Humanism Now
Welcome to Humanism Now, the weekly podcast from Humanise Live. Tune in for the latest news, insightful worldwide guest interviews, and lively discussions on the most pressing questions of our time — all from a naturalistic, empathetic, and rationalist world view that marks out humanism. Join us as we explore ethical dilemmas, dissect current events, and engage in thoughtful conversations that matter.
Humanism Now
36. JC Candanedo on Art as Activism for Solidarity, Identity and Representation
"Inclusion isn’t about ticking boxes. It’s about creating a space where people feel safe enough to stay." - JC Candanedo
Artist, activist, and humanist JC Candanedo shares his journey from a Catholic school in Panama to the art studios of London. His work weaves together identity, displacement, and community action, exploring how creativity can challenge injustice and build inclusive, compassionate societies.
In this epsiode, JC reflects on growing up atheist in a deeply religious culture, navigating migration and marginalisation, and why the arts are one of the most powerful tools we have for social transformation. JC shares the challenges of creating welcoming spaces within the humanist community, and how diversity and solidarity must be more than just aspirations—they must be action.
Key Topics Covered
- How JC’s atheist upbringing in Catholic Panama shaped his identity and activism
- Art as language: using creativity to open space for difficult but vital conversations
- Why Latin American and Arab/North African diasporas are "invisibilized" in UK systems
- The work of the Noria Collective in building solidarity among Global Majority communities
- How JC discovered humanism later in life—and how it changed his view of religion
- Practical advice for humanist groups on inclusion, outreach, and community care
Follow JC
- 🔗 JC’s Work: jccandanedo.com
- 🔗 Noria Collective: wearenoria.com / 📷 @we.are.noria
- 🔗 Axis: axisweb.org
- 📣 Campaign: banconversiontherapy.com
- 📷 Instagram: @jccandanedo
- 💼 LinkedIn: jccandanedo
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Welcome to the Humanism Now podcast. I'm your host, James Hodgson. JC Candanedo is a Catalan Panamanian multidisciplinary artist and photographer based in London. His work blends visual art, social commentary and community action, shining a light on identity, migration and social transformation. JC's projects are not just an expression of creativity, but bold acts of activism rooted in solidarity with those navigating displacement and injustice. JC is the co-founder of the Noria Collective, a collective of socially engaged creatives committed to fostering a culture of inclusion and uplifting voices of people from the global majority living in a diaspora, and a former chair of the Central London Humanists. I'm delighted that JC joins us today to share his vision for a more compassionate, inclusive world grounded in compassion and beauty.
James Hodgson:JC Candanedo , thank you so much for joining us on Humanism Now. JC Candanedo , Thank you so much for having me. We've known each other for many years. You were actually one of the people who helped introduce me to the Central London Humanist Group and were very welcoming in doing so. But for our listeners who are new to your work, could you tell us a little bit about your background and your personal journey, particularly growing up between Catalonia and Panama, and how your upbringing shaped both your creative and your ethical worldview?
JC Candanedo:Yeah, absolutely, and thank you so much for saying that those beautiful words. I was born in Panama in the 70s to a Catalan family. My family emigrated from Catalonia after World War II and they established themselves first via Brazil and then into Panama, Panama being and still is, a very Catholic country. Latin America is one of the Catholic strongholds these days and I think in other parts of the world probably the Philippines is one of those big strongholds for Catholicism. So I grew up in a very religious society, even though my family wasn't particularly religious and we were brought up in my home as atheists. My grandfather, after he had to probably live through Spanish Civil War and World War II and having been displaced and crossing the Atlantic and landing in foreign lands, I think he started having questions about life and the meaning of life and our purpose, and he didn't find the answer to those questions in the Bible or in other religious people or in a church. And when he asked around and had conversations with priests and other religious people and he couldn't answer those questions, he separated himself from religion. So when I was born, this is the family that I was born into, an atheist family. But being an atheist in such a religious environment where traditions, society in general, protocols, ways of speaking are all related to religion. It's really difficult to have a secular existence, so you have to accommodate yourself to how society functions, and that was basically how my childhood was. I was baptized. Just because you had to baptize your children.
