Q&A with Golnoush Pak
California 100 is working with Golnoush Pak, a cartoonist and illustrator with a BFA from UC Santa Cruz and a pending MFA at the California College of the Arts, to help expand our creative presence and youth engagement work.
Nina Parker, our Commission and Youth Engagement Coordinator, has been working closely with Golnoush, and asked a series of questions, to provide deeper insights into Golnoush’s work.
Nina: Were you familiar with futures design or strategic foresight before working with us? If not, is there anything that you enjoy about it or that has made an impact on you?
Golnoush: I don’t think that specifically concepts of future transformation and future envisioning were topics that I engaged in directly. But I would say that as an environmental studies major during my undergrad, and being involved with my community, the concept of future envisioning has always been a big part of conversation, and the ways that I look and think about the future. Also as a cartoonist, and someone who creates a lot of stories, I frequently think about creating stories where the environment, the setting, always presents a future in which I would see myself living along with others in a way that is sustainable and just for everyone.
Nina: Why did you choose to take on this partnership?
Golnoush: I would say at first I looked through the California 100 website and read about the work that y’all do, I didn’t really know about the partnership until a conversation between Karthick and me. I was very inspired by the level of energy and momentum that I felt from the project. About creating a future that addresses all the different areas that California is either struggling with at the moment, or is gonna be a point of attention in the future for the state. And that it [the partnership] focused on youth engagement, involvement, and empowerment, which is something I am very passionate about. So it felt like it was really meeting a lot of the areas that I always want to be engaged in.
Nina: I didn’t know you were interested in youth work!
Golnoush: I do like youth work, but a lot of it is through art, storytelling, and engagement in interdisciplinary ways. I have a strong passion for bringing more youth voices to the table because we have enough, you know, people reaching retirement that are making choices for our generation and future generations.
Nina: How do you hope to continue to work with young people in the future? Is that a goal of yours?
Golnoush: Yeah, the thesis I’m doing for my Masters, and a lot of the stories I work on are tailored towards middle grade and young adults. That is where I see myself engaging indefinitely. And, in a lot of what is going on in my home country of Iran, I think about how the children are being impacted. So I think a lot about ways, again, that use art or art therapy to engage with those environments.
Nina: Can you tell us about what you’ve done this Fall with California 100?
Golnoush: I think we’re still fairly early on, and that momentum is going to grow very quickly, but so far I’ve worked on a comic that was a call to action for the Youth Summit coming up. I’ve organized and helped with a few creative workshop sessions that ranged from crafty projects, where the fellows are encouraged to think about the future through a creative lens that is low stakes, all the way to having conversations about their manifestos and ideas they have.
Going forward, I will be working on more comics as well as helping with the Summit that is coming up, and creating posters and interactive murals that would basically be a visual for the work the fellows are doing.
Nina: Would you be willing to expand on one of the workshops that you’ve done so far? And what led you to creating that workshop?
Golnoush: I am really interested in how comics and storytelling can be used in different avenues to help us think about various topics. I was inspired by the work of Linda Barry who’s a cartoonist in the US who does a lot of work on how comics can be used as a way to tap into, not only your creative self, but also to tap into your self consciousness.
I’m inspired by one of my professors, Nicole Georges. Nicole had a couple of classes with us where we would work on comic booklets that follow a series of prompts that range from character development to using comics as a form of grieving loved ones who have passed away. She has a really amazing depth of skills and tools and resources. Inspired by all of those, I thought of holding a workshop where we have our fellows go through a similar process. They create this booklet where they’re drawing and writing and thinking about the future, and really putting themselves in there. I know the work they’re doing [the Futures Fellows] at the moment involves a lot of reading and research and heavy academic work.
So, how can we just step away from that for a moment to think about everything in a different perspective and get our hands dirty with pen and paper? I had a series of prompts that went across multiple pages, and during this workshop I would share these prompts that were timed, and I would sketch my own example while students would do the same. By the end of the workshop we had this booklet comic of a series of illustrations and writings of what the fellows see in the future. It was really exciting to have them share and say that in ways it was therapeutic, and helped them think more about not only what the future will look like for future generations, but also how they see themselves in that future.
Nina: In what ways are you bringing additional creative elements to the Futures Fellowship program?
Golnoush: I’d say that definitely it depends on which area I’m working. For example, for workshops, a key part for me is to get us thinking using all our different senses, and thinking about all these topics that can be really heavy at times. How can we channel some creative views into that in order to help us get the most out of what we’re working on? Thinking about how so much of what we intake day-to-day is from visual information, and how much visuals as well as things we touch and hear play a big role into our viewpoint and how we retain information. So much of it is about not only having hope, but a feeling like we have a sense of power and agency to make change for the future.
