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@creativediplomat

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Culture that connects across divides. Dispatches on creativity and connection
from around the world.

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CD is a global community exploring what culture can do in divided times. 
Through correspondents on the streets and in the studios of 20+ cities, we share and support the artists, creators, and ideas crossing borders, bridging communities, and opening up new ways of seeing one another. 
It’s a place for unexpected crossovers: creative work that brings different worlds into conversation, challenges the usual narratives, and connects us beyond the lines that keep us apart. 
Join us. Meet someone outside your usual orbit. And tell us what’s happening where you are. 
@creativediplomat creativediplomat.com by @creativediplomat

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2 months ago

Is home where you live, or what you carry with you?

Migration isn’t always a matter of leaving one place behind for another. More often, two places continue to live within the same person, shaping how they remember, create and understand where they belong.

After moving from Sardinia to Tuscania at 31, Bonaria Manca carried her first home into her second. Decades later, she began painting the walls of her farmhouse, bringing together memories of childhood, life on the land and the stories that had stayed with her.

Her home became an expression of what it means to belong to two places, and to keep both alive within you.

Story by CD Rome correspondent Nicola Aprile, @nicolaaprile. by @creativediplomat

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11 days ago

Why would a Japanese sculptor raised in a Buddhist environment devote almost 50 years to helping build one of Spain’s most recognizable Catholic churches?

Etsuro Sotoo arrived in Barcelona in 1978 and encountered the unfinished @basilicasagradafamilia.

He would devote nearly five decades to continuing the work of Catalan architect Antoni Gaudí. But Sotoo understood that reproducing Gaudí’s forms was not enough. To carry the work forward, he had to learn to see through Gaudí’s eyes—studying the nature, symbolism, structure and faith that shaped his creative language.

Story by CD Barcelona correspondent Pilar Simón, @thepiltzihome.

Location footage courtesy of the Foundation Construction Board of the Expiatory Temple of the Sagrada Família, @basilicasagradafamilia. taken in Basílica Sagrada Família by @creativediplomat

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a month ago

Most films about conflict lead us toward a verdict. “Do the Right Thing” (1989) leaves part of the moral work to the audience.

Spike Lee places Black, Italian American, Korean American, and Puerto Rican neighbors on one Brooklyn block, then asks viewers to sit with anger, loyalty, racism, fear, and responsibility without offering an easy resolution.

More than 35 years later, viewers still disagree about its ending. That may be the film’s lasting power: it doesn’t require everyone to reach the same conclusion. It gives audiences who see the world differently a shared story to argue through. When times feel polarized, understanding may begin there—not with agreement, but with staying in the conversation.

Story by Zebedayo Masongo, CD contributing editor in New York City. @zmasongo @malindipress by @creativediplomat

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13 days ago

With a world of interiors at our fingertips online, are we finding new ways to bring other countries and cultures into our homes—or are our tastes just becoming more alike?

In his first story for CD, Milan correspondent Simone Lorusso looks at how digital platforms influence what feels like home, the ideas they help us discover, and whether it matters if our spaces start to look more and more similar.

Story by Simone Lorusso, @simone_lorusso
Interior inspiration and imagery via @pinterest by @creativediplomat

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a month ago

Who decides which films, artists, and stories get to represent a country? And what do we miss when we keep looking for more of the same?

Starting with Brazilian cinema, CD São Paulo correspondent Barbara Demerov (@barbarademerov) looks beyond the stories we’ve come to expect, and makes a case for the ones that surprise us, challenge us, and shift what we think we know.
 
Films mentioned:
City of God (Fernando Meirelles & Kátia Lund, 2002) Elite Squad (José Padilha, 2007) Baby (Marcelo Caetano, 2024) The Day I Met You (André Novais Oliveira, 2023) Cidade; Campo (Juliana Rojas, 2024) I’m Still Here (Walter Salles, 2024) by @creativediplomat

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25 days ago

Founded in Lagos by Adebayo Oke-Lawal, the label uses colour, softness and fluid silhouettes to push against fixed ideas of how men and women are expected to dress—and what those clothes are supposed to say about them.

Its latest collection, Water Will Carry Us, draws on the movement, colour and precarity of Makoko, Lagos’s lagoon community, and was shown this month at Berlin Fashion Week.

But the larger Orange Culture story is about opening the door wider: for more ways of dressing, more ways of being African and more freedom to move beyond the roles clothes traditionally assign us.

orangeculture.com.ng
Images courtesy @orangecultureng by @creativediplomat

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3 months ago

South Lebanon has spent nearly three years under bombardment, and most reporting from the region has focused on the war.

In his first dispatch for CD, correspondent Hsen Farhat meets Mohammad Wissam Aoun (@mowiemood) in the southern Lebanese village of Zefta to introduce us to artists from the South. Artists whose homes and studios have been destroyed, but who continue to return to the land that inspires their work.

Story by CD Correspondent Hsen Farhat @_hsenfarhat_. With thanks to Mohammad Wissam Aoun @mowiemood taken in Zefta, South Lebanon by @creativediplomat

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2 months ago

A friend reads a book and thinks of you. Someone spots an artist at a show and sends you their work. In a world shaped by algorithms, “I thought you’d like this” hits different.

In her first story for CD, São Paulo correspondent Paula Jacob explores what happens when we let other people expand our taste, and why people across Brazil are coming together in book, film and art clubs to share what they love, face to face.

Story by CD São Paulo correspondent Paula Jacob, @pjaycob. Paula is a Brazilian critic and scholar who’s spent nearly a decade researching, teaching and writing about cinema and literature made by women. by @creativediplomat

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a month ago

@solangeknowles’ Saint Heron Community Library lends rare, out-of-print and first-edition books by Black and Brown writers and artists—free.

Octavia Butler, June Jordan, Nadine Gordimer, William Pope.L and others, mailed to your door for with a prepaid return label. US readers only, for now.

Story by CD Contributing Editor Zebedayo Masongo.@zmasongo @malindipress by @creativediplomat

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2 months ago

Sometimes a musical collaboration does more than bring two styles onto the same record or stage. They can help one audience recognize another country’s struggle as something closer to home.

When South African singer Miriam Makeba and American artist Harry Belafonte teamed up, apartheid and Jim Crow were enforcing racial separation on opposite sides of the world. Their music crossed that distance, bringing African languages to American listeners while their partnership helped amplify Makeba’s account of life under apartheid.

Zebedayo Masongo shares how their work connected struggles across borders, languages and political systems—and made apartheid feel less distant to American audiences by revealing some of its uncomfortable parallels in the US.

Story by Zebedayo Masongo, CD contributing editor in New York City, @zmasongo @malindipress by @creativediplomat

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a month ago

Paul McCartney wrote “Blackbird” in 1968, inspired by the civil rights struggle happening in the United States and Black women fighting for equality.

Recorded mostly alone with acoustic guitar, foot taps and birdsong, it sounds intimate and effortless. But beneath that simplicity was a message of encouragement: “Take these broken wings and learn to fly.”

A quiet song carrying something much bigger. by @creativediplomat

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3 months ago