JC Candanedo:I went to a Catholic school for 13 years, so in order to graduate and have my diploma from that school, I had to have done the first communion and had to have done the confirmation, because if I didn't do all those things, I wouldn't be able to graduate. So we just did what other people did. Whenever someone got married, you had to get married in church. Whenever there was an event, there was a prayer to open the event, or at school, at the beginning of the week you had to pray, and at the end of the week you had to pray. And we had religious education at school, which basically in my school meant Catholic education. So you had to pray at the beginning of the class. And being atheist at home meant that we understood as children that all these things were superstitions and were rituals of people who believed in these things. But we had to do them anyways and we had to learn the hymns and learn the prayers and perform them and go through all these different protocols. Even when we had people desisting family, we had to have funerals performed at church. Whenever someone got married, we had to go through the whole church marriage thing as well, even if we didn't believe in those things.
JC Candanedo:So that was the way that I was brought up and in my early twenties I left Panama, being used to living in such a religious environment, and I moved to Catalonia and when I guess you would have the same experience if you came from a secular country into a religious country. My experience was coming from a very religious country into a very secular society in which, all of the sudden, religion didn't play any role in my life. So people around me didn't practice, we didn't have prayer. When we had events we didn't have to go to church. People would get married secularly.
JC Candanedo:So for 14 years of my life that was like a new life, it was a secular life. I felt that probably at the time because I was so young, I couldn't really put a name to that experience, but I could definitely tell that religious didn't play that role in my life until I moved to the UK. When I moved to the UK 12 years ago. All of a sudden, religion is in my face this time in a different way because, yes, even though there is this massive influence of Christianity in the UK due to historical factors, there's also so many other religions that coexist and you see religious symbols and religious temples and religious practices that coexist with you all the time, which I had gotten unaccustomed to while living in Catalonia for so long. So it has taken me all this time to get accustomed to them again in a different way, probably in a more diverse way than the one I had when I was growing up in Panama.
James Hodgson:That's really interesting the difference of those experiences in the three different cultures. It may well be surprising for people to hear that, actually, returning to the UK, you felt that the religion was more prominent in society than elsewhere in Europe, particularly in Catalonia. So what would you say are the differences in the role in which religion plays in the culture, the difference between, say, latin America versus a country like the UK?
JC Candanedo:I think it's also a matter of perception for people in Latin America. As I said before, latin America is one of those Catholic strongholds perception for people in Latin America. As I said before, latin America is one of those Catholic strongholds, or has been historically since the conquest in the 15th century. And the way that Catholicism has embedded itself in the roots of the identities of people in Latin America it's by separating themselves from other groups, other Christian groups, even within Christianity. So I have this really funny experience that happened to me around seven or eight years ago when two people from Panama came to visit me here in the UK and we were in a group of people having a conversation and religion came into the conversation and I turned around to tell the other person who was from here that my two friends from Panama, they were Christians. And my friends turned around to tell the other person who was from here that my two friends from Panama, they were Christians. And my friends turned around to me and corrected me and they said, no, we're not Christians, we're Catholic. So this is the campaign that Catholicism has had in Latin America separating themselves from all the other Christian groups to make them feel that Catholicism is actually the true religion and anything that doesn't feel that Catholicism is actually the true religion and anything that doesn't sound like Catholicism, it's wrong. I think in the 90s or the early noughties, in which other Christian groups have gotten more influence and, as we know, in the United States, the Evangelical is one of those Christian groups that has gotten really strong. He has a lot of influence in Latin America as well. I think Catholicism has lost a little bit of that edge, let's say in Latin America, of that influence, and now it's all these competing groups within Christianity that are competing to become the majority in the continent, and I think today only the Philippines remains as one of those really Catholic-identifying countries in the world. Panama itself, in its constitution, provides freedom of religion to anyone who lives in Panama, but at the same time it favors Catholicism as the religion that people should follow and we should follow Christian values. That is something that is written in the Constitution in Panama.
JC Candanedo:My experience, as I said, growing up in Panama and going to this school, which was a Catholic school, was that people from other religions who came in school, they were just kept aside. They were made come to the prayers or to church when we had mass, but they were just kept in a corner. They just sat in a corner and didn't have to participate. We didn't speak about them. We didn't speak about their religions, because why? This is the important religion. So that's the experience in Panama. The experience in the UK is that something that I didn't experience in Panama. Even though the influence is so big and the Vatican ambassador in Panama and the bishop in Panama are really respected figures in Panamanian society, I don't think people consider them as members of the political establishment, whereas in the UK, as we know, we have this massive influence of the Anglican Church, the Church of England, in the House of Lords. So they are part of shaping the political country and that might be the comparison between the two countries.
