[Music]
you
does anyone here have a favorite mantra
or motto something that inspires you or
helps you get through the day maybe it’s
a post-it note stuck to the bathroom
mirror or maybe it’s a print hung in
your living room maybe it’s just a quote
on your cell phone’s home screen let’s
see a show of hands if you do the
conference would love to know what
inspires you please share it with us via
social media using the hashtag evoke
presence if you ever come to my house
you may or may not notice that I have
mantras everywhere the mantras aren’t
overt but they are included in the art
that I choose to live with in order to
passively remind myself of different
things for instance this large piece is
a canvas wrap of a photo I took and it
reminds me to question everything
this piece hangs in my office and it
reminds me to be kind
this piece is on the stairs on the way
up to my bedroom and it reminds me that
if I like myself other people will like
me too finally I made this piece in my
bathroom to remind me that everything
isn’t always the way it seems and it
prompts me to imagine what else things
could be I’m sharing my art collection
with you not because I’m a master
collector but because I believe in the
power of art and I believe in the power
of mantras since 2015
I’ve been spreading a positive and
inclusive message around the city of
Chicago as a kind of communal mantra I
started doing this because too many
things have unintentionally evolved into
reasons for us to not get along so I
wanted to create something that instead
exists solely to remind us all to get
along and help each other succeed I
define a communal mantra as a positive
publicly visible unifying statement that
expresses a community’s basic beliefs I
coined this phrase because I think
communities could benefit from the power
of mantras that
that we all do as individuals you may
think this is a newer novel idea but in
fact it’s not take Matthew Hoffman’s you
are beautiful he started this project 14
years ago when he passed out only a
hundred stickers this phrase reminds
people that they are beautiful the way
they are now over three million stickers
have been stuck that allows strangers to
stumble upon them maybe when they need
it the most
the project was picked up by Oprah and
this positivity has been embraced around
the world
his project has been a huge inspiration
to me and my project and shows me the
power and what a phrase can do there’s
also a precedent already for this type
of idea working for a city we all
recognize this logo it was created by
Milton Glaser in the 1970s as an image
as part of an advertising campaign
designed to heal a decaying New York
City through tourism Glaser did the work
entirely pro bono in the name of helping
his city rise again if you’ve been to
New York City recently this may seem
like fake news but it’s not back in the
70s New York needed all the help it
could get the city was just hours away
from bankruptcy and President Ford was
refusing a federal bailout they were
laying off 1/6 of the city’s workers and
despite the crime that included police
officers as a protest the police
themselves published and distributed a
million copies of this guide for
tourists called fear city teachers and
garbage men went on strike and according
to the city’s then police commissioner
crime is at its highest level in the
history of the city there was a crack
cocaine epidemic in certain
neighborhoods like the Lower East Side
and parts of the Bronx were totally
deteriorating but the logo gave the city
something to love something to rally
behind and crucially the campaign
appeared to have awakened something
within New Yorkers themselves Glaser
said later that the shift in public
mentality was the most
ordinary thing one day people just woke
up tired of sleep stepping in dog poop
and garbage people got fed up and said
this is our city we’re going to take it
back and we’re not gonna allow this
stuff to happen anymore a big part of
that moment was this campaign so did I
Love New York just helped create a new
positive image for the city so the
tourists would return no it did way more
than that it awakened New Yorkers love
for their own city and that’s what saved
New York City I’m highlighting New
York’s logo because I believe a communal
mantra should incorporate art I say this
because art has a unique ability to
reach people when language fails
sometimes words fail us because
conversations are just too difficult
people avoid talking about certain
topics because they don’t want to hurt
each other’s feelings or risk offending
anyone it’s these topics where art helps
the most
and it’s these topics we need to talk
about art allows a viewer to interpret
the message themselves this individual
dialog allows for a powerful change at
best or at worst the viewer just says
well that’s just art how I just
described New York City reminds me a lot
of how Chicago is thought of today in
fact as a Chicagoan I’m constantly
reminded of how terrible everything is
by people who don’t live here so
naturally this is something that’s
always in the back of my mind and
something I want to fix so one night in
June 2015 I was walking my dog Benson
god he’s handsome isn’t he I was
thinking about my journey from Canada to
America and how I had wanted to be a
