Voices Between: Our Approach
Our collective proposes to innovate for the purpose of giving rise to resilient humaneness through approaches that build bridges. New Voices is a global collective of creatives who tell stories of past wars (or specifically the wars of the 20th century) through contemporary perspectives. Often, our members’ familial connections and personal histories play a role in their passion to drive forward conversations that speak to the reverberations of war and and the consequences it has for our perceptions of self. Through joint humanistic storytelling and education initiatives, New Voices members use their unique combination of perspectives and skills to break down the narrative of us versus them and to dispel the myth that we live on different sides of history.
New Voices strives to bridge the chasms between diverse areas of activity and learning. Our experiences as creatives who have also worked in academia, business and the non-profit sectors gives us insights into the potential for positive action within each, as well as the responsibility that each bears in a wider perspective, which we deem particularly urgent to emphasize as we watch the arts and humanities becoming de-funded across the West.
Issues that we foresee addressing include, among others:
The impact and responsibility of artists in relation to collective memory: Artists continue and will continue to represent the Holocaust and other genocides in creative work. However, over time, there will likely be a drift away from the facts and the experiences of those events for numerous reasons including artistic expression, dramatic value, market value, etc. There is a needed conversation to be had about this tendency and what it means for our collective memory — because art is often the vehicle for education, even if artists do not see themselves as educators.
The responsibility of the academic community to act as a resource for art: What does it mean for the scholarly or academic community to start positioning itself as a resource to artists so that new creative work can better be informed and aligned to the virtuous results of that conversation? Without impinging on creative freedom, and without making the Holocaust “stagnant” as a historical fact, can resources be provided to help artists negotiate dramatic or creative space in ways that are good rather than bad?
The responsibility to hold public discussions across conversational or professional lines: Aside from conversations suggested by the bridge-building approaches between currently siloed areas of learning we envision other types of boundary-crossing conversations. What would it mean for fiction writers to talk to each other across national or regional lines? For Jews and Muslims to discuss memory and art? For Eastern Europeans to identify the tensions of exploring and expressing the Holocaust in their own native languages and national discourses? For fiction writers, screenwriters, and visual artists to ask themselves whether they think the same about these themes; why they did or didn’t tackle certain issues; and why they made certain decisions.
These conversations and others seem notably absent or under-represented in civil society to our collective detriment. The New Voices initiative aims to attend to these gaps through focused and pragmatic (but also engaging and enlightening) activities.
Currently foreseen initiatives include:
Our collective proposes to innovate for the purpose of giving rise to resilient humaneness through approaches that build bridges. New Voices is a global collective of creatives who tell stories of past wars (or specifically the wars of the 20th century) through contemporary perspectives. Often, our members’ familial connections and personal histories play a role in their passion to drive forward conversations that speak to the reverberations of war and and the consequences it has for our perceptions of self. Through joint humanistic storytelling and education initiatives, New Voices members use their unique combination of perspectives and skills to break down the narrative of us versus them and to dispel the myth that we live on different sides of history.
New Voices strives to bridge the chasms between diverse areas of activity and learning. Our experiences as creatives who have also worked in academia, business and the non-profit sectors gives us insights into the potential for positive action within each, as well as the responsibility that each bears in a wider perspective, which we deem particularly urgent to emphasize as we watch the arts and humanities becoming de-funded across the West.
Issues that we foresee addressing include, among others:
The impact and responsibility of artists in relation to collective memory: Artists continue and will continue to represent the Holocaust and other genocides in creative work. However, over time, there will likely be a drift away from the facts and the experiences of those events for numerous reasons including artistic expression, dramatic value, market value, etc. There is a needed conversation to be had about this tendency and what it means for our collective memory — because art is often the vehicle for education, even if artists do not see themselves as educators.
The responsibility of the academic community to act as a resource for art: What does it mean for the scholarly or academic community to start positioning itself as a resource to artists so that new creative work can better be informed and aligned to the virtuous results of that conversation? Without impinging on creative freedom, and without making the Holocaust “stagnant” as a historical fact, can resources be provided to help artists negotiate dramatic or creative space in ways that are good rather than bad?
The responsibility to hold public discussions across conversational or professional lines: Aside from conversations suggested by the bridge-building approaches between currently siloed areas of learning we envision other types of boundary-crossing conversations. What would it mean for fiction writers to talk to each other across national or regional lines? For Jews and Muslims to discuss memory and art? For Eastern Europeans to identify the tensions of exploring and expressing the Holocaust in their own native languages and national discourses? For fiction writers, screenwriters, and visual artists to ask themselves whether they think the same about these themes; why they did or didn’t tackle certain issues; and why they made certain decisions.
These conversations and others seem notably absent or under-represented in civil society to our collective detriment. The New Voices initiative aims to attend to these gaps through focused and pragmatic (but also engaging and enlightening) activities.
Currently foreseen initiatives include:
- The publication of joint articles in the media;
- Conducting public conversations that are recorded and distributed through both traditional channels and also social media;
- Conducting joint workshops and learning programs both in person and in cyberspace;
- Identifying and pursuing synergies between creatives and institutions of learning or action in war, genocide and peace.
- Creating a common platform which serves as a distribution and contact point on the world wide web, and a hub for sharing innovation.
- Treating the entire initiative as a “learning enterprise” so that we can adopt, adapt, and innovate as necessary so that we are always crafting appropriate solutions for addressing the key problematics as the world around us changes and evolves.
