For this episode, we have invited the creative alumna of the European Master in Human Rights and Democratisation who conceived the jingle for the podcasts The Road Less Traveled: Laura María Calderón Cuevas.

Laura grew up in a family who enjoyed the arts and encouraged her passion for music and dance. She started being aware very young of the inequalities in Colombia. She understood the power of singing and bringing people together, while working in New York at the UN during the day and playing in a band at night. She realised that music could be a catalyst for change and that she could link her art to her activism.

For her master thesis, she based herself on the multicultural system of human rights and the concept of the right to knowledge as conceived by Professor Boaventura de Sousa Santos. Music transforms our reality. How do we put into practice our human rights knowledge? How do we transform that knowledge and integrate the arts?

Since she graduated, she has been doing music workshops in the refugee camp near Thessaloniki. She also started a new project: composing lullabies with migrant mothers on an individual basis. In most of those songs, the mothers talk about their wishes for their children and their wishes for a better life. What brings her joy in her work: the smiles of people at the end of the workshops. During the workshops, everyone feels equal and is at the same level of vulnerability.