Belonging through Art with Tyler Jones Part One (Episode 10)
Charlotte Donlon talks to Tyler Jones about art and belonging.
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Why It Matters: When life feels too fragmented and disconnected, art can serve as a vital bridge to a sense of belonging. This episode with Tyler Jones, director of 1504 in Birmingham, Alabama, explores how art grounds us—connecting us to ourselves, our communities, and something larger. Tyler’s story reveals that belonging through art isn’t just about creative participation; it’s about the process of becoming, being shaped by creation, and finding safety and community in spaces where our stories are welcomed.
The episode highlights the importance of making art accessible to all, and how intentional design of art experiences can deepen empathy and belonging.
>>> Tyler shares how practices like labyrinth walking and embodied experiences help him feel more connected to himself and the world. These practices, along with creative exploration, support the lifelong work of integrating mind, body, and spirit—especially during times of challenge or transition.
>>> A pivotal moment for Tyler was being seen and valued by his middle school art teacher, who empowered him to teach younger students. Such moments of recognition can ignite a lifelong journey of creativity and belonging, showing how early support and encouragement can have a profound impact.
>>> Through his work curating exhibitions like "Joe Minter Is Here," Tyler demonstrates how art can open doors, invite contemplation, and make space for everyone to feel included. Art transforms not just our sense of self, but also our connection to place, family, and community, especially when it is made accessible and participatory.
After Listening to This Episode, You’ll Walk Away With:
A renewed sense of how art can help you feel more at home in your body, your story, and your community.
Ideas for using art and creative practices as tools for connection, healing, and personal growth.
Encouragement to seek out or create spaces where your story and creativity are welcomed, knowing that art can be a powerful force for belonging, both to yourself and to those around you.
This second mini-season features conversations with three individuals who are doing significant work in ways that promote ideas connected to belonging through art. I hope you enjoy hearing from them.
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About Tyler Jones
Tyler Jones is a writer, filmmaker, and experience designer from Florence, Alabama. He is a founding member of 1504, where he has directed over 40 multimedia projects worldwide. Today, he leads the studio’s narrative strategy and place-based work in The South.
Learn more about Tyler Jones and his work with 1504 here.
Episode Transcript:
Charlotte Donlon:
Welcome to all of this and more. I'm so glad to bring you the first part of my conversation with Tyler Jones for our second mini season on Belonging Through Art. Tyler is the director of 1504, a narrative studio in Birmingham, Alabama, working at the intersection of culture, community, and mixed media storytelling.
Tyler's approach to art is deeply personal and profoundly communal. He's someone who believes in creating conditions for connection, not just for himself, but for everyone who encounters his work. In this episode, we explore the many ways art helps us belong. Tyler shares how practices like labyrinth walking and embodied experiences have grounded him, and how encounters with music, poetry and visual art have shaped his sense of self and place. We talk about the power of early encouragement, like a middle school art teacher who gave Tyler his first taste of being seen and valued for his creativity, and how those moments can spark a lifelong journey of becoming. Belonging through art, as Tyler points out, is more than just participating in creative acts.
It's about the process of becoming, of being shaped by the act of creation itself and of finding safety and community and spaces where our stories and expressions are welcomed. We discuss how art can transform our relationships with place, family, and even our own bodies, especially during times of transition or challenge.
Tyler's story brings together so many layers of belonging as a parent, a community member, and a creative leader. His recent work curating the Joe Mentor is here. Exhibition in Birmingham is a powerful example of how ARC can open doors and invite contemplation and make space for everyone to feel seen and included.
In a world that often feels fragmented, art offers us a way to connect to ourselves, to each other, and to something larger. Thanks so much for being here. I hope this episode inspires you to notice the art in your life and the ways it helps you belong
Welcome to All of This & More. I'm Charlotte Donlon and I'm excited to talk to Tyler Jones today for our second mini-season on Belonging through Art. Tyler, it's so good to see you. Thank you for talking with me. Before we get started, can you share a bit about yourself for those who aren't familiar with you and your work?
Tyler Jones:
Yeah. Thank you, Charlotte. Hello everybody. It's great to be here. My name's Tyler Jones. I am the director of a narrative studio called 1504. We are in Birmingham, Alabama. That's where I'm today. And 1504 works at the intersection of culture and community. And do mixed media storytelling. We work with designers and writers and filmmakers and strategists all over the world, and we're really just grateful to be able to do this weird thing from Alabama, which is an endlessly inspiring and challenging place. So, glad to be here.
