Check Out Georgia Van Cuylenburg’s Story

Today we’d like to introduce you to Georgia Van Cuylenburg.

Hi Georgia, so excited to have you with us today. What can you tell us about your story?
I believe that everyone comes here with something special to do – an important role we get to play in the lives of others and in making the world a better place for us all to live. For me, it is children, loving children, believing in their incredible magic and using everything I have within my power. -time, energy, idea and love to make the lives of all children brighter, safer and more joyful.

And I think that along with our ‘role’ we are given all the challenges and lessons we need to make that possible.

When I was two and a half years old, I got my first ‘challenge’ and in that unfortunate – fortunate moment, I decided I needed to protect every child from ever feeling what I felt and experiencing what I had experienced. I wanted to make sure that every child would feel safe to be their perfect and beautiful self.

In that same moment, I blocked this memory from my mind, maybe the trauma was too much for my little body to carry and it stayed hidden till 2008. But everything that happened from that day on makes so much sense and feels almost like it was always part of the ‘plan’.

When I was four and a half years old, I was in my first school production and when I saw the audience laughed and clapped, I knew THIS, THIS was how I could make children happy, how to make them smile and laugh and give them the joy that I was deep down wishing for myself.

When I was 12 years old, I met a young man from LA who asked me what I wanted to be when I grew up, I told him I wanted to be an actor but I didn’t know if I was good enough. And he said in return, “Well, if you don’t believe you are, no one will!” He was right, His words have rung in my head and heart ever since and he was the first email I ever sent when I was 18 asking him to pick me up from the airport that coming month when I moved to LA. And I got to hire him as second unit to a film I made four years later – maybe the most meaningful hire I’ve ever made!

But it was never just about being an actor or a performer for me. My love of performing enabled me to connect with those I loved the most – kids. When I thought about my new friend’s challenge at 12, I knew, amongst all my insecurities and fears about my own life, that I didn’t yet understand, that I could ‘use’ the magic and power of entertainment and media to spread positive messages for children around the world and if there was anywhere that I could do that from it was Hollywood. So I decided I would move there the minute I could…and I did.

Since moving to LA in 2005, I’ve gone on the all too common roller coaster of this industry; and like any good roller coaster, it has sometimes been amazing fun, sometimes terrifying, sometimes nauseating and always better with friends by my side.

Early on I got myself into the world of stand-up comedy which in so many ways was a saving grace amongst all the challenging parts – it gave me friends to laugh with and surrounded me with really clever folks who saw the world differently to most and I really loved that.

After being the voice of a couple of well-known cartoon characters in Australia, I was able to parlay that into some big roles here in LA – so very grateful to discover the video game world and community. I then got given the chance to help create and host a kids tv show My Magical World for kids age 2-5 a dream come true and after filming six episodes and winning a fancy parenting award for our first 3, the producers fell out and there was that magical moment gone, almost too fast to believe it had happened in the first place.

Amongst all of that, I had started losing my hair. It was scary and confusing and isolating because I had nowhere to turn to ask for help. In the space of two weeks I lost all of my hair and…oh did I mention I’d been working as a hair model up to this point? Despite that, I really knew very little about hair so I went out and bought myself a terrible wig and put a hat over it cover it up and so began the most confusing year of my life. That year of hiding taught me one thing – I don’t like hiding.

So instead, I made a movie about my experience; I went very public as a proud Alopecian and started supporting young people all around the world who had the same condition. I ended up on a few big talk shows and so suddenly this ‘horrible scary’ thing that had happened had lifted me into the place I’d wanted to be – sharing positive messages with kids everywhere. My hair had always been something I was known for and now my lack of hair was something I was known for – a huge part of my identity… and yet I still felt quite lost as my hair literally came and went six times over the coming years. I continued to weather the storms each time pretending it didn’t affect me – but it wasn’t easy…I can admit that now…it was really rough.

