- [Kacie] Art is flexible, it's dynamic, it can be multi-layered.

- [Umi] I use dance and movement as a means to tell story.

- [Adam] I think it's very important for every student to have some experience making art.

- [Kacie] I'm just using my art form to be a part of the conversation.

- [Umi] We could use this to really understand the humanity and dignity of all people.

- [Jasmine] I feel like I am painting a world that I would like to see.

- The connection between art and social justice is to revolutionize the mindset of the people.

(upbeat music) I believe that the art can inspire and teaching can transform, and you bring the two together and we can have radical pedagogy.

- [Narrator] Disrupting the norm to promote social justice, that's the mission for these trailblazing artists.

The group is part of Emory University's Arts and Social Justice Fellowship program, and they're here today brainstorming ways to continue making a positive impact on their communities.

- The Arts and Social Justice Fellowship Program was started in the midst of the time of chaos and confusion.

After George Floyd was killed, we were all confused about what the next steps would be and how we would respond.

And I think the entire country was trying to figure out how, what would the next steps be, what would be the response that we could make as a community, as a society, and certainly as an academy, as Emory University.

- [Narrator] Carlton Mackey, then director of the Ethics and the Arts Program at the Emory University Center for Ethics, wanted to respond using a language he felt everyone would understand, art.

- Art allows people to see what they are, not what they are not.

And I believe that the primary role of the artist, particularly artists who are connected to communities, is to translate the longings of the hearts of the people.

- [Narrator] And Carlton wanted to do just that.

So he reached out to fellow artist, musicologist, and now divisional Dean of Arts, Kevin Karnes.

Together, they came up with an idea.

- I feel like we have to respond in a way that really is courageous and really gives students an opportunity to grapple with and seek more deeper, deeper understanding of what is actually happening, and in a way that could actually catalyze a movement toward actually putting their learning, their knowledge, their college experience towards addressing what, at the time, was the most pivotal moment in society, and the Arts and Social Justice Fellowship was born.

We brought in artists from across the city of Atlanta and we brought them into classrooms to pair them with Emory University professors and to come up with creative ideas of how can we take, how can we address the issues that arise in our field, in these academic fields, present them in a creative way to students, allow students to be able to ask deep, hard questions, and to translate that learning into real life projects that share not only with the students so that they can better understand, but so that they could share with the community.

- But how do we sing together?

- But how do we sing together?

- How do we piece together?

- How do we piece together?

- This semester, Garrett and I have been teaching the students in my Georgia Civil Rights Cold Cases class at Emory University.

- We've been working together to create an artistic project in response to their research of the 1906 Race Massacre.

Each of our 16 students has written a depiction of one moment from the massacre as a scene, short story, or poem.

- Since then, we've broadened and we've addressed not only issues of racial injustice but social injustice broadly.

So, environmental, issues around the environment, issues around immigration, issues around health disparities, in addition to race.

And as a result, we've broadened the pool of applicants and the number of artists that we've brought in, as well as the professors that we've, that we partner with.

- Common ground, connections, listening to each other, in a word, empathy.

How do you explore and practice empathy?

Through something that we all share.

- We pair the artists with the professors during the summer and they explore the syllabus.

And the artist and the professor look at what are areas that are particularly challenging, and the artist helps the professor create those modules within the classroom.

How can they break these very difficult subject matters down and the ways in which they intersect with social justice issues?

And how can they create an artistic project around that?

And we have an end-of-the-year showcase, and the professors, and the students, and the artists showcase their work to the world.

- The ASJ program, I believe, has made exciting changes or impacts, upon the Emory community, the students, the artists themselves, opening up opportunities and resources to them that they may not have had otherwise.

We've had an awesome range of art fellows the past couple of years.

We've had dancers and choreographers.

We had a clown last year.

Actors, musicians, spoken word artists.

- We are proud to have a diverse group of fellows this year, all who all practice a different medium.

