Sneak Peek: Nyati Dhokai Podcast

Niyati Dhokai: Going back to how we started the Veterans and the Arts Initiative, it’s those initial community conversations. It really was at the heart of how we started the Veterans and the Arts Initiative, and it’s really at the heart of how we have continued. We’re always interested in what their inspirations are for their artwork or for their music, and so we’re always learning a lot about that. A lot of our veterans will tell us about the music that they’re listening to or the exhibition that they’ve seen or just share something that they’ve seen online that they would try to emulate, and we try to incorporate all of that as much as possible into our curriculum as we’re planning out next steps, and then we also just encourage group conversations as well, where people can understand where their fellow community members are coming from so they know how it is that we’re making the choices that we’re making. Because as I always joke, having such a diverse and intergenerational group of people who identify in so many different ways and who are from so many different eras of service that they have supported, I feel like the Veterans and the Arts Initiative is a lot like hosting Thanksgiving dinner week after week after week, and for every person who participates, they have their favorite thing that they come for and then they have that one thing that they’re just kind of not, you know, that interested in but they know that it means a lot to somebody else. And I feel like that’s a lot of what develops within the Veterans and the Arts Initiative is that, that understanding of what creates joy for themselves but what creates joy for others and negotiating all of those preferences in this beautiful group space and sharing in that experience together. I think that that’s really at the heart of what we do to build community.