professional baseball player just before
my senior year my mom allowed me to
chase this dream I moved to Minnesota to
live with my aunt my uncle and my three
small cousins I thought about how it was
so weird to go to school my senior year
and not know a single person I was
reminded that the worst thing about this
transition wasn’t missing my family and
it wasn’t even the feeling I used to get
walking into the lunchroom and having no
one to sit with the worst was the
feeling I would get whenever I had to
correct
one of my new classmates when they set a
so-called harmless racial comment the
kind of ignorant comment where it didn’t
matter if there was or wasn’t a minority
in the room these things are always just
wrong to say so I corrected people as a
new kid in town I didn’t care if it was
a prom queen or the captain of the
football team
sometimes my lecture was received
properly but other times it was at best
uncomfortable and at worst an actual
altercation these moments happen
infrequently where I grew up but in this
new place I was needing to say something
more often I noticed that what I had
always felt comfortable doing
infrequently was now happening
frequently enough that I was starting to
feel like a nag I also didn’t have the
comfort of knowing people so I actually
had the weird thought that what I was
doing might be hurting me and allowing
me to not make new friends so instead of
having the strength to continue to do
what I had always done what I knew is
right I was weak and I stopped
correcting people embarrassingly I
started to pretend I just didn’t hear
these hateful comments whenever they
were sad so on this walk I realized that
all these years later I was still mad at
myself for that weakness I should have
kept correcting those hateful comments I
realized that if society is ever going
to solve racism and hatred we all need
to correct these comments right when
they happen we need to be able to say
that hate based comments are wrong but
we need to do this in the right way a
way that gives people the confidence to
correct the hatred no matter what in a
way that makes the message received
we need a communal mantra it was with
all these thoughts in my head that
Benson and I passed a white wall in all
the years of living in my neighborhood
this wall had never been tagged and it
had never been graffiti as a result it
sticks out like a sore thumb to me for
months I had been playing a pointless
thought game saying what can I write on
that wall that if I did
it might not need to be removed so with
all these horrible high school memories
on my mind and my brain marinating on
Chicago’s problems the phrase we all
live here popped into my head the
thoughts stop Benson and I in our tracks
yes Benson and I I actually remember
saying WOW out loud in that very moment
to me the phrase meant racial equality
gender equality sexual equality income
equality and even environmental issues
those four simple words encompass some
of the most hard to talk about but
important issues of our time and they
did so on a disarming but effective way
it’s the inclusion of the phrase that
makes it powerful
it’s the inclusion of the phrase that
makes it safe to say and it’s the
inclusion that makes it possible for a
message to be received
maybe we all live here could be a
communal mantra that could give people a
vocabulary and a reminder to help and
hate maybe just casually seeing these
words every day in the familiar
surroundings of our own neighborhood
could establish a new baseline thought
of inclusion for us all I asked my
friends with the phrase meant to them
luckily they answered the same things
that I had thought it meant so I was
encouraged not being a shy person I
printed some signs that said the phrase
and I took them around the city I wanted
to know if tourists or strangers would
let me take their picture while they
held the signs hundreds and then
thousands of people did I posted all
these pictures to a blog on tumblr and
to my surprise tumblr featured the blog
I ended up with thousands of followers
in a week
and what was really cool was I started
waking up to messages from strangers all
over the world
urging me to keep spreading this message
telling me they loved what I was doing
and that the world needed to hear this
message this particular message from a
stranger in Vietnam was my favorite
I really loved that last line everybody
always smile it’s just beautifully
grammatically incorrect because of the
blog I was invited to speak to a high
school Media Studies class taught by a
teacher friend of mine just talking to
his class even made the the local high
schools paper after the school called me
again and they said what could we do as
a school with the phrase here was my
opportunity to introduce a communal
mantra I told him I’d come up with
something and get back to them well what
I came up with is a program for schools
called act
everyone knows schools love acronyms so
mine stands for art community and
technology three pillars of what I think
make us all human and three things that
I can build off of to make this and keep
this interesting to students the main
initiative of the program is to create
public art using the phrase as a theme
like you see on the screen I visit
participating schools and I conduct
