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As part of our Three Things series, Michigan Radio’s Morning Edition host Christina Shockley speaks with Evan Chambers about what the people of Michigan can do to help the state. Chambers is a professor of Composition at the University of Michigan.

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His first idea is for everyone to “to find where our drinking water comes from and visit it.” He recommends that we “go find the headwaters we live by, or go visit the stream near our house, and walk, wade in the water, go kayaking. Just go walk beside it, I think we’ll come, we’re bound to fall in love.” Evan describes the way water is always a part of our lives and a part of us. “…We can come to see that the river is actually everywhere. It’s in the streets, in the gutters and the sewers. It’s literally flowing through our veins. We’ll learn actually that we’re utterly dependent on it for our lives.”

But it might not be enough to just visit the water. Chambers sees a need to change it for the better. “So, every single person in the state can immediately improve the health of our waters by limiting our use of home toxics, or not fertilizing our lawns. If you live in an apartment complex, just talk to the management about not applying that fertilizer or that insecticide and we can make an immediate difference in the quality of our own health and the health of our environment.”

Chambers is a composer who believes in “keeping art local” in the same way people are coming to think about food. He says, “It should be grown as close to our homes as possible. That it should be made by people we know, and that it should taste like our soil somehow. Art’s that made near our communities is part of our communities.” Chambers points out that Michigan has a lot of regional arts organizations and an unusually high number of orchestras around the state.

He sees these as Michigan strengths that we need to protect. “We have to find a way to sustain them, and that means participating somehow. Instead of renting a video, go see a live concert. Or join a civic band, or your local civic theater company…we can all make art ourselves.”

Lastly, for his third suggestion Chambers wants us to think differently about what it means to live in a vibrant state. He sees a need to “come up with a new metaphor to understand our relationships to each other. Maybe we could replace competition with collaboration or cooperation…We competed ourselves into this recession and we might need to something else to get out.”

Chambers thinks that the arts are an excellent way to redefine human relationships to each other, and in a way that will benefit the entire state. He describes the arts as a model for using cooperation to create meaning in local communities. “We might look around and not see enemies and competitors, but instead see neighbors and collaborators, and friends – and not winners and losers. So, we could come to see our participation in the life of the state as a creative and collective endeavor instead.”