Making art to connect strangers 🎨 Ivan Cash, Director of “A Social Distance”

“I think that there's just some stubborn part of me that wants benevolence towards strangers to be more accepted and widespread. That's my underlying mission.” - Ivan Cash

Ivan Cash is an interactive artist and filmmaker whose work celebrates and inspires connections among strangers. He has received high accolades for his work (Forbes 30 Under 30, Cannes Lions Shortlist, exhibitions in V&A Museum and The Brooklyn Museum). But that’s not why we interviewed him on the podcast. We brought him on the podcast to go deep on the techniques he uses to connect strangers through art. 

 Ivan is one of the creatives we admire most who use storytelling and art to actually bring people together, connecting strangers through small, benevolent collaborations that add up to much more. His first community art project, "Snail Mail My Email," invited volunteers to transform strangers’ emails into handwritten letters, free of charge. In the six years it ran, 2,000 volunteers sent 29,249 letters to 80 countries. From there, he launched  The Passenger Project, connecting strangers sharing the same plane, and Selfless Portraits, which gave strangers permission to draw each others’ Facebook profile pictures.

Recently, Ivan released “A Social Distance,” a film that features a montage of people living in countries most impacted by COVID-19 and was viewed by people around the world.

We talked with Ivan about turning an idea into a project, setting constraints to foster group creativity, and engaging people who care as collaborators.

👏Learn more about Ivan and check out his projects at: www.ivan.cash

✨Learn more about our correspondent Maggie Zhang on her blog, Commonplays.

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