We have Jasmine who's a painter and a muralist and who has these amazingly vivid and bright images that she creates and is able to cast them large-scale throughout the community.

We have Kacie, who's a sound designer and it's exciting because she's actually going to be partnering with another, another artist, a movement maker.

So, thinking about sound design and movement and coupling the two to really help students understand some of the nuances around AI and really the justice issues that are embedded and that really need to be addressed early on.

And we have Umi, who is another movement artist and who brings her unique cultural heritages of African American and indigenous identity together.

And even that is a disruption and challenges kind of normative narratives that we have in our mind about either of these communities.

(soft bluesy music) - I believe art should be accessible to people because art is for the people.

We're talking about our experiences, we're talking about big ideas around how we live, how we work, how we exist together, how we build this world together.

- [Narrator] With every brush stroke and every vibrant hue, muralist Jasmine Nicole Williams is building a world filled with color.

- Being able to give people art on the streets, they don't have to know where to go to get it, (laughs) it just kind of happens upon them.

They live with it.

I think that's why I'm so, I love murals so much and I'm so interested in murals.

- [Narrator] At the Underground Entertainment District in the Five Points neighborhood of downtown Atlanta, Jasmine's colorful, larger-than-life mural stops passerbys in their tracks.

- [Jasmine] I feel so much pride when I pass by this mural.

This is my city.

So to paint at the Underground is, is just such a huge honor.

- [Narrator] When Jasmine was approached by Living Walls Atlanta to create artwork on this historical landmark, she wanted the piece to be of history.

- So this mural is called "Liberate" and I wanted to honor the legacy of my favorite artist, Elizabeth Catlett.

She's a printmaker, an educator, an organizer who was born in the United States, she's a Black woman, and because of her political views, her citizenship was revoked.

And luckily, Mexico opened their doors to her, gave her full citizenship, and she lived out the rest of her life there.

And it says liberate on her forehead, just kind of calling for people to, to act in a way that will liberate us all.

I painted her here as an elder because I wanted to kind of signify how long and arduous our struggle for liberation has been here in the United States.

The patterning in her face, like showing her age, showing her wisdom, and the columns in the middle are black and white like her portraits.

So it's kind of weaving together like the color robustness of the world, but like the black and white of like, "We gotta do this work."

I believe art is meant to shape and mold our world.

In order for us to see, you know, like to have faith in a better world, to have faith in each other, we have to be able to visualize that together, and I believe that art is, visual art is a really great medium for that.

(soft bluesy jazz music) All right everyone, if we could like, shake our hands out a little, (laughs) just loosen up.

I just ran here, so, I need to loosen up.

But yeah, how's everybody been?

I applied for the Emory Arts and Social Justice Fellowship because I felt like it was a really great time for me to intervene and talk with these students about why these things are happening.

- [Narrator] These things, Jasmine says, are all the injustices around the world people in marginalized communities face.

- My goal with the fellowship is to connect with students on the basis of culture and politics.

I see and I've come to understand that they work hand-in-hand.

There's no way that we can build working class political power in this country without working class culture.

So thinking about our different, like our different identities, the places we are, and the things that we experience kind of creating a map.

- Art is almost always inherently political, or carries a message, and so like, when looking at like famous art pieces but also you know, some not so known art pieces, just being able to see the impact they had.

So yeah, I think this class has really taught that.

- Well, I'm also a political science major, but I've kind of been using this semester I guess to explore more creative outlets.

So, in addition to this class, I'm also taking a regular visual arts class, which is, you know, painting and sculpture and stuff.

And, I feel like that's been a helpful thing to take alongside this.

To be able to do those two things at the same time and kind of learn how something that is a creative outlet can also be, as you said, inherently political.

- I want my students to walk away feeling confident and feeling comfortable to think critically about everything around them, to be asking the necessary questions, to be thinking about all of those who are impacted.

- [Narrator] Professor Lydia Fort, who is partnered with Jasmine, shares this same thinking.

She's not only happy to be working with Jasmine, as an avid art lover, she is thrilled that art is bringing about a revolution in this way.

- Art being used as a tool to create change I think is essential.

We heard from one of the students earlier today that they feel like how can you make art and not be a tool for change?

I think that definitely is true for people of color, that no matter what we might do or how we might engage, that anything is gonna have some aspect of history, or struggle, or desire for future.

For us, I know that it's not gonna do it alone.

Right?

Art is only a part of a need for a strategy that involves all kinds of different ways to impact change.

I hope my students become lifelong art appreciators, that they find a place for it to be in their lives in a very natural way.

I also hope that they can feel like any action that they take, artistic or not, is a powerful way forward for themselves as individuals, for communities, for ideas, for issues, and not to be shy about that, to embrace it and be really bold in their commitment to anything that they wanna talk about.

- To create a visual map of our struggle here in the Americas.

So from the 1500's to present day.

So I assigned the students a zine project, which they turned in today.

And the project was for them to find a social movement or social issue that they felt connected to that they wanted to learn more about, or that they were a part of, and to create a zine talking about the historical reference, where that movement is today, how they see themselves a part of it.

- Mia and I, as we did on the Stop Asian Hate Movement, 'cause we remember it being pretty prevalent when we were in high school and going through COVID-19 and kind of wanted to learn more about how it looks nowadays.

- For the zine I discussed about vegan activism, which I produced a documentary past.

So, this is basically about the ambivalence or controversy over radical acts that vegan activists who, for example, they defaced like beloved artwork in museums.

- For my project I did the Black Lives Matter movement, but more specifically, how athletes play a role in this movement.

- I like art because it's deeply human and I feel like the thing that unites all of us is truth.

And the only thing that's really true is our subjective experience here.

Like at the end of the day, we're just people on earth, (laughs) and we're just, I feel like we all share the belief that we want better lives.

So just joining in on that and sharing our stories is a part of facilitating that.

- They were paired up, they could work either in pairs or by themselves, and you know, just talk about a social issue that means something to them.

I'm really grateful that, you know, they really put their all into it.

- So I was really excited to be partnered with Jasmine.

I'm not telling anybody but you that I hope we can work together in the future.

So-- - We will.

(laughs) There's so much darkness in the world and, and I hold that, you know, like I definitely hold that.

But there's, the only way we can actually get through that darkness is if we hold onto our joy, if we hold onto our faith in one another.

I hope that my art allows for people to see themselves.

I hope that my art allows people to get in touch with their humanity and get in touch with the humanity of others.

(light upbeat music) - Hey friends, can you hear me?

Fantastic.

- [Narrator] At this Atlanta music studio, sound designer Kacie Luaders is busy at work recording a podcast.

- Tracking it here in Pro Tools, and so what I'll be doing, I'll be sitting and listening in.

If I hear, let's say someone starts laughing really loudly, or they're getting just a little loud, we can bring down the faders, kind of adjust as needed as we're listening.

- [Narrator] Another thing Kacie adjusts as needed?

Technology, specifically AI.

The Emory Arts and Social Justice fellow says she uses the tool to help her with mundane tasks.

- Artificial intelligence, in my process as a podcast producer, definitely, a lot of the repeatable tasks when it comes to things like when we have a transcript of a finished session and we see lots of ums and ahs and likes and you knows, AI is really good at finding those things and highlighting them and saying, "Would you like for me to just remove all of them?"

Whereas even two, three years ago, I would have to, as you know, a human person, listen to all the audio, look at all the transcripts and manually go through and remove those kind of like filler words.

I am definitely a fan.

- [Narrator] For now, AI is helping to make her job a little easier.

But she wonders will it replace her someday?

More importantly, will it be used fairly across all groups of people?

- The topic that I'm exploring through the Arts and Social Justice Program this semester is how artificial intelligence, AI, ties into human rights, civil rights.

It may not seem like it has much tie in, but through conversations with students, through exploration with improv, and data, and just talking about the ways that AI is going to impact us as creatives, as artists, as everyday people, we're finding ways to just have some really robust discussions.

And I'm also using my sound design within the context of AI to have conversations with people about what it could possibly mean for artists of all disciplines if and when these AI tools start to get good enough to take over our jobs.

And so, there have been some very audio-specific conversations about will AI be able to design sound one day.

AI is already starting to compose music one day.

What does that mean within the context of live human musicians?

- [Narrator] To address this ever-growing fear, Emory Art prioritized the human aspect of creation by partnering Kacie with a music professor from Emory and a dance professor from Spelman College.

- One of the distinguishing features of our collaboration is that it is this double or triple collaboration.

I'm working with Kacie and T. Lang at Spelman College.

A lot of the way we're approaching AI is by talking with our students and getting their interests or questions, in terms of which directions we go.

And many of the students have raised concerns about the use of AI.

- This semester, with movement invention and Adam's live electronica music course, we are combining Kacie's, creative imagineer, her devices and her platform in artificial intelligence.

We're trying to see how we can teach the machine how to learn and respect and have dignity for Black women bodies, Black and Brown sounds, the otherness and the vastness of who we are.

We're hoping that we can provoke interest for Black and Brown bodies to want to be in those type of imagineer spaces, to be those writers in movement, to code this machine to behave.

- So the way we decided to collaborate in teaching our classes was in part by using Zoom.

And, this is because we're located in different spaces, and we couldn't physically meet together every week, that would be very difficult.

- [Narrator] This Friday night performance at Spelman's Museum of Fine Arts is the only time the group has met in person.

- For our midterm performance today, I created a soundscape bed for the Emory Improvisational musicians to improv over.

All of the music that you're going to hear is going to be performed live by Emory students.

All of the dancing that you're gonna see is going to be, nothing has been choreographed before today.

It is the spark of whatever moments are about to happen.

- Whenever I'm listening to these music and dancing to it, I'm definitely looking for sounds that are a little bit more human-oriented.

So, I like the ones that are involving talking, or crying, or screaming, as more of it as it could sound, I suppose, but it helps me find a human element in the actual sound.

And then also natural sounds, like rain or storms, really helps to kind of figure out what emotional shifts I'm going for whenever I go into a new movement phrase.

- Yeah, it's kind of like a feedback loop, like they dance to our music but then their dancing influences our music and then it keeps going, and we're influencing each other in cycle.

(slow ethereal music) (people chattering) - With the improv dancers, what I sometimes will do is I act as sort of a prompt generator.

That's essentially what we're telling the AI to do.

Write this email for me or generate this narrative for me.

Dancers, I'm curious.

Tell us a story about you as a child.

(slow ethereal music) - When I heard the prompt, I immediately thought of my family going to amusement parks.

We are huge rollercoaster fans, so I immediately decided I'm gonna be a rollercoaster and I just took off as if I was going down the hill.

- When I prompted them about show us a story from your childhood, this was the first time that this has happened in a performance.

This is the first time I've delivered this prompt.

Seeing them all run and scatter, for me, I felt like, "Oh, they're going back to a time when it was okay to run around a museum."

(slow ethereal music) (audience clapping) - [Speaker 1] Y'all (indistinct) together.

- Certainly ask the students questions if you have them.

- What came first?

Was it the dance moves and then the sound?

Or was it the sound, the AI, and you just had to find someone to do dance moves to?

- [Speaker 2] It's like the chicken and the egg thing.

- Yes.

- I personally would say they (indistinct).

Improvisational movement is fueled by your surroundings.

(audience clapping) (people chattering) - I think AI and technology was originally created to make our lives easier, take simple tasks out of the way.