The thing that kept me going the whole time was the kids – I had been volunteering with soo many different organizations working with youth across LA in underresourced areas – finding family in their families and seeing every day the very real challenges they go through. These kids were the most resilient, empathetic, mindful kids I had ever met and yet I could feel the struggles they were having at school and how hard life was for them with the unavoidable traumas that surrounded their lives. I noticed they didn’t ever get to take part in any form of art – music, dance, visual arts – none of it. I reflected on how my life might have been if I didn’t get to do art of all different forms to help manage the pain I had been feeling as a young person and I knew I had to do something to change it for these kids. So in 2014 I started Arts Bridging the Gap a 501c3 social justice organization that highlights the voices, experiences, and self-expression of youth from under resourced communities through immersive arts programs. Since then, we (me and my magical team of staff, teaching artist and volunteers) have worked with thousands of LA youth, supporting them to gain the skills, mindsets, and connections that will allow them to be their best and fullest selves, as individuals and as members of diverse, thriving communities long into the future. We have held ongoing art workshops all across LA from Watts to Panorama City to El Serrano. When I first started ABG, it was about bridging the opportunity gap but now I am soo proud to say we have become known for bridging gaps that very few people believe can be bridged. We have brought 1000’s of youth classified as ‘at risk’ (a term we try not to use as we feel we are all ‘at risk’ of something) together with LAPD officers to build friendship, understanding and crate permanent public murals. From this work, I developed an empathy curriculum that we now use and share with educators anywhere who want to bridge divides and heal traumatized communities.

We are bridging the gap between female/nonbinary students and the tech world with our program Futures Rewired that supports them in learning how to create social change art with immersive tech and gives them a leg up into the male-dominated industry. And we have helped students in LA connect with youth from Uganda, Lebanon and India through our Penpal Art share program. Everything we do is based in neurobiology and the tenants of positive psychology. I have become a total nerd for the science of thriving, the science of happiness and the science of healing trauma.

With every class and every moment, we have with young people I become more and more convinced that art is the most effective way to heal the traumas that our young people are carrying and that are holding them back from being their full selves. There is so much undeniable research out there about the dangers of Adverse Childhood Experiences (ACEs) and the damage trauma does to our whole body. With everything that we’ve experienced in the last two years that has made us all confront how fragile mental health is in our lives and how crucial it is to thriving, we cannot keep doing education and youth development the way it has always been done – it wasn’t working then and it certainly doesn’t work now. I believe with all my heart, brains and from witnessing the hundreds of real-life examples, that providing arts to children is the most impactful and meaningful way to help them heal from this moment in history, to help them thrive through their family and community trauma, and the support them in being the incredible humans and leaders they can be.

Sooo I’ve been working 24/7 as a volunteer at ABG since 2014 – it has been some of the most rewarding and exhausting work of my life. I am also so fortunate to have had the opportunity to start orgs in Uganda and Ethiopia that also work with youth and women – but that is a story for another time. I recently traveled to India and Lebanon to film a VR docu-series with youth there and it was through that experience and coming home to LA and witnessing all my young people – in spite of all the challenges before them – pursuing their dreams that they were able to return the favor for me. They have now inspired me to push through my own challenges and get back to that mission that got me on the plane to LA in the first place. So as the roller coaster keeps on rolling, I am now back working where I started – this time with a team of amazing young people – to create media/entertainment content that is 100% positive and love filled and that invites youth everywhere to be perfectly exactly who they are as we work together to build a truly joyful world for us all.

Would you say it’s been a smooth road, and if not what are some of the biggest challenges you’ve faced along the way?
I wouldn’t say the road has been smooth – far from it but the view along the way has been filled with incredibly meaningful and joyful moments with the most exceptional folks and friends that make it all worth it.

It started with the abuse I suffered at 2.5 years old and more crucially the trauma that developed as a result of me keeping that secret – repressed under shame and confusion and such negative experience of self for so many years. And yet I am sooo deeply grateful for that bump in the road because I doubt i’d be doing what I do now if it wasn’t for that poor broken man choosing my body to let out his pain on all those years ago. So in many ways, I can look back at that bump in the road now and smile and say thank you – thank you for this life.