James Hodgson:Yeah, I think it's really interesting when you're raised and brought up in a culture you perhaps don't realize where these influences are. Telling that, you mentioned that you really learned more about the role of Panama once you moved away and I think it's quite eye-opening, as someone who's always lived in the UK, to also hear about how it is perceived by someone who's arrived later in life and had those formative experiences elsewhere. But in terms of influencing culture and society, I know you do great work in trying to have a positive influence through your artistic career. So what, to you, is the purpose of art?
JC Candanedo:It's a very good question as trying to define what art means, right. But first of all, I would like to speak about the arts in general and not just about art. I think when people hear the word art, they automatically think about visual art, where I like to talk about the arts in general, including all different disciplines. The arts, they're a language, and they're a really powerful language, because I feel like it's a very inclusive language that we can all understand and interpret in our own ways, and it's very easy to have conversations that are maybe challenging or difficult or heavy to have if we use the words of the languages we speak than if we use the arts. When we use the arts, people engage with those topics in a different way, and that is the reason why, in the work that I do, I like to touch on topics that may not be discussed on a daily basis by the people who experience and engage with the work that I do, but through the arts it becomes a little bit more palatable, if you want to say it that way.
James Hodgson:And how do you hope that people feel or question when they engage with your work?
JC Candanedo:I like people to challenge their assumptions. I want people to have conversations with themselves. When they look at the work that I do, when they learn about the topics that I discuss in my work, I want them to ask themselves questions, ask themselves what is their positioning within the issue that I'm trying to discuss with my work, with my work? Have they influenced the issue that I'm discussing? Are they affected by the issue that I'm discussing? How can they contribute to making this issue better and also challenge those assumptions that sometimes we have, where we don't think that we necessarily influence some of the issues that we see in society today, but actually we might not only influence them but also benefit from them in many ways.
James Hodgson:And I know you work across a variety of mediums in photography, performance and Xmedia. How do you choose the medium of the work, given the message that you want to get across?
JC Candanedo:It depends on the type of work that I'm doing and the type of topic that I'm discussing.
JC Candanedo:I always choose the medium according to what is the message that I'm trying to convey.
JC Candanedo:If I'm working with photography, usually someone who's witnessing something or taking part in an experience of an issue that affects a community that I might belong to or that I may have a relationship with, so I might choose photography for that. If I'm discussing something that, for instance, I have a project that discusses the influence of all the natural resources of the American continent that have created new cultural identities around the world, I bring in those natural resources into the work. And then I work with other types of materials, like cotton and pigments, because those are an intrinsic part of the theme that I'm developing with the work, always trying to combine all that with photography, because that's how my practice started. But I think for me, the materials that I use and the method that I use in creating my work is part of the story that I'm trying to tell. I don't separate the story from the materials, from the technique. For me they're all part of the story that I'm telling, of the storytelling process, if that makes sense.
James Hodgson:Yes, it does. That's very well put and you've spoken. I know a lot of your work is themed around the idea of identity and you've worked a lot in this area of displacement. How do those themes tie in with your more broader humanistic value and outlook on life?
JC Candanedo:I think they are very much part of it, part of my humanist values. Maybe at the time when I started working in the arts, I wasn't aware that I had these values. I discovered myself as a humanist later in life, but I discovered that the values that I had were humanist values all along, and you can see that these values transpired in my work. I think, as a humanist, this idea that this is the only life that we have and we have to make the best out of that life, and that means upholding human rights and all humans with dignity. In my work, I explore issues of identity and migration and displacement. I'm speaking about issues that affect human beings and if we treat humans with respect, if we treat people who have had to the places where they were born or where they live due to forces that are basically life or death, what better way of treating those humans than with compassion and respecting their human rights? And I think that is something that should be embedded in our values as a human as well.
James Hodgson:Yes, and I think increasingly we're seeing challenges, seeing enough compassion and respect for a lot of those groups that you mentioned, seeing enough compassion and respect for a lot of those groups that you mention. And I know your art is very much evocative and there to act on behalf of people and, I guess, considered a form of activism. So do you see art as activism and how do you find the relationship between those two elements of your work today?
