Bill Cleveland: 00:28:38

Part 4 Next Steps and Warning Labels.

Bill Cleveland: 00:28:44

So one of the strange juxtapositions that always seems to be present in the work that you're describing and work that I've engaged in all my life, and that is that we live in a society that in general doesn't give much stock to the idea of making up a story or telling your own story, whatever. It actually has a term applied to it, which is entertainment.

And it occurs to me that when you actually turn the table and you say, what are the dominant stories and who's telling them? And in fact, are they benign? Are they trivial?

And when someone tells the story of an alien presence that is undermining our heritage, that is a powerful story. And it occurs to me that some of those people who are doing that actually know how to spin a story that people will listen to.

David O'Fallon: 00:29:45

Oh, absolutely.

Bill Cleveland: 00:29:46

And it behooves people who think differently to be equally powerful and forceful in the crafting of stories of truth and. And justice that are original, that are accountable, that are true. So here's a question for you.

If there was someone who basically said, david, I like what you do. I like the path of the questions that you ask and being engaged concretely in them, what would you say to them if they asked?

So tell me, what are some good ways to move forward into this kind of relationship with the world?

David O'Fallon: 00:30:23

There's the Grace Lee Bogg statement that this is the time now for a few critical connections, not necessarily trying to go mass. So I think that supporting work on whatever scale, whether it's in Philly or Austin or LA or Seattle or Minneapolis, is important.

So I'd like everybody who hears this and who might be working on a scale where they say, I'm not doing enough. It's not big enough. Yeah, your work is Important. Do it where you can.

I think it was a guy that I continue to revere and hold as a hero, Gary Snyder, who said, basically, hey, work in your own backyard, hoe your own garden, get elected to the school board. Do that.

So, yes, scale matters, but it also matters that you do the work where you are, and that means actively supporting the policies and the funding that can help that happen.

So I think you can look at where money comes from, I think, and not to get too far afield here, but many foundations are rethinking their methodology of giving their philanthropy to be more involved, more partnership oriented, rather than just dispensing money and saying, we've defined the problem, now we're looking for people to solve it. Yes. So working on a policy level matters. Working specifically matters. And then I think.

And you've done this so well, Bill, in so many ways, networking really matters.

Some people working in Philly need to know somebody in LA who's doing something similar, who needs to know somebody in Omaha who might connect with somebody in Fargo, who might need to know somebody in Baton Rouge, and so on and so on.

Too many people are doing good work, but they still feel, in spite of all the connectivity over the web, isolated or not supported or nobody's paying any attention. So specifically, the more networking, resilience, building we can do, the stronger these networks of hope and action will be.

So any ways that we can support that in informal or formal ways, to me are very important. And I think there are some good methodologies going on. Informal, but I think important. U.S.

department of Arts and Culture, which is basically grassroots, totally citizen driven organization, is important. I think Americans for the Arts does some really good work in a lot of different venues. So, yeah, there goes all those dimensions.

So it's policy, it's program, it's specificity on any scale that you can do the work and connect with others.

Bill Cleveland: 00:33:06

So it occurs to me that in many ways what you're describing is a practice of community building that we learn firsthand when we grow up. Most people have a group of friends that they cultivate and they figure out how to be friends and to serve.

We don't call it those things, but you have to imagine that for most of human history, because it was essential to survival, the strategies and tools and ways in which people literally shared stories, confronted challenges and obstacles, solved things together, kind of came naturally because there were no other options.

And we're now in a hinge point where I think people can think that they have actually done something of substance in a world that gives you those likes and it's missing a critical element, which is the ditch is not getting dug, virtually. No, it's not.

David O'Fallon: 00:34:03

No. And I think you're on to a couple of very key ideas. And let's use that word practice for a moment.

I think right now a very important practice for anybody is write your own manifesto, write your own statement of purpose. The world is doing everything it can to keep us, if you will, asleep or befuddled or discouraged.

So I think whether you do it in writing, which is my favorite way, or whether you make a video for yourself or something, stand on your own ground and ask yourself, what is it that I really believe in my purpose, my sharing? It's not like there's a single answer to that. It's not like there's one answer and you keep it forever. But do that personal work.

I think it's really interesting that journal keeping and memoir writing are just taking off everywhere. But I think as a practice right now, to know where you stand in the middle of this whirlwind is extremely important.

And then to use something that my friend Eric Booth explained one time, to use your word, entertainment. In a sense, entertainment is there to reassure us that, hey, things will work out, everything will be okay.

But what art does is challenge us to say, don't take anything for granted. The future is not a given. What are we creating? What are we working on? Where are we going?

So entertainment keeps us reassured, if you will, or amused or partially asleep. Art asks us where you stand and it's harder. Creation is hard work. It's joyful and it's really hard.

