Arn Chorn-Pond is a musician, human rights activist, and peace advocate. He was born in Battambang province in Western Cambodia in the 1960s, and grew up in a family of artists. During the Khmer Rouge regime in the 1970s, free expression through music and arts was banned in Cambodia. 90% of the country’s artists were killed during the years of the regime, and overall around 2 million people died. Arn believes in the vital power of music and the arts to heal and to transform; in terms of individual people, communities, and whole countries. He has dedicated his adult life to this cause, founding the organization Cambodian Living Arts in 1998. Originally, Cambodian Living Arts worked to revive the country’s endangered traditional art forms and pass them on to the next generation. Twenty years later, they offer scholarships, fellowships, grants, exchanges and more - acting as a catalyst for creativity and innovation, and helping artists today to write the stories of Cambodia’s future.