Charlotte Donlon:
Wonderful. Before we talk a bit about belonging through art. I'm going to dive in with a few questions from my Quick Belonging Checkup, which if you're listening, there's a link to this in the show notes. So first, are you feeling generally connected to or disconnected from yourself, others, the divine and the world right now.
Tyler Jones:
Yeah. Big question straight out of the gate. I love it. I, I think that I'm feeling cautiously optimistic. I do think that integration, the work of integration is like the lifelong pursuit. And so for me right now, I'm in a season where I'm trying to do more integration with my body and feel more embodied as a human being. Usually when I am in seasons where I'm more in my head or stuck in my head, I feel less connected. And so, you know, for me, some of the priorities right now that I've actually been trying to write out and revisit daily have been to care for myself. To be real with my family. And then third is to behold the divine presence.
And so those are things that I often fail miserably at, but just to have those reminders in my, in my bag every day have been good. And that's, that's what I'm trying to orient myself to despite being in a phase of life where I have two toddlers and noise is the norm, and to really be present is, is hard.
Charlotte Donlon:
It definitely is. I want to ask how you are noticing your body more and being more embodied, but I'm gonna wait and see if we talk about it later. It might come up later. If not, what return to it is that, if that's okay?
All right. So what are three places, things, activities, or ideas that have helped you feel like more of your whole self over the past couple of weeks?
Tyler Jones:
Okay, so, one of these is a local outreach that I'm involved with called The Threshold Center, and that's a still emerging community of folks who are seeking the sacred in different ways. And for me, one of the things I've gotten to do through that is facilitate a labyrinth walk. Walking labyrinths for me was one of the first real contemplative, embodied practices or technology or however you wanna think about labyrinths or what they mean. But labyrinths have just been a great way for me to get grounded. And once I started realizing what they were and where they were, they were everywhere. And here, even in Birmingham, we have a handful of really beautiful labyrinths.
And so at St. Stephens, there's a memorial labyrinth that I've been walking with a small group of folks. So that's one thing that's made me feel more like myself. And the other thing, which this is a little bit on the fringe for me, but I'm doing a research project looking at the state of spirituality and religion in America.
And as part of that research I went through Reiki certification or Reiki level one. So. I'm a, you know, a green belt or yellow belt or whatever, whatever my starting, starting point is. And that was fascinating and I think more than anything helped me start to tune in more to my intuition and what that is and what that feels like. And I think a lot of us, may have not been initiated into how to listen to our intuition. And intuition can be kind of a, a mysterious thing.
And I think just ways to pay more attention to myself is what I'm hoping to get out of this reiki training. But again, very new, new territory for me to be exploring that.
Charlotte Donlon
Okay. I was not expecting that, so I'm officially,
Tyler Jones:
neither was I.
Charlotte Donlon:
officially a little surprised, but I love it. So are you gonna do more Reiki training or was this sort of just a piece of a bigger thing?
Tyler Jones:
I think I went in more like anthropologically just to explore and see. And now I'm, now I'm curious to see maybe stay tuned. I do think that whatever Reiki is about has a lot of different holistic health benefits, like even on, on yourself. And so, yeah,, I'll check it out or, or may try to integrate it into some type of yoga practice.
We'll see.
Charlotte Donlon:
Okay, great. And you know I'm a fan of the Threshold Center. That's how we first connected was through Mary Bea Sullivan, who's the director there. They're doing wonderful work here in Birmingham, and I'm so glad to have met you through them and to see how they're continuing to have lovely offerings at the intersection of belonging and art and spirituality.
So. Thank you for your work with them. You're also on the board and I know the board has been instrumental in getting it launched and y'all have done a ton. And, and amen to labyrinths. I have so many thoughts on that and we could talk about that for an hour, but we'll move on , and I know it will come back because it is one thing I wanted to talk to you about with regard to the Joe Minter Is Here exhibition. So I'm excited to hear more about your relationship with labyrinths.
So are there any songs, movies, TV shows or books that have helped you feel less alone in this world recently?
Tyler Jones:
You know, as, as much as we all love Mary Oliver she still just has the ability to cut through, especially in springtime when things are blooming and blossoming here. And one of my favorite poems of hers is called "Mysteries, Yes." And I actually have an excerpt here. It just, it ends with this last line that, well, it starts with saying truly we live with mysteries too marvelous, to be understood. And then it goes on to say, let me keep company always with those who say, look, and laugh in astonishment and bow their heads. so, yeah, to me, just how can I orient my life and my interactions with people around the, "the bigger than me", whatever you call that--t he mystery element, the divine presence. So to me, Mary Oliver, especially with how nature kind of unlocks that.
