Showcasing the Arts and Scholarship
For 23 years, CAF organized the International Compassionate Living Festival (ICLF) in Raleigh, NC. The ICLF brought artists, academics, and activists together to learn from and be inspired by those opening the doors to our knowledge of other-than-human animals. Eminent speakers included Nobel literature laureate J. M. Coetzee, artist Sue Coe, and many others.
In October 2017, CAF joined Compassion Arts Festival to form the Compassion Arts & Culture and Animals Festival, which featured a music premiere, a radio documentary, lectures, a film-screening, and performances at the Leonard Nimoy Thalia Theater at Symphony Space in New York City on October 21–22, 2017 (see below). The Festival was preceded and accompanied by a pop-up art show entitled “Beasts of Burden,” curated by CAF grantee Jane O’Hara. Other CAF grantees who performed or presented at the Festival included: Ayten Alkan, Michael Harren, Jo-Anne McArthur, Ellie Sarty, Jasmin Singer, and Mariann Sullivan. Cyrus Mejia, whose image was used for the program cover, is also a CAF grantee. In the picture below: (top row from the left) Gretchen Primack shares a poem from her collection Kind, philosopher Dale Jamieson eulogizes his friend and colleague Tom Regan, CAF grantee Radhika Subramaniam reads from “The Elephant’s I”; (second row from left) Martin Rowe interviews CAF grantee Jo-Anne McArthur about her animal photojournalism; Mariann Sullivan, Jasmin Singer, and Michael Harren of Our Hen House (all CAF grantees) perform in John Yunker’s radio play Sanctuary; CAF grantee Donald Vincent performs his spoken-word poetry; (third row from left) Turkish scholar Ayten Alkan talks about stray dogs in Istanbul; Michael Harren’s The Animal Show utilized a string quartet; and CAF grantee Marisa Miller Wolfson em-cees. Click here to see more images from the Festival.
Since 2017, CAF has supported the events that Compassion Arts Festival has hosted, including the 2018, 2019, 2020, and 2021 festivals.