JC Candanedo:I definitely agree with what you said about my work being activism, as we call it today.
JC Candanedo:It's like a mix between art and activism. My work is very personal to me and it reflects on my own experiences of having been born to a family of immigrants and then becoming an immigrant myself. I use my work to talk about those experiences and the experiences of other people who go through displacement and migration as well. You don't necessarily have to use your work that way. That's the way I choose to use my work, and I'm saying that because some people, when they think about the arts in general, they might just want to appreciate the beauty of life and express it through art, and that's perfectly fine, but that's not the way in which I choose to create my work. My work very much speaks about the issues that I see happening around me these days, because I truly for people to engage with my work and consider how can we change things to make this world better, and I think that is something that we should all aspire to. So yeah, I do definitely consider my work to be activism.
James Hodgson:And how do you find the relationship between art and activism today, or the effectiveness of those campaigns what are very challenging times?
JC Candanedo:I find that there's now two different opposite movements. There is one movement that is very in favor of using the arts to advocate for social transformation and to make this world better, and some people do it because they feel that it's the right thing to do. Some other people might have to jump in the wagon just because it is something that everyone else is doing, but there is this really strong movement. And then there is a reaction of another part of the art sector that feels that you don't necessarily have to create work that means anything or that has a purpose or they say anything, and you just use the arts to appreciate life beauty.
JC Candanedo:I think those are two very valid perspectives. I think that the things that we're seeing that are happening in the world right now are too heavy, and if you bring that into the work that you do, you're not only experiencing them as a human, but you're also experiencing them in your professional life. So I understand artists who want to keep those two things separate. I can't do that because my work is my life and my life is influenced by everything that is happening around me. So I definitely feel this responsibility to create work that speaks about what's happening around me and the ways in which I think that things can be improved.
James Hodgson:And I know that in recent years you founded the Noria Collective with your co-founder, which is helping more people to connect and collaborate on these types of projects. Can you share the story of what inspired the founding of the Noria Collective and the project's aims?
JC Candanedo:Yes, absolutely yes. As you mentioned, Noria is a collective of socially engaged creatives and the idea that we had when we founded it was to create solidarity and champion the voices of people from the global majority, but specifically for people from North African, Arab and Latin American diasporas. And this idea of founding this collective came from the experiences of myself and the other co-founder, sandhya , because we found that our communities have been invisibilized in the UK for too long. And I say invisibilized because we are not invisible. We are here, we are active participants in society in the UK, but if you look at the national statistics, we don't appear in the statistics.
JC Candanedo:I can't, for instance, tick when I'm filling in the equality monitoring forms that my ethnic background is Latin American, because it doesn't exist. And when the option doesn't exist, it means that the government doesn't have to take any responsibility. For me, I'm just part of a bucket that is called mixed others and then all the decisions that could affect my community. They also are indecivilized, so they don't have to take any actions about them. The minute that they add my cultural and ethical background to those statistics, it means that then the government will have to create the services and put in the funds to be able to cater to my community and my co-founder, sandy.
JC Candanedo:She also found the same for her community as well. So that's what we both have in common. The other thing that we saw that we had in common was that both communities have a lot of shared struggles and shared issues in terms of, you know, living in this post-colonial world and also as immigrants within the UK and being affected by this very aggressive and hostile immigration environment that we're living these days in the UK. So we decided that the best thing that we could do was take action and take matters into our own hands and create this organization that aims to bring these two collectives together, but also try to make other global majority collectives in the UK to make them aware that we have more things in common than the ones that separate us, and that solidarity is key in the times that we're living, and I think it's the only way in which we're going to be able to heal from everything that is going on in the world today.
James Hodgson:I love this theme of finding what those things we have in common to create solidarity and collective action, and I'd love to come back to that. But I was really quite shocked, actually, by what seemingly quite a small example in, when you're filling out census information, that your identity is not represented there, and it seems something which would be a fairly small change to make which would have quite a large impact. Are you comfortable sharing how, the feeling that it evokes when you see that lack of representation, and what it might mean to you personally on a more of a larger group scale, if just those small changes to acknowledge different identities were incorporated into society?