assemblies for the entire school I do
this so that every child goes through an
exercise with me to understand what we
all live here means in order to help me
create a logo for the art project at
their school from their drawings I
source the ideas to make an official
logo which gets put onto products that
we sell to help raise the money
necessary for the art it’s sort of like
a hyperlocal
I heart New York and this ownership
strategy also has the dual benefit of
ensuring that students care more about
the art when they see it every day
because they are directly involved in
its creation they wear the clothes with
pride and they show off the art to
friends and family by creating public
art and not art in a classroom or locked
in a hallway of the school it also makes
the local community get involved so they
can help support the art this introduces
students to local leaders and business
owners who they may never have met
otherwise while I worked on getting
school signed up because we know that
takes a while I started doing street art
with the phrase
all over the city to spread this message
I use chalk so I wasn’t illegally
tagging tagging anything also I think
chalk as a medium perfectly symbolizes
the struggles against racism and hatred
that we have as a society and what I
mean by that is there’s no pill for us
all to take that will magically solve
these problems it will take us all
chipping in a little bit every day to
make these problems go away and by
having to maintain the murals after it
rains or snows I feel like I’m embodying
the struggle through my art finally it’s
way more noticeable the kids when young
kids see it they usually have to ask
their parents what it means and that
starts a conversation a very meaningful
conversation I started getting positive
feedback while writing on the walls from
people walking biking or driving by
people were frequently taking pictures
of the art and tagging it allowing me to
collect data that people loved this
phrase the people were definitely into
the communal mantra what I was doing
helped make a community better could
something just written on a wall or hung
on a fence or communicated through art
help a city like Chicago heal itself
it’s still early but the answer is
definitely yes a kindergarten teacher at
the very first school to do the octane
me this quote literally seeing the words
we all live here in English and Spanish
every day has gotten us talking about it
first it was explaining to the students
what it means now it is the kiddos
sharing their various experiences of
living or seeing we all live here in
action it’s been the perfect way to tie
our I be learner profiles and attitudes
into the community around us again
literally and figuratively this was
incredible the phrase was already having
an impact on kindergarteners this is
important because I believe in order to
actually end racism in hatred we have to
start with our kids by working with
schools of all ages we can help a
generation of young people grow up with
the vocabulary for safely and
effectively correcting hatred whenever
they encounter it
but as a teacher told me early in this
project the idea needs to be cool so how
do we make ending hatred cool well we
can use art fashion music and sports to
highlight our communal mantras by
becoming a part of popular culture the
communal mantra can be cool hatreds out
there lurking and we don’t know when it
will strike but when it does young
people need to be ready so they don’t
shy away from correcting hatred like I
shamefully once did do you want to help
end racism in hatred
do you want to help people know what to
say when they hear hateful things then I
challenge you create your own communal
entre or just use the tools that I’ve
created to introduce we all live here to
wherever you live many people are
waiting for America to be great working
together and through communal mantras
I’ve proven that we can make it greater
than it’s ever been I’m going to finish
today with a story that an artist friend
once told me he told me how a nice old
lady came up to him while he was
painting a mural next to a park she had
gone all the way out of her way to tell
him how much she loved his work and
right as he was about to hug her she
said this is the kind of thing that will
keep those people out of the park
those people imagine the artists shock
imagine the shock of going from wanting
to hug someone to wanting to hurt them
you know this story highlights the
dangers of hateful comments we don’t
know who or when or went what they will
say so we don’t see them coming they
offend us and inflame us so badly and
when we react poorly this only
strengthens the hateful person’s beliefs
well I know where that Park is and I put
a communal mantra up across the street
so imagine if that hateful woman comes
back again and when she does a child
instead appears with the perfect
response to her hatred a response that
they had internalized from a lesson
learned in school or the communal mantra
on the wall across the street what if
that child just calmly points out it
and walks away imagine the power of that
imagine how the woman would have to feel
when she was left reflecting on the fact
that she was reminded by a child that we
all live here thank you
[Applause]
you
