Yoko Ono

Yoko Ono was born in Tokyo in 1933. Her father had a job in a bank that took him around the world. Yoko grew up in Japan and also spent some time in the United States. Both her parents were interested in art and music - her father was a skilled piano player and her mother was a talented painter.

They enrolled Yoko in music school when she was 4 years old old and taught her about her Japanese heritage. She went with her mother to classical theater performances and to temples where she would write a wish on a piece of paper and hang it on a tree with other people's wishes.

Her mother and father preferred traditional art and music, but Yoko wanted to create her own new things. On the outside she was obedient to her parents, but inside she had a rebellious and independent spirit. Have you ever felt like that too?

In 1941 Japan went to war with America. When Yoko was 12 years old the United States Air Force bombed Tokyo leaving nearly a million people homeless. Her father was working far away in Vietnam and so she her little brother and her little sister were sent to live in the countryside where it was safer. All around them people were struggling struggling to survive.

Yoko had to sell some of their belongings in order to buy food, but she and her siblings were sometimes hungry and unhappy. "Let's make a menu together!" Yoko said to her brother Keisuke one day.

"What kind of dinner would you like?"

He said "Ice cream!"

"Good" she replied "Let's imagine our ice cream dinner!"

They imagined together and Yoko realised then the imagination could connect people and make them happy. Years later she would say that this imaginary dinner was one of her first pieces of art. What would your imaginary dinner look like?

A few years after the war ended, Yoko and her family moved to America. She studied poetry and music at University, but she felt like an outsider. To be an artist you need courage she told herself so she left University and moved to New York City. Finally, she felt she could truly live and create as she wanted.

She was still interested in how art could bring people together. In her early artwork Painting to be Stepped On, she placed a canvas on the ground and invited her audience to step on it. Later, she invited people to share a memory of their mother or hang a wish from a tree, just like she did when she was young.

Yoko also wrote a book called Grapefruit, full of playful and thought-provoking instructions for making art like - draw a map to get lost, have a dance party, let people dance with chairs, step in all the puddles in the city. A lot of the ideas were impossible to actually do, but Yoko wanted people to imagine that everyday life could become art.

Yoko also imagined a world without war, where everyone lived in peace. Sounds wonderful, don't you think? She and her husband, the musician John Lennon, thought so. They used music, art and every opportunity they could for activism and to make a difference. Yoko and John even invited newspaper journalists to join them on their honeymoon where they stayed in bed for a whole week as a peaceful protest against the war happening in Vietnam. This got people talking about world peace even more. Give peace a chance, they sang.

A lot of people didn't understand Yoko's art or music, but she kept on doing it anyway because she believed that you can change the world by being yourself.

Now in her '90s, Yoko is known as an artist, a musician, a filmmaker and an activist for peace. She's made over a dozen albums and has had art exhibitions around the world. Her different wish tree artworks have brought together over 2 million wishes.

Is there a wish or an idea that you want to bring to life? Go on, tell a friend or your family! As Yoko says a dream you dream alone is only a dream - but a dream you dream together is reality.