JULIAN LENNON - Singer-songwriter, Photographer, Doc Filmmaker, Exec. Producer of Common Ground

How can the arts inspire us to lead lives of greater meaning and connection? What kind of world are we leaving for future generations?

Julian Lennon is a Grammy-nominated singer-songwriter, photographer, documentary filmmaker, and NYTimes bestselling author of children's books. Executive Producer of Common Ground and its predecessor Kiss the Ground, which reached over 1 billion people and inspired the US Department of Agriculture (USDA) to put $20 billion toward soil health. The natural world and indigenous people are also the focus of Lennon’s other documentaries Whaledreamers, and Women of the White Buffalo. In 2007, Julian founded the global environmental and humanitarian organization The White Feather Foundation, whose key initiatives are education, health, conservation, and the protection of indigenous culture, causes he also advances through his photography, exhibited across the US and Europe. His latest album Jude spans a body of work created over the last 30 years. Julian was named a Peace Laureate by UNESCO in 2020.

"This is why protecting the indigenous around the world has been an important cause for me because of that history, because of their knowledge, and the potential of losing it forever. I know that around the world that there are groups that are striving and doing the best that they can to maintain and hold onto those languages, doing as much research and capturing as much of that knowledge as possible. You know, fortunately, there are some incredible, dare I say, youngsters these days who are learning, who have such respect for their elders and their history and their past. They are learning the language and holding onto it as best as they can. As I said, I think the fact that it's all being recorded now and put down, and hopefully nothing further bad happens. I think it's key because we've learned so much from the Indigenous. You know, we're part of that history. It's just we've lost our way. They still know where they're going. It's just the rest of us that have been misguided, I would say, in the bigger scheme of things. The other thing was we, you know, for many, I mean we didn't know any better. That's no excuse, but, you know, we all rode on that bandwagon too of enjoying life to the extremes before we knew, really what that meant, how that abused not only people but the Earth. And the situation that we live in, as you see in the film also, I think we're only just seeing the tip of the surface really about the quantity of illness that is coming from the past 50 years of the way things have been done. I mean, the general public didn't know about so, so many of the bad things that were happening. The poisoning, the chemicals in our food, in all of our products, whether it's from, deodorants to hairsprays to makeup. It's really only in the past few years that there's been a decent should I say shift in that world and that finally some companies are taking responsibility for their actions and their positions, and they're trying to change things too. So little by little, little by little, but it's working."

https://julianlennon.com
https://commongroundfilm.org
https://kissthegroundmovie.com
https://whitefeatherfoundation.com
https://julianlennon.lnk.to/JudeWE
https://julianlennon-photography.com

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