Bill Cleveland: 00:35:41

Yes, yes. And the other thing that I think we forget is that it is actually in our nature to be makers.

And I think the degree to which we have no fingerprints on the end result, it's an unhealthy thing.

David O'Fallon: 00:35:55

I think it's an unhealthy thing.

And I think it's a marker of how disease connected we have become, not only from each other, but from the earth and the air and the fire and the water, if you will. Those four primary elements that I still like to think about.

But you might be a vital person on Instagram or Snapchat or TikTok, but at some point you got to eat and you're going to go someplace and poop and you want to have a glass of water. Where's all that come from?

Bill Cleveland: 00:36:22

Yes, I'm sorry.

David O'Fallon: 00:36:23

You're living in a body. Your body is part. Your body is your first place, if you will. You want to talk about grounding your body is a place. Are you taking good care of it?

Are you smart about it? Do you love it? Can you take care of it?

Bill Cleveland: 00:36:39

It's so interesting that so many of our colleagues in the work that you've described, those art forms, they are places where the head and the hand and the heart are all coming together to manifest something visceral in the world.

David O'Fallon: 00:36:56

Exactly.

Bill Cleveland: 00:36:57

And it occurs to me that when we separate those connections, we are losing touch with something pretty vital and important.

David O'Fallon: 00:37:07

Bill, to build on that, one of the things that's changing right now is the understanding of whole body wisdom, that the body knows things. There's an incredible Seneca heritage dancer choreographer here, Rosie Simmons. Rosie's gone international.

She's known for all her life that the body continues ancient trauma in its actual cellular structure. Her body knew that, and science is now confirming that in new ways. But she knows this and has performed it, and you can tell that.

So to leave this body wisdom out of the equation of what kind of world are we shaping and how are we going to get along with each other is, in fact, I think, dangerous.

My partner, Judith Howard, is a dancer choreographer, and I learned a lot from her about the power of the body and its wisdom and its knowledge and its systems. But that's also indigenous knowledge, as you know.

I am hanging out at the Science Museum of Minnesota right now as the resident humanist there and encouraging them to think about science and new narratives that include ancient indigenous wisdom. As one indigenous scientist said, I can imagine a science that's inclusive of relationships, which some scientists can't imagine.

It's facts, it's knowledge. It's taking things apart rather than putting things together.

Bill Cleveland: 00:38:34

David, as they say, you've traveled many roads over many seasons. What have you learned that you think really makes a difference?

David O'Fallon: 00:38:47

First you build a relationship, then you build a project or a program, and everybody's for relationships.

But it takes time to build trust, understanding, and authenticity, if you will, then devise a program or a project and carry it out and keep learning. That's one.

The second thing I want to emphasize again, in this whirlwind time, whoever listens to this in whatever way you find for yourself, write your own manifesto, your own personal statement of purpose and belief in whatever form you can.

It's images, it's words, it's music, it's whatever it is, but do it for yourself, and that will help you as you stand wherever you need to stand in relationship with others. And the third thing is be in the room with other people. In whatever way you can find yourself there.

It takes courage to do that, but I encourage us to do that. Steph.

Bill Cleveland: 00:39:42

Yeah.

Just to conclude, one of the things that is always, I think, surprising in the training programs that I've done is that it's a six month process, the work. And for the most part, people are strangers when they start out. And I think one of the side benefits is that they're not at the end.

And when we start, we ask people, name your most successful project and describe the most important outcome. And most people understandably come up with something like, we reduced truancy or we increased awareness of diabetes prevention or a concrete thing.

And it's the kind of thing that funders want.

But by the time we finish, we ask people to reflect again on what it is and we add a little element which is, given your history since that moment, take that into consideration and imagine, in fact, that project actually never ended.

And to a person, people are able to say, we're really proud of our accomplishments, but at the end of the day, those people that we forged those relationships with are the biggest asset coming out of the work.

David O'Fallon: 00:41:00

Absolutely. And I think I just want to rephrase what you just said. At the end of the day, all we have are our relationships with each other.

Bill Cleveland: 00:41:09

Absolutely. David, thank you so much.

Bill Cleveland: 00:41:11

All right, my friend, so we come to the end of another episode.

But before we bid you adieu, I'd like to mention a festival on art and social change taking place on September 25 and 26 called Reimagining Democracy. It's being presented by Atlanta's Arts Exchange both in person and virtually around the world.

We're happy to be a partner in this, in what I know will be a great event. So save the date and we'll keep you posted. Change the Story Change the World is a production of the center for the Study of Art and Community.

It's written and directed by me, Bill Cleveland. Our editor in chief is Andre Nebbe. And our extraordinary soundscape is crafted by the incomparable Judy Munson.

You can reach me at bill@artandcommunity.com if you enjoyed today's show, please subscribe and pass it on.

Bill Cleveland: 00:42:08

Adios.