The Creative Process and One Planet Podcast wishes listeners Happy World Environment Day. For this special episode we celebrate the natural world with Artpark Bridges, the Parkinson's Community, independent living adults with Parkinson's disease, and People Inc, the Arts Experience, a day habilitation program for adults with developmental disabilities.

Artpark Bridges is a year-round community engagement program led by interdisciplinary artist Cynthia Pegado, dedicated to empowering adults of diverse abilities and backgrounds through expressive arts workshops and performance opportunities. Serving the Buffalo-Niagara Falls region of New York State, Artpark Bridges connects citizens with a sense of inclusion and purpose, healing and creative expression. 

Cynthia  Pegado
Teaching artist and movement expert, Cynthia Cadwell Pegado, weaves her passion for immersive performance into the creative process of site-specific work for people of all abilities. Ms. Pegado is an eight-time New York State Council on the Arts (NYSCA) Community Arts awardee, for “Art Moves Me”, her interpretive dance program based on visual art, designed for the Burchfield Penney Art Center and "Sound Dance" designed for Artpark. She has choreographed performance works for students in Parkinson’s specific classes as well as public programs which include Global Water Dances (a worldwide network of choreographers advocating for water quality)

Muriel Louveau
French vocalist composer Muriel Louveau has been invited by Sonia Kozlova Clark ,director of Artpark festival, as an international artist in residence at Artpark in 2022 to create and customize virtual expressive voice classes facilitated by Cynthia for Artpark Bridges groups including the Parkinson's and People Inc communities. This ongoing program of classes  focuses on vocalizing skills and communal art-making with a theme of universal humanity.

"For me it is an artistic exchange but foremost a human experience. I cannot describe in words how this collaboration with the Artpark Bridges community inspires me, touches me, and opens my heart." Muriel Louveau, Artpark Bridges Sound Moves Me Artist-in-Residence.

These recorded pieces have been developed with their students during "Our Garden " vocal workshop Poem "'Lily" written and read by Nancy (People Inc), "Nature" by Ed (PD group), "Fragile Beauty" by Nancy and Cynthia, "Garden of Love" by Cammie (People Inc).

Flower Duet · Leo Delibes · Conducted by Philip Milman
Creative Commons Attribution 3.0 Unported  CC BY 3.0

Mia Funk is an artist, interviewer and founder of The Creative Process & One Planet Podcast (Conversations about Climate Change & Environmental Solutions).