Creativity as Survival and Power
This webinar explores how storytelling, music, and art in displacement serve as acts of resistance, healing, and collective empowerment. From Dzaleka Refugee Camp, Malawi, to colored neighborhoods in Colombia, this conversation highlights artistic practices reshaping individual well-being, community narratives, and policy discourse.
Speakers
- Michael Spicher, Ph.D., is a philosopher and strategic aesthetics consultant who helps people and organizations integrate beauty into culture, design, and decision-making. With over 20 years of experience, he brings deep insight into how aesthetic values shape flourishing, having spoken at global events on design, fashion, and intentional space. Based in Boston, he teaches at several area universities and also directs the Aesthetics Research Lab.
- Francisco Alcala Torreslanda is Co-Founder and Executive Director of HOME Storytellers. He has a background in corporate leadership and documentary storytelling. HOME Storytellers partners with refugees and marginalized communities to create hope-driven films and campaigns. Their new film, “We Name Ourselves,” explores how art becomes survival, restoring dignity, connection, and hope in the harshest conditions.
- Juan Pablo Franco Jiménez, Blumont’s Country Director in Colombia, leads programs improving humanitarian assistance, self-reliance, durable solutions, and integration for migrants and internally displaced persons. Previously with Colombia’s government for seven years, he is an Industrial Engineer, Political Scientist, and holds a Summa Cum Laude master’s in Public Affairs from Sciences Po.
Facilitator
Stephanie Acker, co-founder of Home Ground Lab, is a policy and communications practitioner whose work has centered on ‘home’ and has held roles with the U.S. Office of Refugee Resettlement, UNICEF, and the European University Institute. She has a Master’s in Public Administration from Harvard Kennedy School of Government.
About the series: Beauty, Art, Belonging, and the Neuroscience of Place
Co-hosted by Home Ground Lab and Clark University’s Integration and Belonging Hub
Can beauty help people heal? Rebuild? Belong?
This three-part webinar series explores how beauty, art, and design intersect with neuroscience, dignity, and resilience—especially in contexts of displacement, housing insecurity, and humanitarian response. From refugee camps and post-disaster neighborhoods to communities painting their way back to belonging, this series reveals a radical truth: Beauty is not a luxury. Beauty is infrastructure. Each session brings together global experts in neuroaesthetics, refugee leaders, urban designers, and humanitarian practitioners.
