Every Person Is A Philosopher

With the holiday season in mind, it’s important to remember the community aspect of creative culture, and pay attention to the networks across all cultures and social classes that we need to build and maintain in order for good art to thrive and proliferate. In Chicago, the Neighborhood Writing Alliance does exactly this. Under the idea that “every person is a philosopher,” the Alliance connects low-income adults from across the city to share and collect their personal experiences, tell their stories, and share ideas about their communities through writing and discussion. The results are then published in the Journal of Thought.

The drive behind the journal is local, but the idea is universal. We are all kept alive by the stories we build and share together. Our communities are defined HGH by how we interpret the world around us, and pass words on to each other. No story is too insignificant or unimportant to keep locked up inside a person, and we all benefit from hearing and understanding the words of others. With the proliferation of programs around the country that encourage so-called non-writers to write and non-artists to create, here’s hoping that we can bring art into more people’s lives in order to bring more people’s lives into our collective creative culture. I encourage you to seek out similar programs in your city and support them in any way you can, and if you find your area is lacking this resource, take it as a call to start one, because the stories are out there waiting to be shared.

This entry was posted on Wednesday, December 26th, 2012 at 8:00 am. It is filed under Creative Culture. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed.