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Who's in the Video
Gillian Caldwell is the Executive Director of WITNESS, an international human rights organization that provides training and support to local groups to use video in their human rights advocacy capaigns.[…]

Growing up in SoHo.

Question: Who are you?

Transcript:I was born and raised in New York City.I was born to a scientist and someone who is essentially an artist at heart. So I think from the get go, you know, competing but arguably complementary dimensions to me in my . . . in my development. I spent a lot of time as a young girl in Soho. My parents separated when we were six, and we moved to Soho. And in fact we had a loft in the back of the gallery where my mother was starting things up in Soho in 1979 . . . or ‘72 I guess it was. So I had exposure early on to a lot of people working in visual arts, a very eclectic community. There was a room off the side of our kitchen where people would be staying and taking care of us in exchange for free rent essentially in Soho in those days. So everybody from, you know, a gay French chef to a Trinidadian model, to a cartoonist – I mean a very broad range of people. And then also at the same time I was growing up in Soho well before most . . . most families were living there. I mean it was a lot of abandoned factories. I was spending a lot of time in Dutchess County New York with my father who loved the countryside, who was born and raised in Vermont. So you know a strange combination of a loft life in Soho and working on a farm in Dutchess County; and a lot of exposure through the schools that I went to to very diverse communities. Bank Street College of Education where I went through sixth grade was really a very diverse environment, both economically and racially. And so I think it was a real gift to grow up here.

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