If we don't have to spend our time doing those mundane tasks, we have more time for creativity and finding joy in art.

And, I also think that could kind of level the playing field for people, in terms of systemic biases that are built in, that if everyone has more time to spend doing what they love, then everyone gets more opportunities.

- [Narrator] A successful performance.

Now to the classroom for a debrief.

- Hey, everybody.

I'm so sorry that I am not with you physically, but we've learned that you could do some pretty cool stuff virtually.

- Like yeah, how did you think it, I know you said we, you thought we killed it and stuff, but like, I don't know, what were your like unfiltered thoughts?

- I think that, to be honest, I think you all are way more interesting than the AI component that I brought to Friday's performance.

Regardless of what we do with the AI to compliment or enhance, what it is that you're doing, I don't think it's going to be more interesting than you putting, dangling keys on a music stand, having a dancer like syncopate with like, I mean, what, like what, I don't know how, you know, gen AI can compete with that.

(people chattering) (light upbeat music) - I'm here in Atlanta for a week to work with Adam on a performance based on the instrument he's designed to facilitate this fellowship program with Kacie and the students from Emory and Spelman.

It's been a good opportunity to learn about what's going on here with this collaboration and some ways that it could have some meaning outside of Georgia, in the Northeast as well.

Prompts from Kacie maybe could help get from that zero to one.

It seems that one of the important aspects of this is not necessarily the performance itself but the process and the discussions happening.

But it's clear that experiences people have through processes such as these will change the art they create.

And I think that's really an important takeaway and the discussions that have happened through this fellowship seem to really be influencing even our own performance this week.

- We're just talking about the worry that AI could make, generate art that is so perfect that it is not interesting, not human.

- When it comes to the dynamics of live performance, humans in a space together, can that ever be replicated?

- What we did last Friday was something experimental, was something that-- - Could not be replicated.

- Could not be replicated, but apparently if you do just like randomly select people from the street, they might not appreciate that.

- AI making everything too perfect will, I don't think it will be a problem, and I think the imperfections really matters.

- All right, we have like five minutes and so we might jam a little bit.

(soft upbeat music) The most important aspect of this collaboration, what I hope the students will take from it is to be curious when they encounter something, someone new, rather than to fall back upon perhaps an idea, an approach that is more comfortable or familiar to them.

- It is my desire that as we are playing with artificial intelligence, AI, that we understand and make AI and machine learning devices understand our humanity and our complexity and our genius.

- Well, I am optimistically pro-ethical AI.

I do believe that the tool which AI is, it's a tool, it does not function without humans inputting things into the tool, can be used for good.

I'm rooting for humanity to use these tools in ways to help assist and aid humanity.

(tribal drumming music) (singing in foreign language) (bells jingling) (singing in foreign language continues) - [Announcer] Give it up for our jingle dress dancers.

- So we are in Atlanta, Georgia, we're at the First Voices Festival, we're at a powwow.

So, you'll see a lot of Native American folks come together to just share some good medicine through dance, song.

And so as a dancer, as an artist, I use dance and movement as a means to tell story, create experience.

- [Narrator] Movement artist Umi Iman is showing audiences that Native Americans come in a vast array of shades.

- I come from a Black, Jamaican, and Tsalagi Native American lineage and I believe it's very, very important to see dark-skinned, Afro Indigenous people on the powwow circuit.

A lot of folks see Native Americans as people of the past, extinct, but we are a growing and ever-evolving group of people.

We're a very diverse group of people.

We come in all different complexions and we, we have a lot of different healing practices that are specific to tribes and that are shared.

I am a Arts and Social Justice fellow with Emory University and I was so blessed to be paired with some faculty in the School of Medicine.

And so we're focusing on healing and really centering ways that Black and Indigenous people heal.

- [Narrator] A form of healing, Emory professor Anna Yaffe wants her students to adapt.

- We've been working with Umi Iman this whole semester and it's been an amazing experience.

