We asked Jerry McGrath for his bio and his 10-year-old daughter decided to pen it. She wrote: “My dad is tall. He has short, brown, curly hair. He also has glasses. My dad went to Waterloo University. I also would like to go there. He teaches young people different things like anarchism sometimes. My father loves to read (like me) and he also likes to play video games in his free time. His personality is strict and funny.”
That pretty much sums up Jerry, one of Canada’s leading thinkers on the role of art and culture in creating change and disrupting systems. He’s led an assortment of projects and programs to support entrepreneurs as they rethink how society should function, including with the Banff Centre for Arts and Creativity, Artscape Daniels Launchpad in Toronto and Ukai Projects. In fact, Jerry is a passionate systems thinker who believes almost every answer starts with a better question.
We sat down with Jerry McGrath between fire drills and amidst the hustle of his communal Toronto office to learn more about the role of art in creating better systems.
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What do you think?
- What did you learn from Jerry?
- What is the future of art?
- How do we create a society that understands and appreciates the value of culture?
- Can an appreciation of art and culture help protect our natural landscapes? Or is the cultural question so big that it will overwhelm everything else?
- Do we need a bit of anarchy in the system to create art that matters?
- How might you use art to advance system changing ideas?
More on Jerry
Watch his video: Tunnel Mountain: One Conversation
Read the article: The Japanese Words for “Space” Could Change your View of the World
Favourite Book: One Hundred Years of Solitude by Gabriel García Márquez
Favourite Program: SELECT Climate Program