Two other quick ones,, if we're giving out endorsements here I have plenty of those. One is a, graphic novel, if you can call it that by Richard McGuire. it's a book, I'm gonna hold it up called Here. Maybe I can send you links to these things later.
But ignore the kind of strange film adaptation that happened with Tom Hanks recently. But this is a beautiful, a beautiful study of the passage of time through one fixed living room. So it looks at a living room over hundreds of thousands of years and imagines time. And then the last one kind of related to that theme is the last movie I saw, which was Sinners very, you know, has kind reached, I think blockbuster level, but it's set in the Mississippi Delta in the thirties.
The quick premise (no spoilers) is a sawmill. Sawmill is converted to a juke joint. And this is a movie from Ryan Coogler. And there's a really pivotal scene in the movie, or to me, a really beautiful, pivotal scene in the movie where, different genres and eras of music come alive in this juke joint and really just connect sort of the past and future of Black music, in a way that when watching it, I felt like I'm watching cinema.
You know, it's, it's kinda rare that it kind of gets to that level with how, how much we're just consuming content, TV shows, movies, but this scene in Sinners is just, it really, it really struck me. There's a piece in the New York Times called Anatomy of a Scene where, where Coogler talks about that scene. So if you're curious about that movie or that, or that scene check it out.
Charlotte Donlon:
Wonderful. Thank you so much.
Okay. Now remind me, did you, were you a film student at one point?
Tyler Jones:
Not really. I mean, I was, I was aspiring on the film school track, I actually started college in Los Angeles, but, but really quickly realized that my interest in screenwriting could be maybe channeled more through journalism. And so I retreated to the South and ended up getting my master's in journalism at the University of Alabama.
And yeah, really fell in love with nonfiction storytelling, fascinated by that, that blurriness narrative work and, and nonfiction. So.
The, the film the interest in film has been just as a, a way to, a way to connect, a way to communicate, you know, visual storytelling has always captivated me.
Charlotte Donlon:
Okay. Thank you for reminding me a little bit of your story that I had forgotten. Okay, so what comes to mind when you hear the phrase belonging through art and what early memories. Do you have that feel like belonging through art moments?
Tyler Jones:
Yeah, so I think that I've been thinking about just belonging through art, and I do think the word through is doing some, some heavy lifting here, which is interesting. You know, for me, one of the, the first times I felt that whatever artistic interest or expression that I had as a kid was, was sort of seen, was by my first art teacher Angela Harris.
And in middle school I was taking, taking art classes from her and she actually hired me to be her teacher for the, for the younger students. So it was this at a really young age to be empowered to be a teacher, I think influenced me tremendously. To feel like, yeah, even at 12 years old that I had something that I could, could pass on and, teach. I don't know really what the lessons were, what the quality of those lessons were, but yeah, it was it was an art class in garage in Florence, Alabama. The other thing that, when I just think about the word belonging is its relationship or maybe there's a causal thing with the word becoming. And there's something I, I have in my office and have kind of pinned up is this letter that Kurt Vonnegut famously wrote to high school students who were asking for advice, but he was the only author that wrote back. Are you familiar with this letter? He was in his eighties and, and wrote a letter to these high school students and basically just said, create anything like. Write poetry, write, write music, write films. And that process is the process of becoming, and you're actually developing your soul when you, when you create. And then he gives them an exercise to actually tear up whatever they've just made. And again, that process of the act of creation, is a practice of becoming. I do think that a certain level of safety or or sense of belonging is really critical to sort of reach those levels where now you can then be or, or become. Yeah, I think about that word a lot.
Charlotte Donlon:
Yeah. Thank you for your, your thoughts on that. I really appreciate that and have thought a lot about the intersection or the relationship between belonging and becoming and how both are sort of always happening. Hopefully, hopefully. How it's nice to have both always sort of happening.
Do you have any early childhood memories , or later childhood memories of music where you encountered music because you're from the Muscle Shoals area. I'm gonna focus on music for this question. That that has, that created a core memory for you and like a core sense of belonging that you've carried with you throughout your life?
