By Brianne Sanchez for Arts Midwest.
Broadcast version by Mark Moran for Iowa News Service reporting for the Arts Midwest-Public News Service Collaboration

Stories are shortcuts, introducing people and places we might not otherwise encounter. They help us discover meaningful connections, even amid isolating circumstances. Curious people often turn to books because novels and memoirs open up on demand, but everyone has a story to tell. 

In Iowa, CultureALL’s Open Book program makes striking up a conversation with a stranger as simple as visiting the local library. Their catalog of personal narratives introduces real-life protagonists whose singular struggles touch broader topics like immigration, identity, grief, faith and more. 

Since 2018, the Des Moines-based social impact organization has recruited more than 50 Iowans from diverse backgrounds to serve as human “Books.” They share short talks about a defining chapter of their lives with intimate audiences of “Readers.”

From Charlie’s harrowing story of surviving a traumatic childhood abduction to Sylvia’s tale of defying society’s expectations as a blind woman to earn her PhD in soil chemistry, human “Books” prove why people shouldn’t be judged by their cover. 

“Open Book can be a catalyst to speed up a relationship and introduce a conversation that maybe wouldn’t have naturally occurred,” says Karen Downing, a retired English teacher who brought the concept to CultureALL.

CultureALL supports human “Books” through the storytelling process. It compensates them for visits to retirement communities, libraries, businesses and other locations. 

Open Book’s story-sharing format was inspired by Human Library, a movement that began in Denmark in 2000 to address prejudice through personal connections. 

CultureALL’s version is reciprocal.

“We realized that, yes, people want to hear other stories,” Downing says. “They also really wanted to share their own and get a sense of their lived experience in conversation with someone else.”

She and former CultureALL AmeriCorps Service member JJ Kapur collaborated to localize the Human Library concept and measure its empathy-building impact.

Humanizing Complex Issues

Initiatives like UpLift: The Central Iowa Basic Income Pilot have participated in Open Book to bring local voices to issues like poverty and homelessness. Congregations have also used the program to build relationships across racial divides. Funding from Humanities Iowa is helping the CultureALL program connect urban and rural populations, too. 

“Hearing a personal story can change a lens on an issue or big, thorny topic that people maybe don’t have a nuanced understanding of,” Downing says.

The vulnerability Open Book encourages can be validating for participants like Yerliana Reyna, an immigrant from the Dominican Republic who moved to Iowa by way of the Bronx, New York. 

Reyna is a middle school counselor who connected with Open Book after participating in the Iowa Latinx Project’s Media Ambassador Program. She shared her story at a senior center in Pella, a community known for its deeply Dutch heritage. 

“I remember one of the ladies kept looking at me and then when I was done [speaking], she said, ‘You know that you are more brave than you think,’” Reyna says. “Your story can be of encouragement for somebody else.”


Brianne Sanchez wrote this story for Arts Midwest.


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Sixty years ago this weekend, young activists marched across the Edmund Pettus Bridge in Selma, Alabama, demanding their right to vote and changing history in the process. Today, another group of young people is using art to make their voices heard in Georgia.

A Boston-based arts group, beheard.world, has teamed up with Selma-area teens for "Selma Again," a production that blends dance, spoken word and music to shed light on the struggles the city still faces today.

Director and choreographer Anna Myer said the performance is about pushing forward, as well as looking back.

"The piece talks about real things that are happening and things that go to the heart," she said, "and it also talks about love and the only way forward is love and the only way to keep moving forward is if we do this together."

Myer said she first visited Selma years ago and was struck by how poverty and crime persist despite its historic significance. She and her husband, filmmaker Jay Paris, along with Selma natives, helped create a nonprofit initiative to blend nonviolence education, performing arts and storytelling for local youth.

It's part of the Selma Cross-Cultural Nonviolence and Performing Arts Academy, which was co-founded by Dallas County natives and civil rights veterans Charles Bonner and Viola Douglas, along with the Rev. Gary Crum of Elwood Christian Church. Through poetry and dance, teens confront modern challenges and honor past civil rights leaders.

Myer said this year's production highlights how today's youth can step into the legacy of activism left by the "foot soldiers" of the 1960s.

"In the performance in Atlanta, we're honoring civil rights veterans who are still alive - Andrew Young, and Charles Steele, and Faya Rose Sanders, and Lynda Blackmon Lowery," she added. "We're honoring them and we'll be also speaking their names in the piece."