She's brought so much to our course.

She's really helped our students learn more about their selves and their own cultural history, in order to apply those learning points to the larger global health education that we bring.

Our students are doctors.

They're doctors training in different specialties in medicine.

We applied because we are doing sort of innovative adult learning and global health and we wanted to figure out new ways that we could teach our adult learners concepts, fundamental concepts in global health education.

And we thought having an artist, fellow faculty member co-construct would help us kind of get to the learners in a deeper way.

Through our course, we hope that our students learn, become more conscientious, culturally appropriate, and ethical global health practitioners.

And we hope by working with Umi Iman that our students will have a better understanding of their own culture, their own biases, and how to overcome those in order to be the best culturally appropriate practitioners that they can be.

- Perfect.

So now we're gonna go to tempo.

So with going tempo, you have to keep your feet more in because if you step too much, it will be really fast.

My role as an Arts and Social Justice fellow is to bring dance into the classroom and not only get folks moving, but get folks thinking about the social context that surround the dances, that the Black vernacular and the Indigenous dances that I'm sharing.

I've been practicing jingle dress.

Jingle dress is a healing dance that originated in the 1920s within a few Ojibwe communities.

And the dress, the regalia in the dance, comes from a dream.

There was a man that received a dream of, specifically for women doing a specific movement, doing a specific dance in specific regalia.

And so, his daughter was sick and this was in the time of the influenza epidemic.

And so, when he woke from the dream, he shared this dance, you know, this regalia with the people, the dance.

The dress was made and the women did the dance and the little girl saw the dance and it inspired her to just move, move beyond her illness, and she got up and joined the women who did the dance for her.

And so, jingle dress, to this very day, almost 100 years later is still a very much so a healing dance.

This is a jingle dress right now.

It is a very specific regalia, and the original dresses had 365 jingles on the dress.

And the women that would dance the dress traditionally would pray over the dress, make a prayer every day as they put a jingle on the dress.

The dress says "I'm here, you can't silence me, you have to notice me."

Everywhere we go, I can't move without being heard and that's a statement in and of itself.

One of the other things that we really appreciate about the regalia is because it really drives in that we're here and we're not invisible.

So it's also important to note, at this time in the 1920s, you know, jingle dress was created, there was also the Religious Crimes code of 1883.

And this was a law that banned Native American ceremonies, music and dance, religious practices, and medicinal and healing practices.

And then in 1978, the government passed the Religious Freedom Act, which legalized indigenous art, dance, healing practices.

Any comments?

Anything?

I don't think there's a such thing as a bad question, but we can always find out.

(group chuckling) - What happens when a jingle falls off?

- When jingles fall off, 'cause they do, we believe that that is the ultimate affirmation, that put prayers and hope and dreams to rest because they are being answered.

And so for us, our jingles falling is a good sign.

I'm always like, after I dance, looking around the ground, like (mumbling).

- Is there like a standard jingle size?

Are there like different shapes of jingles?

Are there different jingle sounds?

Is that like a variation that is like common?

- Yeah, so these are, size-wise, standard jingles, and there's either technically adult size and then you have like kids size.

- I was just wondering when you lose a jingle and you put a new one on, you said that there's a prayer for each jingle.

Is it, so you do replace them and is it like a new prayer that you have with that one?

And what's kind of the ceremony of, I guess, the jingle falling off and then replacing with a new jingle?

- It's really self-defined, but it does include holding in your intention a specific prayer, or if not prayer, a hope aspiration, or dream.

And back.

(tribal drumming music) So add your body a little bit.

- [Narrator] And Umi's hopes of getting these doctors to dance?

Fulfilled.

(tribal drumming music) (group clapping) - We're gonna transition into this room back here.

We're going to put some jingles on a dress.

My positive hope could be I want my recovery to heal or my recovery to move faster.

Or it could just be I'm having fun and I hope everybody else is having fun too.

