How To Be Hopeful Episode 13 "Pushing Back With Hope"

This week I had the absolute pleasure of speaking with the artist, musician, and poet  Landry Butler from Nashville, one of the  hubs of community and creativity in the beautiful American south.

We spoke about many things including how art and creativity can help hope to grow, the importance of people singing together,  and how despite despair growing in America, hope is growing too

“ we have to push back with our own hope,  the belief that we like to work together and build each other up, we can do that … still have the hope that we can do something positive”

We spoke a lot about the importance of knowing the stories that have been left out or “edited so that they don’t tell the whole truth”  as Landry says, if we knew them we would be “better people because we would have an idea of where we came from and where we’re headed”  and Landry speaks about the comfort that knowing  our history can provide “some of my ancestors were enslaved and dealt with the horrors of slavery which is something I can’t even imagine, but they survived which is the reason I am here today, and that brings me a lot of hope, to know that things and sometimes do get worse but if you take it one step at a time you can survive and you can build something positive out of it” We also spoke about  the hope that has been inspired by the Black Lives Matters movement, and how allies can best help outside of marching and protesting   “talk about it with other white people and to study up on racism”. We spoke about activism in which  “you need to get people’s attention and you need a plan” and what utopia might look like, when we are all free of fear.

All of this PLUS  a track from Landry’s band the Inglewood Social Club for your listening pleasure!

 You can find out more about the wonderful Sunday Assembly here:

About Black Lives Matter (U.S) here:

And about Landry here: http://landrybutler.com/

Inglewood Social Club here: https://inglewoodsocialclub.bandcamp.com/

And watch on YouTube here: - https://is.gd/G8mOLb 

More soon!

Love Bernadette

My book "How To Be Hopeful" published by Elliot and Thompson is due out September 2020. This podcast series is a chance for me to chat again to some of the people who I interviewed for the book, as well as some people who I didn't have the chance to. I hope you enjoy it. 

You can find me here www.bernadetterussell.com

twitter @betterussell insta @bernadetterussell 

Facebook https://www.facebook.com/bernadetterussellwrites/