JC Candanedo:acknowledge different identities were incorporated into society. Yeah, absolutely. This could take a whole podcast to explain how that feels and to work around why these statistics are put the way that they are put. But just to give you an example of how that experience looks like for someone who's from Latin America, when you come to the UK and you're faced with that question what is your ethnic background? And you have all these options that include very specific groups and mixes white with black, caribbean or non-white European with black African and these are very specific ethnic backgrounds and they're put together with other, rather bigger groups that are not ethnical backgrounds. They're put with nationalities like are you Indian, are you Pakistani, are you Bangladeshi? And this is the same question and I'm not finding myself, but I'm finding very specific groups that also have no relationship between themselves. Sometimes we're told well, you're a Latin American, that's not necessarily an ethnic background, it's more of a Latin American. That's not necessarily an ethnic background, it's more of a cultural background. But when you see the ethnic questions, they're mixing ethnic backgrounds with nationality. So it depends on what the politics at the moment might be or what the use for that data the government wants to do. But in the end.
JC Candanedo:The experience is that you feel that you are not welcome, that you don't belong in this society. You know that. You live here and you participate in society in so many different ways. I mean, the typical example that everyone says is that you pay your taxes, so you have taxation without representation. But there's so many other ways in which you contribute to society. Just by the work that you do, by the services that you pay for, by contributing to the economy directly or indirectly, you are part of the society. But you're not counted as part of the society. If, on top of that, you have a passport that doesn't allow you to participate in politics you can't vote in the general elections then you feel double not welcome.
JC Candanedo:If you can say that. So yeah, you look around yourself, I'm not the only one here. If I were the only Latin American in the village, I could say okay, so the system is not prepared to welcome people like me because I'm the only one. But then you see so many other Latin Americans who live in the UK. You read the statistics, which I don't know how they calculate, but we are considered one of the fastest growing groups in the UK at the moment. I think the last time I read the figures we were a quarter of a million only in London. But then you're not shown in where it matters, in those statistics that they use in the census, where they actually create all these provisions to cater to all these different communities. So that really affects your sense of who you are and where you belong.
James Hodgson:Yeah, quite naturally it would do so, and thank you for sharing all of that. It's quite shocking when you hear it laid out like that. To not have that representation or acknowledgement in society, to pay your taxes but to not be able to vote seems unfair in and of itself and I love that the noria group is bringing together these disparate voices, but also allies and those who want to support in other ways to create, use creativity and art, build community and, I guess, have this collective action. So how do you use the collective action in your creative process when you're working on projects with the Noria Collective?
JC Candanedo:So, Noria Collective, our main modus operandi is through the arts. We use the arts to create spaces with people from the global majority and, as I said, particularly Latin Americans and people from North African and Arab descent. This is where they can feel included, where you can feel safe to just be yourself and have conversations about your experiences of belonging to these communities with people around you without feeling that you're going to be repressed. So what we do is that we create programs. We're currently running a program that started last week, May 29, and it's running across the whole of the year, until the end of 2025, where we use different art disciplines to have conversations around issues that affect us externally issues of racism, colorism, all sorts of discrimination but also issues that affect us internally, like our feelings of belonging and identity and also trying to create that solidarity, as I said before, between all these different diasporic groups.
JC Candanedo:So we do this through the arts and we also offer to run programs for other organizations. So we do creative production and consultancy services as well to help organizations become more inclusive of people from the global majority.
James Hodgson:And if somebody wanted to get involved, either as an artist or a cooperating organization, what's the best way to reach out to Noria?
JC Candanedo:On our website, Noria, or you can reach out to us on social media Instagram Noria on Instagram and the same for LinkedIn.
James Hodgson:And we'll include all of the links in the show notes there. I'm interested, given your work with Noria and representation more generally, how do you see diversity, inclusion and representation amongst humanist groups?
JC Candanedo:I think one of the biggest challenges for humanist groups in the UK and I'm going to speak of the UK because that's the experience that I have is in including everyone who considers themselves, or who might consider themselves to be a humanist. I think that naturally these humanist groups have formed around people who are like-minded and who belong to certain communities and they have become niches of those communities. That means that other people who might not necessarily know that they're humanists but have some shared values with humanism, and then they discover humanism. They come to the events and the activities that are run by humanist groups. They don't see themselves represented in those groups because no one in the group looks like them or has had the upbringing that they have had or do not have the same age, and that is a challenge because then the retention of those new I don't want to call them members of humanism because it's not that humanism is an organized thing but they're not going to feel included in these groups because they don't see anyone who they can relate to, and that is a big challenge.
