Make a difference again this week with your Changeletter!

Got this from a friend? Get your own copy of Soapbox Project's Changeletter here to overcome your climate anxiety while taking meaningful action in 3 minutes or less each week.

May 2024: the power of art

Each month, we break down our topic into four weekly modules. Catch up on previous editions here.​

This week's module: READ

• 🎯 READ | Your brain (and city) on art (TODAY)
• WATCH | How to transform a movement through art (5/8/24)
• ACT | How you can put art into your activism practice (5/15/24)
• REFLECT | Share your art reflections! (5/22/24)

Estimated reading time: 3 minutes for the action plan

Here's what we'll learn today Reader

When we think about “solving climate change”, maaannnyyy of us think…

• We need technology!
• We need individual behavior change!
• We need different policy and systems-level incentives!

Yes. You are correct!

But it’s time to stop limiting ourselves to what we can quantify. We’re missing an obvious climate and social justice solution, one that humans have known about since before we were even homo sapiens:

Art!

In this month’s Changeletter, we will go beyond ROI and metrics and greenhouse gas emissions. We will explore why it’s time to stop thinking about art as this frivolous cute little bonus of society. We’ll examine that perhaps being creative is the point of it all.

​As Bayo Akomolafe says, “If we beat the system at its own game, we’ve lost. The time is very urgent – we must slow down.”

So this month, let’s slow down and make some art.

We’ll start today’s READ module with three articles: two on what art does to our brains, and one on my favorite example of arts and social change. Let’s go! 💨

Your bite-sized action plan Reader

✅ READ an article on art

First, you get to understand the perks art and creative expression brings to life on earth. Next… storytime!

Some facts and studies:

• ​Art helps us imagine a more hopeful future.
  ​​
  Girija Kaimal, Drexel University professor + art therapy researcher, has a theory that art-making helps us navigate problems that might arise in the future. Our brain is a predictive machine, and Kaimal says that “when you make art, you're making a series of decisions — what kind of drawing utensil to use, what color, how to translate what you're seeing onto the paper. And ultimately, interpreting the images — figuring out what it means.” Art builds our imagination skills, and I can’t think of a more necessary time for imagining the future.
  ​
  ​
• ​Art lowers stress.
  ​​
  A 2016 paper in the Journal of the American Art Therapy Association found that 45 minutes of creating art in a studio with an art therapist significantly lowered cortisol (stress hormone) levels. The best part? Skill level didn’t affect health outcomes! I love the idea that finger painting could save your mental health.
  ​
  ​
• ​Art makes you a better learner and a better rememberer.
  ​​
  Okay this is some literal big brain info: art enhances areas of your brain to perform tasks that they are designed to do! Practicing music, for example, made brain regions engaged in processing sound bigger. 🧠 Art education, especially early in life, makes you a better collaborator. It makes you more socially and emotionally resilient too, and we all need to build our own resilience before we can effectively create climate resilience.

​

Let's end with one of my favorite stories:

Edi Rama, the former Mayor of Tirana (Albania's capital) increased public safety, reduced crime, and improved tax collection rates from 4% to 90%.

Not through technology. Not through asking people to change their behavior. Not through policy.

​He did it by painting buildings bright orange.​

A moral of the story, according to Mayor Rama: “We wanted to give people the sense of a city, not simply as a physical space but a as a space where they could imagine a future. It’s a lesson that beauty and beautiful spaces can make people’s behavior change completely.

So if you’re feeling glum and depressed (and there’s a LOT to feel glum and depressed about), maybe it’s time to take out some color pencils and start scribbling.

​

Love,

Nivi

P.S. If you're looking for a life-changing book to check out, I highly HIGHLLYYYY recommend Joyful by Ingrid Fetell Lee. That's where I learned Mayor Rama's story, and it lives rent free in my head.