Tyler Jones:
But that's, that's a great question. I think for one, there's a level that I may have taken for granted because my dad was a country music songwriter. And so the reason I'm from where I'm from in this small part of Alabama is because of Rick Hall, who was a producer at Fame Studios, hired my dad as a, as a songwriter, and, you, I just,, I have so much respect for people, like, whether it's Rick Hall or Sam Phillips or these, these other folks who sort of push back against the idea of you, you having to be in New York or Chicago or Los Angeles and you see that carried on today? I think with folks like Billy Reid and Natalie Channin up in the, up in the Shoals where the sense of place is strong and they were very rooted in the sense of place.
And so for me, growing up, going to music studios in Nashville, in the Shoals, I think that that left an imprint for sure on just was possible creatively that again, that you could, you could kind of come out of anywhere. You didn't need permission to do this. And then the other one just quickly was during a real kind of angsty period driving around this small town that I, by this point had hated, I was listening to a Paul Simon record. There Goes Rhymin Simon and the liner notes had a photo of the, the studio it was recorded at, and I'd just driven by that. That's this sort of abandoned building, seemingly abandoned building, and had no idea that people like Paul Simon and Aretha Franklin and bob Dylan had recorded what they did there, and that made me see my hometown differently for sure. And I think started to change my relationship with the South and a place like Alabama that, when you're young, feels very closed off and disconnected. But then to see these artists that have actively chosen to work here or come here or seek something here, that was, that was really inspiring.
Charlotte Donlon:
I love that story and I love, sort of like the the connection and belonging to place and music and self and story and family. You know, there's like a lot of layers of belonging represented in that one story. And that one sort of aha moment.
Okay. So as a father with your work, with your creative studio as a community member, neighbor, all of your different roles and responsibilities, how do your encounters with various art forms find their way into these different roles and interactions.
Tyler Jones:
Yeah, I think, you know, being a small business owner, which is essentially what I am you know, with the studio, the lines are really blurry between work and life. And, I don't mind that blurriness and I take inspiration from all of it. One, one thing that I, I did really enjoy last week was a group of folks from around the country and really some international participants came together to talk about experience design for parenting.
So experience design is a interdisciplinary design practice that I subscribe to and have learned so much from, and we just got together. We were all sort of young parents and we're talking about what are, what are sort of contemporary initiations or ways to create the sense of belonging and this, the, the atmosphere of becoming for young people. And try to create these structures that, that feel can feel isolating. I mean, especially for those of us who became parents during the pandemic. But there was a lot of solidarity just to be able to talk with other parents who are approaching, who are trying to approach parenting from a really intentional place. And I'm hoping that those kind of resources start to be shared more widely. I found, becoming a parent, I, I really have struggled to integrate that identity. I think some of that was the pandemic Covid, my oldest daughter being born March, 2020. And I think other aspects are just the natural ego death, right? Or, or shedding of the ego that hopefully happens when you go on that journey of, of parenthood. But yeah, it's been really hard and I have tired to cultivate more community as a parent who are willing to talk about that.
Charlotte Donlon:
That's wonderful. I realized I don't know about 10 years ago that my primary method of parenting was giving my kids art and mainly encounters with art. I also gave them art supplies to make art, but I never sat down and like crafted or made art with them because that wasn't what I wanted to do personally.
And I've been doing some writing around this and, and what I realized is it was natural for me to give them music and film and visual art and photographs and encounters with all of these artists because that's how I had survived and thrived. And I knew that if I gave them more of that, it would fill the gaps for my lack of ability to be everything to them that they needed. So it took the pressure off me personally, and I knew I was giving them this feast of of good things and good encounters that would you know help them process emotions. I mean, there's so many benefits of engaging with art that I'm sure you know, and it's so interesting to me that the research on the effects of art and engaging with art and different forms of art, how that research exploded since the pandemic.
Tyler Jones:
What is it called? The, The Great Pause or you know, the sort of moment that we had to step off the, to be forced, off the treadmill. And I think to, you know, obviously such a hard traumatic time for so many people and I think we're still sort of living with that at like a cellular level of what, what we just went through collectively through a pandemic. And yet there were, there were so many moments of beautiful community work and beautiful relationship building or, you know, our practice that emerged because we, were forced to stop and pay attention and be still. And even things with the the openness to, to talking about mental health challenges too, right? We've seen that really be normalized a lot. Still, still a ways to go, but I have found that people in my peer group are a lot more open to talking about therapy or, you know, again, mental health work since the pandemic.
Charlotte Donlon:
That's so encouraging to hear. My kids are a lot older than yours and it's hard to know what all is happening in the sort of generation coming up behind me, not only in the the children, but how the parenting is unfolding as well.
So, it's interesting to hear stories through my Parenting with Art work and even the Belonging through Art work and all of it's connected, right?
