Zadi Diaz, a member of Transatlantic Network 2020, recently attended Wanted Now a participative workshop to which we invited forty young leaders from Europe and North America to experience and reflect collectively on the notion of cultural rights.

Last month I was invited to participate in a cultural leadership workshop taking place in Paris called Wanted Now.

A group of young thought-leaders from across the UK and the US would meet to tackle the issue of cultural democracy. These were to be discussions that we would absorb, take back with us and apply them to the work that we each do individually.

I work in online media, creating videos and web shows that speak to our connected culture; media that enables us to participate and interact through social networks and innovative technologies. So I was extremely excited to talk to others from outside of the US about how something like cultural democracy could inform my work online and my work in a place like Los Angeles, which many still consider the entertainment capital of the world.

How can I use the media that I create to tackle the complex cultural and social issues that we are all faced with today? And more importantly for me, how can I make that entertaining?

Part of the answer came to me not in the heart of Paris, but in the north-eastern suburbs of the city, in a place called Bobigny.

On an overcast Thursday morning our group took a subway ride to Canal 93, a concert hall and cultural complex which caters to the development of local talent. There, we would spend the day with poets, scholars and musicians.

After hearing talented slam poets share their stories in their native tongue, we went into a hands-on workshop where two very friendly music instructors made us grab some instruments – drums, maracas, keyboards – and just start playing.

People began banging away, smiles and laughter followed as beats were missed and improvised, and suddenly a very distant memory came back to me – grade school.

I realized that the last time I played around with instruments in a large group setting, for no other reason than to have fun, was when I was around ten. The teacher would hand out cowbells, wooden sticks and tambourines and we would be free to make whatever noise we wanted… and at some point, miraculously, we would end up making music together.

Somehow that sense of collective play and exploration got lost along the way.

As our time ended and we exited the studio with beet-red palms, many of us commented on how much fun the session was. I thought it was an essential puzzle piece to hold on to.

Hearing intelligent talks from amazingly intelligent minds had been absolutely incredible, but it got instantly trumped by an international motley crew banging their hearts out on a set of drums in Bobigny.

Wanted Now was part of the British Council programmes Transatlantic Network 2020 and Cultural Leadership International.

Zadi is an award-winning new media producer, director and host. She is also co-founder of Smashface Productions, a production company focused on developing original programming for the web, bridging new and traditional media and building and cultivating online communities through new technologies. Though producing content for the Internet is Zadi’s main focus, she also speaks on panels and teaches people around the world about social media and media literacy. Her work has been highlighted in the New York Times, Forbes, CBS Evening News, MTV, The Associated Press, The Guardian and many other national publications.