In 2012, theater-maker Evan Weissman founded Warm Cookies of the Revolution, a civic health club in Denver, CO. What exactly is a civic health club? Warm Cookies’ own description can’t be beat: “Well, you go to a gym to exercise your physical health, a religious institution to exercise your spiritual health, and a therapist to exercise your mental health. Warm Cookies of the Revolution is where you go to exercise your Civic Health.”

Since Warm Cookies’ founding, Evan and his team have found evermore inventive and entertaining ways to introduce citizens —particularly those who are not traditionally decision-makers, such as young people, recent immigrants and those with fewer resources — to the many ways in which they can participate in and contribute to the civic planning that shapes their communities. Through over 150 unique programs and a jam-packed schedule of ongoing activities, Warm Cookies of the Revolution has convinced thousands of Denver residents to raise their voice on civic issues from neighborhood development to the use of tax dollars and the needs of aging populations. All along the way, they have also lived up to their name by treating their community to mountains of cookies and oceans of milk.

Evan’s work has earned him national and statewide recognition. Evan was selected as a 2019 Roddenberry Fellow for innovative activism as well as a 2019 Livingston Fellow from Bonfils-Stanton Foundation. He was awarded the 2019 Colorado Governor’s Award for Creative Leadership and the 2018 Parr Widener Civic Leadership Award from the Denver Foundation. Evan was Denver Commissioner for Cultural Affairs in 2017 and Creative in Residence at the Denver Art Museum in 2015.

In this interview with Pier Carlo Talenti, Evan reveals how the ethos that first guided him as a theater artist led him to become a community leader who has figured out how to make civic engagement as fun as it is essential.

https://www.warmcookiesoftherevolution.org/

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