Like how art, encountering art, making art, putting ourselves in the way of different forms of art is kind of saving us all in ways or at least helping us, helping us survive the next hour before we do the next thing. One of my favorite, just real quick, one of my favorite bits of research that I read, was that the areas of our brains that activate when we listen to a song or look at visual art or watch a film are the same areas in our brain that activate when we have a conversation with a person. And I was like, okay, that's why it makes sense. That's why I feel less alone when I'm, you know, reading or listening to music or walking through a museum.
Tyler Jones:
That's fascinating. Yeah, I think especially music or for me poetry too, just has a way of kind of getting in through a back door, into my circuitry that can like disarm me and, and yet make me feel so connected to just things that are hard to verbalize honestly. I think that's, that's the beauty of, of that kind of connection with , whatever art form it is that it's, it makes you feel less alone. It helps you make sense of the world. It helps you navigate.
Charlotte Donlon:
Yes, yes. And with teenagers it helps them hold multiple emotions at one time, which adults need also and younger kids need too. But I experienced that need most intensely when my kids were in middle school and early teenage years.
So I first speaking, familiar with you and your work through the Joe Minter Is Here exhibition from 2024. Can you tell us a little bit about that project and how it has helped you belong to Birmingham and the people of Birmingham and the art of Birmingham?
Tyler Jones:
Yeah. Thank you so much for coming to this exhibit that we did. It was definitely an experiment. It was part of a much broader community initiative that we've been a part of for a few years, which essentially is to make the, the artwork of Joe Minter more accessible to the public, specifically in Birmingham and then, and then beyond.
So if you're not familiar with Joe Minter he is a contemporary American artist in his eighties who lives in Birmingham, Alabama and has work in the permanent collections of the Met and the Whitney and the National Gallery, as well as the Birmingham Museum of Art but is relatively unknown in his hometown. Okay. And we, we, we've heard that story before. Even though he operates a environment that you can come visit, you can drop in and visit in his yard where he has this 30 plus year kind of open air museum. It's, it's not very accessible to many people, right? So it's not easy for school groups to visit or, or older people who want to try to navigate this space.
So we, started thinking about what was just a way to, first of all, give Mr. Minter his first exhibit ever in, in his hometown, but also a way to get as many people to this site as possible? So we, we produced a site-specific installation and wanted to honor him, give him his flowers, but also do something that could--while not trying to replicate a visit to his house and his environment, which he calls African Village the African Village in America specifically--w e wanted to create somewhat of a ceremonial experience walking through this space. And so we, we oriented the work on a double spiral labyrinth and we tried to create a contemplative experience for people to come into. You know, which is not what you would, you would expect to get maybe in a, in a traditional art museum. So yeah, it was, it was a, a community effort to honor Joe Minter, and I'm really glad to have survived it.
Charlotte Donlon:
It was a big deal. I mean, there was how long was the exhibit open?
Tyler Jones:
It was open for the month of October 2024.
Charlotte Donlon:
Right. And there were several events, you know, an opening and closing conversations. It was so well done, so beautifully put together, and so many people who contributed to what it became and what it, what it was. And I, I remember walking in the first, I think the opening day. And I wasn't a hundred percent sure what I was walking into. I had visited his home and the African Village in America earlier that day and then walked in and there was like the beginning pieces and the little bit of the story. And then I saw more clearly the labyrinth with his pieces positioned around this double spiral labyrinth and it took my breath away. And walking it, and not everyone, it was interesting. Not everyone knew what to do with, you know, to walk it as a labyrinth, but I knew, so it was such a beautiful spiritual experience for me to receive his work in that manner, in such a contemplative and intentional way. I had never experienced anything like it, so thank you.
Do you have any more thoughts about why you chose to use the labyrinth for this show?
Tyler Jones:
Yeah, and I think, I think a few things are coming up. One is just in, in experience design, which is how we try to approach this we're really trying to create an embodied experience for a visitor. And again, we, we can only really do that by designing the conditions. We can't design or predict the outcomes.
We hope that you have a, we hope that it's contemplative or memorable or whatever, but what can we do to design the conditions to create an experience for you? And, and that really for me is about conditions that engage your mind, your heart, your body. And when those happen, what might happen to your soul? You know, what happens when you really have an embodied experience?
And so that meant we wanted to physically move you through a space, in an interesting way. There was a, a, a sound, a soundtrack. There was definitely like a tactile element to this exhibit too. And my hope is that by, again, making you consider movement as a visitor and your own path, this, this path, this journey through the art that it might be a more embodied experience and, and, and kind of leave the realm of just intellectually being at an art gallery or, or an exhibit.
