WONDERLAND

WONDERLAND is a “master class” in culture change. Podcast co-hosts Bridgit Antoinette Evans and Tracy Van Slyke apply their experience and perspective from careers spent at the intersection of social justice and entertainment to uncover the truth about the stories we’re telling as a country, on TV, in movies and throughout pop culture mediums.  Season 2: WONDERLAND @ FRANK Have you ever wondered: How has the culture change field changed over the last few years? How can we bring our full selves — personally and professionally — to this multifaceted, emotional, and strategic work that we call culture change? How are pop culture fandoms an unexpected force in the 2020 election season? How are artists re-imagining and building new pipelines that center the innovation of historically excluded artists in the entertainment industry? Well we did! In this special micro-season of WONDERLAND, each of the four episodes features a talk by a culture change leader given at frank, an annual storytelling and communications gathering. Bridgit and Tracy then invite a cultural strategist, artist, movement leader or philanthropist to respond and discuss how those ideas impact our work, and our world, in 2020.  

In this episode, we rewind the clock to 2015, where on the frank stage, Ai-jen Poo of the National Domestic Workers Alliance shared her insights and emerging strategy on culture change. Bridgit and Tracy then call IllumiNative’s Crystal Echo Hawk to discuss what resonated with her from Ai-jen’s talk and how the pop culture for social change field has evolved in the last five years. Both movement leaders share insights on how to build a pop culture narrative strategy to make invisibilized communities, visible and powerful.

In this episode, we first hear Bridgit Antoinette Evans’ 2017 achingly beautiful frank talk, where she takes listeners inside her “year of breaking open,” the personal and professional journey she took in order to do the hard and important work of culture change. We then talk with Unbound Philanthropy Executive Director Taryn Higashi who shares her thoughtful response and connects Bridgit’s learnings to her own evolving understanding of culture change and its relevance to the immigration movement and the 2020 narrative environment.

Continuing their exciting conversation from WONDERLAND season 1 on the power of pop culture fandoms and social change, in this episode we listen to excerpts of Pop Culture Collaborative Senior Fellow Shawn Taylor and WONDERLAND co-host’s Tracy Van Slyke’s separate, but deeply intertwined frank talks. They both share personal stories of how and why pop culture fandoms are the focus of their work, and present burning questions and big ideas that provide a framework for how self-organized groups people along with their pop culture passions, are the next big thing for creating culture change. Bridgit and Tracy then call up Jeff Yang, cultural critic turned culture trend forecaster, to discuss his reactions to the frank talks, and dig into how fandoms are an unexpected, but powerful force in the 2020 election season.

 In this episode, we’re talking pipelines and comedy featuring the 2019 frank talk of comedian and Pop Culture Collaborative Senior Fellow Zahra Noorbakhsh, where she shares her personal story and professional analysis about who has the power to decide what’s funny and the broken career pipeline for diverse stand up comics. Her frank talk accompanies her 2019 report, “FUNNY IS FUNNY: Development Models for Diverse Voices in Stand-Up Comedy.” Bridgit and Tracy then call comedy writer and member of the Cowlitz tribe of the Pacific Northwest, Joey Clift, who responds to Zahra’s analysis and shares experiences of Indigenous comedy artists in Hollywood. Bridgit and Tracy discuss how new emerging artist-led pipelines are re-centering power inside the entertainment industry.