(light upbeat music) That's just a jingle dress.

Use pliers, gotta be careful.

We want it to fall off, but organically.

It shouldn't fall off because, you know.

(light upbeat music) (bells jingling) (people chattering) (light upbeat music continues) Thank you for, you know, everyone else's full participation.

I know I put y'all on the spot, but yeah, this really means a lot to me.

- My initial reaction to this experience tonight is just one of joy and gratitude.

I think one of the things that really stuck with me was to heal a person, you have to know a person.

And experiences like this are one of the ways where we can turn the science of medicine into the art of medicine and really reconnect with the people who are, you know, that's why we got into this.

That's why we do what we do.

So I think this experience has been really wholesome and I've really enjoyed it.

- I'm originally from Cameroon and traditional healing, it's kind of big in my culture.

So it was very beautiful for me to experience this alternative form of healing today from Umi Iman, and it's just so energizing and powerful.

I can't help but say I'm very thankful, I'm energized, and I hope I can keep this energy and bring it back to my patients when I go back to work tomorrow.

(tribal drumming) (people chattering) - I want people to understand how we heal.

I want people to understand that dance and song is just as valid of medicine as any other way that people heal.

And so, I want people to remember to move their body.

I want people to remember to engage in their own cultural practices that bring them closer to family, that bring them closer to joy.

(upbeat techno music) (upbeat techno music continues) - How y'all doing tonight?

(crowd cheering) All right, my name is Carlton Mackey.

- For showcase day today, I'm very excited, mostly just for the students to once again show people everything that we've been working on this semester.

When having the conversation about AI and arts and creativity, a lot of times it can go to a negative place.

And so, what I really wanted to make sure in this class that we discussed were ways that we could actually be empowered by these tools, ways that we as human creators will always be able to outperform them because artists and creators are creating from a very real place, and not a place that's just learned.

We as humans have to be the ones to use the tools responsibly and that's hopefully something that we are imparting into the next generation.

You can use these tools ethically and responsibly.

- We are the programmers, and the programmers have control to build the platform.

We are on the precipice of that, for the last three months, wanting to develop our own platforms and systems for creating our new system.

What we found is that humanity will always win.

- I'm gonna use my work to be able to connect people to their humanity.

I feel like this semester was a really great learning experience for me.

It took a lot of principles that I know from organizing, from studying that I've done on my own and like applying that.

Here with the students was like a huge learning experience for me and I feel like I also had an impact on them as well.

(singing in foreign language) (bells jingling) - I'm feeling so grateful how much this project and sharing jingle dress has resonated with so many different folks.

I'm feeling invigorated.

I'm happy that we got to move, you know, our bodies in this space, that we're not just looking at art but we're engaging in being the art.

So I'm 100% glad I applied to the fellowship.

It has been a wonderful experience.

- I feel so great about this year's fellows and what they were able to accomplish and I'm so proud of them for challenging themselves, for inviting and creating a space where our students could feel challenged and were in the midst of that challenge and in the midst of grappling with these very difficult issues, they could mutually, together grow, and be transformed.

And it's just a wonderful, wonderful opportunity to see that be displayed and showcased here tonight.

These students are now advocates for change.

These students have heightened awareness and they'll go back to their communities.

They're at Emory for a short period of time, but they will go back into their professional lives as emerging young adults.

They'll go back to their hometowns, they'll go back to their countries, and they will go back as people who are now, bore witness to and are advocates for global change through the power of arts.

I'd like for anyone watching this to know that you are worthy of the pursuit of your best self.

That in a world where we're constantly bombarded with messages about what we lack, about statistics that tell us about who we are, about our outcomes for our future, about how bad and dismal things are, that we are worthy of pursuing our best self and that we are capable of affecting change in our life.

And the beauty of art is that it is not bound to any fixed current reality.

It can help us imagine and envision a future and can give us the ability to, once we see it, walk toward it.

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