does anyone here have a favorite mantra
or motto something that inspires you or
helps you get through the day maybe it’s
a post-it note stuck to the bathroom
mirror or maybe it’s a print hung in
your living room maybe it’s just a quote
on your cell phone’s home screen let’s
see a show of hands if you do the
conference would love to know what
inspires you please share it with us via
social media using the hashtag evoke
presence if you ever come to my house
you may or may not notice that I have
mantras everywhere the mantras aren’t
overt but they are included in the art
that I choose to live with in order to
passively remind myself of different
things for instance this large piece is
a canvas wrap of a photo I took and it
reminds me to question everything
this piece hangs in my office and it
reminds me to be kind
this piece is on the stairs on the way
up to my bedroom and it reminds me that
if I like myself other people will like
me too finally I made this piece in my
bathroom to remind me that everything
isn’t always the way it seems and it
prompts me to imagine what else things
could be I’m sharing my art collection
with you not because I’m a master
collector but because I believe in the
power of art and I believe in the power
of mantras since 2015
I’ve been spreading a positive and
inclusive message around the city of
Chicago as a kind of communal mantra I
started doing this because too many
things have unintentionally evolved into
reasons for us to not get along so I
wanted to create something that instead
exists solely to remind us all to get
along and help each other succeed I
define a communal mantra as a positive
publicly visible unifying statement that
expresses a community’s basic beliefs I
coined this phrase because I think
communities could benefit from the power
of mantras that
that we all do as individuals you may
think this is a newer novel idea but in
fact it’s not take Matthew Hoffman’s you
are beautiful he started this project 14
years ago when he passed out only a
hundred stickers this phrase reminds
people that they are beautiful the way
they are now over three million stickers
have been stuck that allows strangers to
stumble upon them maybe when they need
it the most
the project was picked up by Oprah and
this positivity has been embraced around
the world
his project has been a huge inspiration
to me and my project and shows me the
power and what a phrase can do there’s
also a precedent already for this type
of idea working for a city we all
recognize this logo it was created by
Milton Glaser in the 1970s as an image
as part of an advertising campaign
designed to heal a decaying New York
City through tourism Glaser did the work
entirely pro bono in the name of helping
his city rise again if you’ve been to
New York City recently this may seem
like fake news but it’s not back in the
70s New York needed all the help it
could get the city was just hours away
from bankruptcy and President Ford was
refusing a federal bailout they were
laying off 1/6 of the city’s workers and
despite the crime that included police
officers as a protest the police
themselves published and distributed a
million copies of this guide for
tourists called fear city teachers and
garbage men went on strike and according
to the city’s then police commissioner
crime is at its highest level in the
history of the city there was a crack
cocaine epidemic in certain
neighborhoods like the Lower East Side
and parts of the Bronx were totally
deteriorating but the logo gave the city
something to love something to rally
behind and crucially the campaign
appeared to have awakened something
within New Yorkers themselves Glaser
said later that the shift in public
mentality was the most
ordinary thing one day people just woke
up tired of sleep stepping in dog poop
and garbage people got fed up and said
this is our city we’re going to take it
back and we’re not gonna allow this
stuff to happen anymore a big part of
that moment was this campaign so did I
Love New York just helped create a new
positive image for the city so the
tourists would return no it did way more
than that it awakened New Yorkers love
for their own city and that’s what saved
New York City I’m highlighting New
York’s logo because I believe a communal
mantra should incorporate art I say this
because art has a unique ability to
reach people when language fails
sometimes words fail us because
conversations are just too difficult
people avoid talking about certain
topics because they don’t want to hurt
each other’s feelings or risk offending
anyone it’s these topics where art helps
the most
and it’s these topics we need to talk
about art allows a viewer to interpret
the message themselves this individual
dialog allows for a powerful change at
best or at worst the viewer just says
well that’s just art how I just
described New York City reminds me a lot
of how Chicago is thought of today in
fact as a Chicagoan I’m constantly
reminded of how terrible everything is
by people who don’t live here so
naturally this is something that’s
always in the back of my mind and
something I want to fix so one night in
June 2015 I was walking my dog Benson
god he’s handsome isn’t he I was
thinking about my journey from Canada to
America and how I had wanted to be a
professional baseball player just before
