CAA Awarded $75,000 Grant by George Soros’s Open Society Foundations

For Immediate Release

Contact: directors at artisticactivism-dot-org

CENTER FOR ARTISTIC ACTIVISM AWARDED $75,000 GRANT BY GEORGE SOROS’S OPEN SOCIETY FOUNDATIONS

Grant to expand CAA’s School for Creative Activism after Successful Inaugural Year

The Democracy and Power Fund, an initiative of the Open Society Foundations, awarded $75,000 to the Center for Artistic Activism.  The grant will allow the Center to expand its School for Creative Activism.   

The School of Creative Activism is a participatory workshop infusing community organizing and civic engagement with culture and creativity.  The School was founded by the Center for Artistic Activism in 2010 and held two successful workshops for activists in the New York area and North Carolina.  In recognition of the workshops’ successes, the Open Society Foundations nearly doubled their funding from 2010 to support continued curricular development and organizer training in SCA workshops over the 2011-2012 year.

Working directly with organizers and community actors, the SCA leverages the strengths of grassroots activism and the attention grabbing and complex messaging of art through a curriculum designed to:

  • Teach cultural tactics and creative strategies employed effectively by organizers in the past.

  • Recognize and draw upon the cultural resources and creative talents residing within individuals, organizations, and communities in the present.

  • Collectively run scenarios and plan campaigns that utilize culture and creativity.

  • Build a network of organizers and artists using a model of creative organizing more effective in our media-saturated, spectacle-savvy world.

The Center’s co-founders, Stephen Duncombe and Steve Lambert, are eager to begin work with the 2012 class of organizers and activists. “OSF’s continued support allows us to do what we think we do best: team up with hard-working organizers to help create more creative campaigns,” says Duncombe. “We truly believe this is the most important work we can do,” added Lambert, “we’re very excited.”

2011-2012 workshops will be held throughout the U.S.  Locations and calls for participants will be announced in the coming months.  For more information on the School of Artistic Activism and other CAA programs, visit The Center for Artistic Activism.

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