Nina: Why do you think it’s important to include a creative element to these manifestos?
Golnoush: I think [creative elements are] important when we’re talking about anything that involves our imaginations and future thinking. Not only visual elements, but anything that would involve our senses, would further help us connect to this future that we’re envisioning. In that sense, I feel like creative work is closely connected to the work that we’re doing. It is also a way for us to engage as a community and be inclusive in the work that we’re doing. In that way we create these art pieces, these illustrations, and these stories that really involve everyone and help us envision a future where everyone gets to have a say.
Nina: I didn’t know you were interested in youth work!
Golnoush: I do like youth work, but a lot of it is through art, storytelling, and engagement in interdisciplinary ways. I have a strong passion for bringing more youth voices to the table because we have enough, you know, people reaching retirement that are making choices for our generation and future generations.
Nina: How do you hope to continue to work with young people in the future? Is that a goal of yours?
Golnoush: Yeah, the thesis I’m doing for my Masters, and a lot of the stories I work on are tailored towards middle grade and young adults. That is where I see myself engaging indefinitely. And, in a lot of what is going on in my home country of Iran, I think about how the children are being impacted. So I think a lot about ways, again, that use art or art therapy to engage with those environments.
Nina: Can you tell us about what you’ve done this Fall with CA100?
Golnoush: I think we’re still fairly early on, and that momentum is going to grow very quickly, but so far I’ve worked on a comic that was a call to action for the Youth Summit coming up. I’ve organized and helped with a few creative workshop sessions that ranged from crafty projects, where the fellows are encouraged to think about the future through a creative lens that is low stakes, all the way to having conversations about their manifestos and ideas they have.
Going forward, I will be working on more comics as well as helping with the Summit that is coming up, and creating posters and interactive murals that would basically be a visual for the work the fellows are doing.
Nina: Through this process what have you learned about young people and their visions for California?
Golnoush: One of the main reasons why I love working with youth would be seeing that sense of drive, energy, and passion to create that future [they envision]. It was especially important when so many of my classes involved really difficult conversations where professors would share about how the challenges of what the future will look like affects students, affects professors, and affects the department.
It’s really easy to give up and to just let the negativity take over – which is how the current system continues to go as it does. What I’ve learned is to continue to look for community and like-minded people, and to get energy and ideas from them and not to forget the people that are struggling. It’s important to find ways to bring them in, and to do that is to have manifestos and a list of statements that say, “hey, it’s not just conversations we’re having, here’s the ideas, guidelines, actions that we can do in order to get there.” I think that’s a really important way for people who are really struggling to come back engaged and have that drive for creating a better future.
Nina: Can you share some creative input the students have already contributed?
Golnoush: First off, I’ve been so blown away by the level of ideas, suggestions, and feedback that the fellows have. Coming in as a freelance creator, the goal might be ‘I’ll just create these pieces and we’ll move on’. I’m so glad that instead of that, I engage with the fellows. It might take longer, and it might become complicated, but I think at the end it’s a lot more powerful and important because it engagees people’s ideas, suggestions, and views. One of the things I really loved was Arlene’s conversation about the 8 different types of health, and she just blew my mind about all of the different ways that we need to engage and discuss health and tech and innovation. If i hadn’t had that conversation with her, the poster that I would have created would probably look very different, and not as closely aligned with her manifesto.
I really loved the conversation that the Conservation & Sustainability team had on the connection between plants, animals, and landscape. One of them had an idea of showing the different layers of the earth, but drawing it in a way that would go through each of our manifestos – I was like “that’s so wild and crazy, idk if i can do that, but we’ll get there”
The other really fun idea is for the K-12 Education team. They were thinking about the idea of a map of a school, and that different topics, like transportation, having elements of school in those. So for example having a lunch box or a lunch menu for the discussion around the cafeteria, or something with a school bus for transportation.
Nina: What are your future plans for continuing to add creative elements to the program or your partnership with CA 100 in general?
Golnoush: I’m super excited, I feel like we’re just getting started. I feel like everything I’m working on is focused on adding creative elements. I’m really excited to continue drafting the posters and having the fellows continuously engaged in that. Also presenting our fellows with fun engaging colors through their highlights, and creating booklets that would include the fellows highlights as well as the manifestos, and something physical that they can take with them. And, we haven’t discussed this as much yet, I’m really excited about the culminating work of California 100 and all the different creative ways that I can hopefully contribute to that.