my senior year my mom allowed me to
chase this dream I moved to Minnesota to
live with my aunt my uncle and my three
small cousins I thought about how it was
so weird to go to school my senior year
and not know a single person I was
reminded that the worst thing about this
transition wasn’t missing my family and
it wasn’t even the feeling I used to get
walking into the lunchroom and having no
one to sit with the worst was the
feeling I would get whenever I had to
correct
one of my new classmates when they set a
so-called harmless racial comment the
kind of ignorant comment where it didn’t
matter if there was or wasn’t a minority
in the room these things are always just
wrong to say so I corrected people as a
new kid in town I didn’t care if it was
a prom queen or the captain of the
football team
sometimes my lecture was received
properly but other times it was at best
uncomfortable and at worst an actual
altercation these moments happen
infrequently where I grew up but in this
new place I was needing to say something
more often I noticed that what I had
always felt comfortable doing
infrequently was now happening
frequently enough that I was starting to
feel like a nag I also didn’t have the
comfort of knowing people so I actually
had the weird thought that what I was
doing might be hurting me and allowing
me to not make new friends so instead of
having the strength to continue to do
what I had always done what I knew is
right I was weak and I stopped
correcting people embarrassingly I
started to pretend I just didn’t hear
these hateful comments whenever they
were sad so on this walk I realized that
all these years later I was still mad at
myself for that weakness I should have
kept correcting those hateful comments I
realized that if society is ever going
to solve racism and hatred we all need
to correct these comments right when
they happen we need to be able to say
that hate based comments are wrong but
we need to do this in the right way a
way that gives people the confidence to
correct the hatred no matter what in a
way that makes the message received
we need a communal mantra it was with
all these thoughts in my head that
Benson and I passed a white wall in all
the years of living in my neighborhood
this wall had never been tagged and it
had never been graffiti as a result it
sticks out like a sore thumb to me for
months I had been playing a pointless
thought game saying what can I write on
that wall that if I did
it might not need to be removed so with
all these horrible high school memories
on my mind and my brain marinating on
Chicago’s problems the phrase we all
live here popped into my head the
thoughts stop Benson and I in our tracks
yes Benson and I I actually remember
saying WOW out loud in that very moment
to me the phrase meant racial equality
gender equality sexual equality income
equality and even environmental issues
those four simple words encompass some
of the most hard to talk about but
important issues of our time and they
did so on a disarming but effective way
it’s the inclusion of the phrase that
makes it powerful
it’s the inclusion of the phrase that
makes it safe to say and it’s the
inclusion that makes it possible for a
message to be received
maybe we all live here could be a
communal mantra that could give people a
vocabulary and a reminder to help and
hate maybe just casually seeing these
words every day in the familiar
surroundings of our own neighborhood
could establish a new baseline thought
of inclusion for us all I asked my
friends with the phrase meant to them
luckily they answered the same things
that I had thought it meant so I was
encouraged not being a shy person I
printed some signs that said the phrase
and I took them around the city I wanted
to know if tourists or strangers would
let me take their picture while they
held the signs hundreds and then
thousands of people did I posted all
these pictures to a blog on tumblr and
to my surprise tumblr featured the blog
I ended up with thousands of followers
in a week
and what was really cool was I started
waking up to messages from strangers all
over the world
urging me to keep spreading this message
telling me they loved what I was doing
and that the world needed to hear this
message this particular message from a
stranger in Vietnam was my favorite
I really loved that last line everybody
always smile it’s just beautifully
grammatically incorrect because of the
blog I was invited to speak to a high
school Media Studies class taught by a
teacher friend of mine just talking to
his class even made the the local high
schools paper after the school called me
again and they said what could we do as
a school with the phrase here was my
opportunity to introduce a communal
mantra I told him I’d come up with
something and get back to them well what
I came up with is a program for schools
called act
everyone knows schools love acronyms so
mine stands for art community and
technology three pillars of what I think
make us all human and three things that
I can build off of to make this and keep
this interesting to students the main
initiative of the program is to create
public art using the phrase as a theme
like you see on the screen I visit
participating schools and I conduct
assemblies for the entire school I do