JC Candanedo:I think that is the work that humanist groups have to work on.
JC Candanedo:They have to put the effort in trying to make these spaces welcoming for people from all walks of life, because, in the end, being a humanist just means that you have shared values with other people who think that, as we said before, that this is the only life that we have, that you should uphold human rights and that you should treat all species that live in the planet with respect and dignity. And there's a lot of people who come from all over the world that share these values and from all different backgrounds. The real work that we have to do is trying to bring all those people together and make them feel that, yes, this space is for you, you're welcome here, but also you can come and you can sit at this table with us, but we are going to listen to you and your voice is going to be heard and valued and you're going to be able to contribute to these groups, and I feel like, at the moment, some groups are not as open and as welcoming as they should be.
James Hodgson:Yes, I agree and I think that's really helpful advice. Given your experiences of creating these communities, building diverse communities, do you have any practical advice or tips in terms of what we can do to improve that both visibility, but also creating more of that welcoming structure or welcoming appearance for potential new members as well, associates or those who want to be actively involved?
JC Candanedo:Well, you have to reach out to people. You have to speak the language that people speak. If I am 50 now and the things that affect me, the issues that I feel connected to in society, are only related to my age group, then I'm only going to be speaking to my age group. If I only go out and speak to Latin Americans, then those are the issues and the groups and the conversations that I'm going to create. I think that we have to open our minds and make the effort to go and reach out to those other people who don't share the same backgrounds as we do but might be like-minded and care about. We often had these conversations on, for instance, the age gap. How can we reach out to younger people? What are the things that we care for at 50 that someone at 21 doesn't care for because they haven't lived that long to be able to understand them? But equally, what are the issues that they do care for that us, from our perspective in the fifth decade, cannot see because our moments are completely different, and that also applies to people from different economical and social backgrounds how us living in a very comfortable position in society can reach out to people who might not be as comfortable, or who might consider themselves to be from a working class background, for instance. How can we make them feel included and tell them yes, you can come here and we can listen to you and you're going to be valued and you're going to be able to contribute and shape this organization the same way that all of us are shaping it? So it is a challenge, because everyone tries always to pull towards their own needs, but we need to find, as we were saying before, that solidarity and the commonalities that we all have.
JC Candanedo:For the older generations, those people who are very fortunate to have known for a long time that they share these values and these values are called humanism, or they consider them before and who have been doing this for a long time, how can we still make them feel welcome and they're important and not get rid of them or consider them obsolete, because they also have a right to participate in the group? And it's a challenge, but it's the work we have to do, and I think it's difficult work, the same way that being secular is difficult work. You have to constantly give your life meaning yourself, without relying on what you know, superstition or sacred books, though you have to constantly self-assess and ask yourself am I being being a good person? Am I being a good human being? Does my life make sense? How can I give meaning to this life? It is hard work the same way, so we should be used to putting in the work.
James Hodgson:Yeah, that's fascinating because I guess you're right about that.
James Hodgson:I agree with everything you said there, but particularly that last part about the challenge of being secular but actually can lead us to be a bit more introspective as well, because we're constantly questioning our own actions and beliefs and thoughts and maybe we need to get out of that headspace a bit and try to meet people where they're at if we want to encourage more people to associate and identify with what we think are very positive values.
James Hodgson:So, yes, I think there is a lot of work to be done and I know that through your work what you did with London Humanist Group and, I know, with everything that you're doing now I think you're helping to spread that message into new sectors. Keep up all that fantastic work as well, and I know that everything that you do you bring a great deal of passion and it clearly is very personally meaningful for you, and I wondered if you had any advice for anyone listening who perhaps feels that same sense of passion but is struggling to find a way to really dedicate their time or put that into a creative or an active process in the same way, which you've done. What's your advice to someone who wants to get started in the things which they feel passionate about, even though it can be quite scary to make that jump.
JC Candanedo:Probably the first thing that I would say is that don't try to become someone who you're not, and try to be someone else. If you see other people who are doing great things for the world, don't try to be them, because their journey is completely different to yours. I wasn't born with this passion for social change, and I think I didn't even discover it in myself later in life. I didn't consider myself a humanist until maybe eight years ago, before I knew I was an atheist. All the people told me, especially when I lived in Panama oh, you're an atheist, but I didn't live my life that way until I was much older, and I think it was the moment in my life when that needed to happen.