"Selma Again" will be performed today (Fri., March 7) at Morehouse College's Ray Charles Performing Arts Center in Atlanta, and Sat., March 8, at Ellwood Christian Academy in Selma, as part of the annual Bridge Crossing Jubilee.

Myer emphasized the show's ultimate goal is to spark meaningful conversations, promote understanding and inspire action for lasting change.

Music lessons. A trip to the theater. Experiences like these can help students recover from cataclysmic natural disasters like the LA fires, according to experts in music and the brain.

Research shows that learning to play an instrument improves listening skills and language development.

Neuroscientist and Associate Professor Assal Habibi, PhD, is director of the Center for Music, Brain, and Society at the University of Southern California, Dornsife College of Letters, Arts, and Sciences.

She said music students see improved decision-making, planning, and focus.

"We're not just giving them a toolbox of musicianship," said Habibi, "but we are giving them a toolbox to have better emotion regulation and better impulse control, and perhaps better respond to stressors around them when natural disaster happens in their environment."

The center works with children in the Youth Orchestra Los Angeles, and researchers noticed improved resilience during and after the COVID lockdowns.

They're also working with several children affected by the Altadena fire - kids who are part of the Los Angeles Children's Choir, which is based in nearby Pasadena.

Habibi said participation in musical and art experiences is especially helpful in the immediate aftermath of a traumatic event, because it facilitates access to emotion.

"Some of these students may not be able to really express what is going on for them, and the fear and anger around all that happened so fast," said Habibi. "But by going to seeing a musical performance, it gives them a connection and access to their emotion and a way to express themselves."

As schools rebuild after the fires, Habibi said she hopes art and music education will be available to help students recover and flourish.

By Amy Felegy for Arts Midwest.
Broadcast version by Terri Dee for Michigan News Connection reporting for the Arts Midwest-Public News Service Collaboration

They’re unlikely friends, skull anatomy and glitter theory. 

In a new-to-the-internet hair and makeup class, the two have come together via the University of Michigan. 

Free and accessible to anyone with decent Wi-Fi, the goal is simple: 

“That no matter who is sitting in the chair, that the person who is applying the makeup understands how to work with whatever skin tone is in front of them, and they understand how to work with whatever hair texture is in front of them,” says Sarah Oliver, the U Michigan professor who created this Equitable Stage Makeup and Hair course. 

From 8 Chairs to Hundreds 

Oliver, who teaches costume technology and design, knew she needed to broaden her students’ understanding of on-stage presentation.

There are over 250 performers at the school at any given time—from opera and dance to musical theater. 

The catch? They can’t all fit in an eight-seat makeup room backstage. So the idea was born: Film demo videos and put them online.

In a matter of months since its March 2024 launch, over 1,800 people have taken the course, which includes lessons in aging, special effects, hair, and drag. Special guests collaborated (read: TV star Alexis Michelle) to bring expertise to the table. 

That expertise, colleague Christianne Myers says, has too long rested on the shoulders of performers themselves. 

“For us, [this course] really was about hair and makeup and meeting performers’ needs,” says the University of Michigan costume designer. “Particularly Black performers have so often been called upon to be the experts of their own hair in a really specific way in regional theaters.” 

In addition to equity concerns, having unnatural makeup or hair takes viewers out of the show, as does a performer who isn’t their best self on stage. 

“Maybe your performance is suffering because you’ve haven’t had as long a break because you had to go and do your own hair instead of knowing you were going to hair appointments that everybody else did, or that someone doesn’t understand the hair texture that you have and they don’t have the proper wig for you,” Oliver says. 

“You don’t even realize that those performers are wearing a wig except for you because you have a wig that clearly doesn’t work for your hair texture or your skin tone,” she adds. 

Accessible Across Stages 

The Coursera modules are truly for anyone, performers and instructors alike. 

People having makeup done in these instructional videos have a range of skin tones; ages across the spectrum are represented. 

“Inclusivity is sort of baked into all the teaching modalities,” Myers says. 

The videos, three years in the making, are high-quality and broken into sections—you don’t need to take them all. Click, watch, learn.

Then, take your whole self, and go perform. 


Amy Felegy wrote this story for Arts Midwest.


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