“Travel is fatal to prejudice, bigotry, and narrow-mindedness, and many of our people need it sorely on these accounts. Broad, wholesome, charitable views of men and things cannot be acquired by vegetating in one little corner of the earth all one’s lifetime. – Mark Twain
“Travel has a way of stretching the mind. The stretch comes not from travel’s immediate rewards, the inevitable myriad new sights, smells and sounds, but with experiencing firsthand how others do differently what we believed to be the right and only way.”
– Ralph Crawshaw
“The more I traveled the more I realized that fear makes strangers of people who should be friends.”
– Shirley MacLaine
“Perhaps travel cannot prevent bigotry, but by demonstrating that all peoples cry, laugh, eat, worry, and die, it can introduce the idea that if we try and understand each other, we may even become friends.”
– Maya Angelou
“Don’t tell me how educated you are, tell me how much you traveled.” – Mohammed
It is my opinion that the realm of the arts and its domain of classical music inherently embody a global and cosmopolitan ethos. To access it fully, an artist must travel.
It is my experience, and I am not alone in this, that the international arts community can often seem distant, elusive, and daunting to anyone who lacks the privileges of social/familial prestige, financial prosperity, or professional networks.
However, the crux of this unease lies more in psychological unease, social insecurity, and pure unfamiliarity. These barriers can be significantly reduced through exposure, experience, and education. With those barriers lowered, all that remains is the issue of money.
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My aim in creating this organization is to support young musicians, enabling them to access that exposure, experience, and education. I want them to confidently and gracefully interact with various cultures and social classes in the global arts scene, no matter their own background or financial status. The focus is not on creating world-famous artists, although talent can and does come from any/everywhere. The focus is on helping young artists become world-fluent. World-comfortable. World-curious. World-embracing.
The Artslantic Exchange is committed to empowering young musicians to evolve into global citizen-musicians, because we believe pursuing this evolution improves us in every way. It doesn't matter if the musicians we help end up in music or any other career--they will be made better, greater, more expansive and skilled humans for having done this work and having had these experiences. The door to that work and experience should be closed to no one.
I am asking for your support in this venture, and I thank you for your time.
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Twyla Robinson
Founder
The Artslantic Exchange