JC Candanedo:I had experiences of having grown up in a family of immigrants in Latin America, but Europeans, especially white Europeans in Latin America, are always treated with respect and with open doors, and that wasn't the same experience that I had when I left Panama and I came into Europe, where I was treated as a third class citizen and those were closed in my face. So I had to wait until all those experiences happened to me and then have the mental tools to be able to process them and understand them later in life and then look back and say, oh, this is unfair and it shouldn't have happened. And it's happening all the time. It's just that I hadn't realized it. And when I had a life full of privilege back when I lived in panama, I couldn't see it because my privilege didn't allow me to see it. And now we're on the other side of the equation. Now it is as if the blindfold fell and I can start seeing these things.
JC Candanedo:But it took me all those decades to be able to get to the point where I'm at. So that's the first thing that I would say is, we all have a different journey, so the time will come. I think that you are very fortunate and I really admire the work that you're doing because, being so young, in my eyes, you have found that passion and the purpose. Some people maybe might never find it. Maybe they just aren't curious enough or haven't been as affected or don't feel a thing that they're as affected, whereas other people see it and leave it daily, because it is the identity or the identities that that they inhabit daily. So that would be the first thing just wait for the moment to come. Then try to become someone else, start reaching out to other people. I think creating solidarity, creating groups or community with other people who are like-minded, that helps.
JC Candanedo:I first came across humanist uk, I think in 2017, at the convention, at the annual convention that year and and I met amazing people doing amazing things for the world, trying to fight against extremism I think it was the theme of that convention that year and I started creating those connections. My experience wasn't that people all of a sudden saw me, walked in and opened the doors and invited me to sit down, and they were all happy and friendly when they saw me. So when I had the opportunity to be involved in one of the groups, then I created that experience for other people, the experience that I didn't have, and that's why I was so chatty and welcoming and open, because I knew that's what I was expecting when I joined my first humanist event. And again, that only happened after years of me having these experiences. But then I thought these are things that would need to be fixed, and then I went on and corrected them.
JC Candanedo:So maybe that's the advice that I would give is if you see something that you don't like, then go and fix it and try to surround yourself with people who are going to fight with you. It is a very lonely fight and the work is really difficult, and if you are part of the people who are affected by the issue that you're trying to solve. Then it's going to become heavy, often triggering, uncomfortable. But if you really believe that it needs to fix, you will do it. Just try to take care of yourself and surround yourself with people who are going to walk that walk with you.
James Hodgson:And finally, our standard closing question what's something which you've changed your mind on recently and what inspired that?
JC Candanedo:change.
JC Candanedo:Ironically, my views on religious people have improved after doing humanism. I think before I discovered Humanists UK and humanism in general, my atheism was closer to the angry atheists, where I was anti-religion because of my upbringing, the way in which religion was in my face all the time, even without my consent, was in my face all the time, even without my consent. I was angry at religion and I didn't understand why there were people who were so devoted and who had these very strong beliefs and who, even though I had seen some of them, really didn't support some of the things that the organized religions or the organizations behind religions were doing. They still believed in the core messages and values of the religion. They could make that separation and say, well, it doesn't matter if Catholic priests are molesting children or if Catholic nuns are harming children, we believe in the Christian message, and then they could continue doing the work.
JC Candanedo:For me, in my mind, I couldn't separate those two things.
JC Candanedo:To me they were all part of the same thing, and when I joined the humanist groups I all of a sudden could see that actually you could share some values, but you are so different in so many other ways that you could actually bring all this group of people who have so many diverse backgrounds and bring them together in a common sense of beliefs and I can say that we're not all perfect. There are humanist people who are good people. There are humanist people who are not good people. So that made me see that also in religion you have the same, and I could separate the organization behind some of the beliefs from the people who are actually doing the daily work, the people who are good and compassionate and are helping their communities and really welcoming and open and friendly to people who do not share their beliefs, because they know that this is the only way in which our societies can thrive, and it's if we learn to coexist with each other. So I started respecting religious people more after joining humanism, which I think it's very ironic.
James Hodgson:JC Candande. Thank you so much for joining us on Humanism Now.
JC Candanedo:Thank you so much for having me you.
