Peace Book Club

The Singing Tree Project

In 1999, a young girl asked, “What if the whole world made a painting together?”

That question launched The Singing Tree project which to date has involved 21,000 people from 52 countries creating a forest of over 100 Singing Tree murals. The artist and founder of this project is Laurie Marshall, who has been empowering youth and adults through creative collaboration for 35 years. Laurie says, “Meredith Miller’s question and vision of the world creating together answered a deep longing I had all my life for a peaceful world.”

Laurie founded the Unity Through Creativity Foundation as a way to bring people together and heal communities through a shared artistic creation, working under a vision to use the arts, inspired by the collaboration and creativity found in Nature in order to envision a positive future and spark innovative actions.

After making The Singing Tree of Climate Solutions with 350 students at Ukiah High F School (California), one of the students said, Free “If we can make this amazing painting together in 12 days, I have more confidence that we can deal with the challenge of climate change.”

Other singing trees were created at the Sarajevo Peace Conference to create healing between families who had killed each other in the civil war, at Parkland, Florida, after the massacre at Margery Stoneman Douglas High School, in Northern California to help families who had suffered wild fires, and in Marin County, CA, after the election of 2016. The Singing Tree process is a collective way for feelings to be expressed and stories to be shared - a necessary step in healing and making way for a positive future. The whole world is invited. If you are interested in bringing a Singing Tree to your community or to become a Singing Tree facilitator, contact: Laurie@UnityThroughCreativity.org, 415-612-0401.

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… people creating a more peaceful world

The Singing Trees

A story from a book for children gave Laurie the seed of the idea for her mural project. This is the story:

“During a long and terrible night in the middle of World War I, soldiers crawled for hours on their bellies to escape the enemy. Everything in their path had been destroyed by the shells, bullets, and violence of war. They didn’t come across any evidence of life - not a house, person, squirrel, bird, tree, or bush.

When the dawn came, they saw that one tree was still alive. Birds from hundreds of miles away who don’t normally come together, were in the tree singing.”

Laurie says, “I see our planet as Peace of Wild Thingsthe Singing Tree of our solar system.”

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