What makes change possible?
Ideas, stories, and conversations about culture, collective action, and the work of making change.
I took this photo of a nonviolent protest in 1993, moments before police arrived and beat the monks. I still find myself studying their faces, struck by the many different expressions of commitment and desire for change.
Thinking Out Loud
How do we make things better? What roles do art, music, and storytelling play? And what can each of us contribute? Essays, reflections, and occasional experiments in making sense of culture, collective action, and the messy work of making change. Find them all here.
Selected Pieces
The Ordinary Work of Making the Impossible Possible. On how change happens, why more of our contributions matter than we realize, and why we should rethink what “not doing enough” means.
Why Do We Sing? Sometimes music helps us change things. Sometimes it just helps us live.
Gen X Questioned Power. Now We Hold It. What We Do With It Matters. A reflection on a generation that grew up questioning authority and now finds itself holding power. What can we learn from our past, and how will we use our influence today?
A Conversation About Cultural Strategy Co-written with Jeff Chang and Liz Manne, this 2018 essay explores what cultural strategy is, how it relates to organizing and social change, and why the language we use to describe our work matters. An invitation to keep questioning and developing the practice together.
Working Together
Much of my work involves bringing people together to ask better questions, explore complex challenges, and figure out what comes next. I do this in classrooms, public conversations, retreats, workshops, and strategic collaborations.
Speaking & Conversations
Keynotes, talks, interviews, panels, and lively conversations about how social change happens, the role of culture and collective action, and what this moment calls for. Through stories, history, and firsthand experience, I explore what makes change possible and how each of us can participate.
Facilitation
Retreats, workshops, gatherings, and spaces that bring people together to explore complex questions, build relationships, and create the conditions for new ideas and possibilities to emerge. I design and facilitate collaborative processes that help groups navigate different perspectives, deepen connections, and move toward shared understanding and action.
Strategic Advising
For artists, organizers, students, and others developing ideas, navigating career or leadership questions, or figuring out how they can contribute to social change. I also work with organizations to assess cultural and strategic opportunities, think through complex decisions, and determine where to focus their efforts. Both draw on decades of experience helping people turn ideas into action.
Have an idea for a conversation, gathering, or collaboration? Let’s talk!
Selected Work
My work has taken a lot of different forms over the years, from organizing concerts and building collaborations to developing cultural campaigns, producing stories, and researching how change happens. Here are a few recent examples.
Freedom Needs a Soundtrack
Thirty years after co-founding the Tibetan Freedom Concerts with Adam Yauch of the Beastie Boys, I created and executive produced this six-part, award-winning documentary podcast. Through the voices of artists, Tibetan activists, and organizers, we revisit how the concerts came together, what they changed, and what their story can teach us about collective action today.
Culture Surge
In 2020, I helped lead Culture Surge, a collaboration that brought together artists, storytellers, and movement organizations to encourage civic participation during the election. In less than five months, we worked with hundreds of creators, developed shared resources, and produced more than 450 pieces of content that reached tens of millions of people. The experience reinforced something I've come to believe deeply: relationships, trust, and collaboration are as important as the things we create together.
Artist & Activist Residency
What happens when you give artists and activists space to rest, connect, and create, without asking for anything in return? In 2017, I started a small residency in New Orleans based on that idea. Over the years, more than 100 people stayed with us for over 600 nights. Some rested, some worked, and some remarkable collaborations emerged along the way. We closed the residency in 2024, but the experience continues to shape how I think about creating the conditions for change.
How I Got Here
For more than thirty-five years, I've worked at the intersection of art, culture, and social change. I've helped bring artists and movements together, built organizations and collaborations, and spent a lot of time trying to understand how change actually happens.
In my early twenties, I co-founded the Tibetan Freedom Concerts with Adam Yauch of the Beastie Boys. I later co-founded Revolutions Per Minute with people from Pearl Jam and R.E.M. Over the next decade, RPM supported more than 1,300 musicians and comedians across dozens of social justice issues, helping them find creative ways to contribute through their art, audiences, resources, and relationships. Since then, my work has expanded beyond music into film, visual art, media, and social movements, with storytelling at the heart of it all.
In 2026, I created and executive produced Freedom Needs a Soundtrack, an award-winning, six-part documentary podcast that revisits my journey from music fan to activist to co-founder of the Tibetan Freedom Concerts. Telling my own story, and examining what the concerts changed and what they didn't, helped me see my earlier work and the process of making change in new ways.
Along the way, I've helped shape the fields of cultural strategy, narrative change, and impact storytelling, contributing ideas and practices that have also found their way into academic research and teaching. But what matters most to me is seeing those ideas help artists, activists, and communities make change in the world.
These days, I'm writing, teaching, facilitating conversations, and sharing what I've learned with people beyond the professional fields I've spent my career in.
With Chuck D of Public Enemy and Adam Yauch of the Beastie Boys at a New York press conference for the Tibetan Freedom Concerts, 1997. Photo: Danny Clinch
Let's talk.
Have an idea, a question, or an invitation? I'm always interested in thoughtful conversations, new collaborations, and opportunities to learn and work together.