A broken bowl is easy to discard. A kintsugi bowl asks a different question.
What if the break is not the end of the story?
In the Japanese art of kintsugi, shattered ceramics are repaired with lacquer mixed with powdered gold. The cracks are not concealed. They become part of the object’s history.
Democracies break, too. Trust breaks. Institutions break. Relationships break. Communities break.
We have become very good at pointing to all the cracks. We have become less practiced at mending them.
This is where artists of all disciplines have something distinctive to offer.
We are golden
Artists do not erase disagreement. They create spaces where people can encounter one another differently. They help communities remember, imagine, mourn, celebrate, question, and begin again.
Artists, writers, musicians, performers, designers, filmmakers, architects, and other makers become the gold. Not because we are more valuable than anyone else, but because we understand that durability requires care, fractures demand attention, and a throwaway culture weakens communities.
Res Creativa exists because democracy needs more than better arguments. Democracy needs better ways of reconnecting what has come apart.
Healthy democracies need creative intelligence.
As Joni Mitchell wrote in Woodstock, we’ve “got to get ourselves back to the garden.”
— Randall White
Learn more about the Res Creativa initiative
Res Creativa is building a movement around a simple idea: healthy democracies need creative intelligence. Discover the vision, meet the founders, and help shape what comes next.
Kintsugi is the word that escaped you this morning. Cloisonné is obviously different, but beautiful nonetheless.
Art is so important now more than ever. I feel like live performances are really going to have a surge in the next year. We need community. We need art that inspires discourse and dialogue.