The other thing about the labyrinth is I think often those types of contemplative symbols, containers, imitations, what have you, are, are unfortunately really limited to privileged spaces to the retreat centers or the wellness centers and, and they can seem intimidating, inaccessible, esoteric, what, what have you.
And there was something for me about bringing the practice of labyrinth walking into a warehouse in the heart of the city, regardless of if you knew what was happening or knew how to walk a labyrinth, or you were five years old or you brought your dog to this, which both of those things happened. You know, I think it was just for me, a way to see could we, could we kind of build a bridge between the communal experience of seeing art in public, public art and also the maybe individual practice of walking labyrinths and to kind of see what that marriage was like. And it, it was fascinating to observe what did and didn't work from that.
Charlotte Donlon:
It was tremendous. And I think one thing I loved about it, well, I have two things to say. First, I like that you I mean it kind of goes back to create these conditions, right? Like the labyrinth was one condition but you knew, and I know, and a lot of people know that like, just because you aren't aware you're walking through a labyrinth doesn't mean you aren't being somehow formed by your movement through the labyrinth.
So I love that it's, it's like holding space for the mystery for the unseen for things to happen that we may not even be aware of that are happening to us and in us and around us. The other thing is that personally, my personal experience and I visited, I mean, I went four or five times, took friends, we kept showing up different times of day.
I wanted to see, I mean, there were, I won't go into all that, but walking the labyrinth for me, it, it let me pause and look at the art in a new way because it's like I'm moving, I'm in this embodied thing. I'm moving through space, but there's plenty of room around me. I can pause and let those around me keep going.
And I found myself pausing often and I, I just went so slowly through it and it was like an invitation to look more closely was what it felt like to me. And I'm a, I mean, I love visio divina, which is a sort of spiritual practice of looking closely at art and letting that art speak to you and it was, it was such a wonderful encounter with Mr. Minter's art and Birmingham as a place and the people around me. It was just kind of like this perfect mix of everything that I think belonging through art is about happened right there.
Tyler Jones:
Yeah, well you definitely reached a super fan status for that exhibit and it meant so much that, that people like you and others kept coming back to see the different times of the day or to see when Mr. Minter might be there, which was cool. He started coming back more and more, but. I really, I, I credit that to, I mean, ultimately it's his work, right? That's I think when curated or presented in the right context and you're invited in to meet it in a certain way, it can hopefully break through more than if you were seeing it on a white wall somewhere. Okay. And I think as museums and institutions are looking to do this, kind of getting more into the community I think these kinds of models can show that there's an appetite for it, that people are willing to drive to a strange place in a strange warehouse to see art in Birmingham. I was encouraged to see that. yeah, and we just, we need, we need more public art too. I know, I know. With the, the really complicated time for, for art funding. Yeah, to your point, there's something subconsciously that happens even in your own, like body's intelligence when you encounter art or you walk a labyrinth, that is doing something to you that, that's I think, healing. And we need more of it.
Charlotte Donlon:
I agree. Thank you. Yes. May we have more?
Tyler Jones:
Yep.
Charlotte Donlon:
And I will. Say like when I revisit the African Village in America and see this space he's created with his art over so many years, I'm, I try to return to the intentionality of like, let me pick one piece to look at.
Tyler Jones:
Right.
Charlotte Donlon:
Or like after, I look at this piece for a few minutes what, what comes next? Like, it, it feels like more of an adventure in a way that that's not so overwhelming because it's pretty overwhelming to go and see all of it at once. I also really appreciated the conversations that happened with Imani Perry, Ashley Jones, experts in art preservation.
I, I am just so thankful that I was able to receive everything y'all offered.
Tyler Jones:
Yeah. Well, and, again, that project was, was funded by the National Endowment for the Arts and a lot of grant funding that is now under threat or has, or is gone. So that all of that programming was free to attend. We had hundreds and hundreds of school students that were able to see this work free. And yeah, and those opportunities are, are, are now under threat. So it's just, I think a reminder of what we can all do actively to help support the arts and make it as accessible as possible.
Charlotte Donlon:
And in my work around belonging through art, one thing I love about it is knowing that other people are doing this work already. People have been doing this work forever. And one thing I'm really interested in doing is highlighting some of those who are doing this work in ways that are meaningful and powerful, and you're one of those people. So thank you so much for your work and for promoting the work of others, also. It was so good to talk to you today.