this so that every child goes through an
exercise with me to understand what we
all live here means in order to help me
create a logo for the art project at
their school from their drawings I
source the ideas to make an official
logo which gets put onto products that
we sell to help raise the money
necessary for the art it’s sort of like
a hyperlocal
I heart New York and this ownership
strategy also has the dual benefit of
ensuring that students care more about
the art when they see it every day
because they are directly involved in
its creation they wear the clothes with
pride and they show off the art to
friends and family by creating public
art and not art in a classroom or locked
in a hallway of the school it also makes
the local community get involved so they
can help support the art this introduces
students to local leaders and business
owners who they may never have met
otherwise while I worked on getting
school signed up because we know that
takes a while I started doing street art
with the phrase
all over the city to spread this message
I use chalk so I wasn’t illegally
tagging tagging anything also I think
chalk as a medium perfectly symbolizes
the struggles against racism and hatred
that we have as a society and what I
mean by that is there’s no pill for us
all to take that will magically solve
these problems it will take us all
chipping in a little bit every day to
make these problems go away and by
having to maintain the murals after it
rains or snows I feel like I’m embodying
the struggle through my art finally it’s
way more noticeable the kids when young
kids see it they usually have to ask
their parents what it means and that
starts a conversation a very meaningful
conversation I started getting positive
feedback while writing on the walls from
people walking biking or driving by
people were frequently taking pictures
of the art and tagging it allowing me to
collect data that people loved this
phrase the people were definitely into
the communal mantra what I was doing
helped make a community better could
something just written on a wall or hung
on a fence or communicated through art
help a city like Chicago heal itself
it’s still early but the answer is
definitely yes a kindergarten teacher at
the very first school to do the octane
me this quote literally seeing the words
we all live here in English and Spanish
every day has gotten us talking about it
first it was explaining to the students
what it means now it is the kiddos
sharing their various experiences of
living or seeing we all live here in
action it’s been the perfect way to tie
our I be learner profiles and attitudes
into the community around us again
literally and figuratively this was
incredible the phrase was already having
an impact on kindergarteners this is
important because I believe in order to
actually end racism in hatred we have to
start with our kids by working with
schools of all ages we can help a
generation of young people grow up with
the vocabulary for safely and
effectively correcting hatred whenever
they encounter it
but as a teacher told me early in this
project the idea needs to be cool so how
do we make ending hatred cool well we
can use art fashion music and sports to
highlight our communal mantras by
becoming a part of popular culture the
communal mantra can be cool hatreds out
there lurking and we don’t know when it
will strike but when it does young
people need to be ready so they don’t
shy away from correcting hatred like I
shamefully once did do you want to help
end racism in hatred
do you want to help people know what to
say when they hear hateful things then I
challenge you create your own communal
entre or just use the tools that I’ve
created to introduce we all live here to
wherever you live many people are
waiting for America to be great working
together and through communal mantras
I’ve proven that we can make it greater
than it’s ever been I’m going to finish
today with a story that an artist friend
once told me he told me how a nice old
lady came up to him while he was
painting a mural next to a park she had
gone all the way out of her way to tell
him how much she loved his work and
right as he was about to hug her she
said this is the kind of thing that will
keep those people out of the park
those people imagine the artists shock
imagine the shock of going from wanting
to hug someone to wanting to hurt them
you know this story highlights the
dangers of hateful comments we don’t
know who or when or went what they will
say so we don’t see them coming they
offend us and inflame us so badly and
when we react poorly this only
strengthens the hateful person’s beliefs
well I know where that Park is and I put
a communal mantra up across the street
so imagine if that hateful woman comes
back again and when she does a child
instead appears with the perfect
response to her hatred a response that
they had internalized from a lesson
learned in school or the communal mantra
on the wall across the street what if
that child just calmly points out it
and walks away imagine the power of that
imagine how the woman would have to feel
when she was left reflecting on the fact
that she was reminded by a child that we
all live here thank you
[Applause]
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