When I was starting high school, all of the hidden trauma found its way into a very severe eating disorder and years of anorexia – which makes total sense now – I hated my body for being a target so I was trying to change it. But I was determined that my flight wouldn’t be for nothing, so I wrote a play readMylips… and shared my experience with Australia with one hope – to stop the silence surrounding eating disorders and mental illness. And that battle and that experience was so incredibly important and valuable – it showed me that there are soooo many people out there struggling to love themselves or even like their outside shell and it enabled me to see how beautifully human it is to struggle with your place in the world and the place your body has in the world. Getting to learn all of that at such a young age, I have to look back and say thank you bump in the road.

And then there is the losing my hair part – which, needless to say, was a very bumpy patch of road; being in an appearance obsessed city, dating, trying to be comfortable in front of the camera – even in the face of casting directors asking me (while on camera) if I was wearing a wig!! But my alopecia areata has been the biggest gift of all the bumps I think because it was the moment when I finally felt and deeply experienced that everyone in the world is just waiting for someone to tell the truth about their life so they can too – to take off the proverbial wig and say THIS IS ME – HOW ABOUT YOU? It has been nearly 14 years since I first came out about my alopecia areata – I have almost a full head of hair now – and yet a day still doesn’t go by without someone reaching out online or in person and saying “I’ve never told anyone else this but…” I cannot put into words the gratitude I feel for getting to be that person for sooo many people in the world and for getting to see the true unfiltered beauty of people. These bumps have proven to me how incredible all humans can be, how much we really do want to connect with each other and how much smoother life becomes when we can finally be real, share our struggles and learn to be Ok just being 100% us.

As for the bumpy road of ABG and the other work I have the honor of getting to do with youth and families across LA and the world? Well yeah that road is never ever smooth. The challenges of raising money, the red tape of working with the cities and school systems and the frustrations of so desperately wanting to do something and being met with roadblocks at every turn…yeah that is the kind of bumpy I wouldn’t wish it on anyone but…then I look at our kids and the challenges they face simply because of the world they were born into and I quickly get over myself. And no matter how hopeless it can feel sometimes – specially over the last two years when everything felt like the universe was against our kids ever getting the future they deserved – all I have to do is connect with one of our kids, take a moment to paint with them, share a laugh and see them smiling through the kind of worries most would crumble under and the road is smooth again. Nothing has ever been more magical to me than a smiling child and they make EVERYTHING worth it a million times over.

Thanks – so what else should our readers know about your work and what you’re currently focused on?
Well some of the work I’ve done in the past:
– Voice of Vanille Final Fantasy xiii,
– Ensign Raina Temple in Star Wars the Old Republic,
– Sydney PAYDAY2 and now the voice of Noom in Australia (finally can share my work with my family)

Hosting
– My Magical World
– Academy Awards red carpet for a few years

Comedy
– Second city grad
– Host of LAUGH FACTORY NERDWORLD

Acting
A few neat films including Interwoven and all those near misses we love to reflect back on one every few years

But my specialty and my focus is creating and hosting Kids TV. That is now where all of my energy is goin – developing a kids TV show for tweens/teens giving them that safe space to be them. We are going for Mr. Rogers, meets Lucille Ball meets Oprah  It is incredible to develop this together with kids. I’m so excited to see where we can go with it and just loving all the very real honest and legit content we are creating right now for social media – so proud of these kids!!

As for ABG – we have painted 72 public murals across LA, some that are now very well-known thanks to Instagram and LA traffic – keep an eye out for the mural on Hollywood High by the In and Out on Sunset Blvd or the mural on the southwest side of Hollywood Blvd and Highland ave and then there is the giant Be Yourself mural at Sunset Studios on Bronson or the BLM memorial mural by the Laugh Factory on Sunset Blvd. I feel so fortunate to have been given such a prominent canvas’ all around LA for our kids to share their message and I hope you will go check them out. – we think they are pretty special (though I might be biased)

Image Credits
Modeling shot taken by Ksenia Koldaeva