Our Unstoppable Voters project is fighting anti-voter efforts through creativity, joy, humor, and innovation.
We support and fund wild, experimental, funny and joyful projects and help make them more impactful through training, research and community building.
We held an information session about Unstoppable Voters; notes and a recording are here.
We just closed applications for direct project funding and support. Stay tuned to learn the projects that were selected.
Who’s This For?
For Voter Advocacy Organizations
If you work for an organization and want support to make fresh, fun voter campaigns, get in touch!
For Artists and Creative People
If you want to use your creative skills to protect the freedom to vote, watch for our next round of applications and apply for project funding and support when it opens.
For Anyone Who Cares about U.S. Democracy
If you like this idea and want to support it, watch the info session to learn more and be sure to sign up for our newsletter for updates soon. And donate!
What is Unstoppable Voters?
Unstoppable Voters celebrates voting – and counters deliberate barriers to voting – through experimental, innovative advocacy. It is run by the Center for Artistic Activism, the leader in the field of research and training around creative campaigns. Effective advocacy must be waged on multiple fronts, and we bring a focus on the cultural change that is critical. We also bring new voices to advocacy – artists, cultural workers, and other creatives who contribute unique perspectives and revitalize movements with joy, humor and hope. You may have seen our work in the press right before and after the 2020 election, like the feature in CBS This Morning.
If you’re not sure creative activism is effective, just look to our most recent huge win: we started the Free the Vaccine for COVID-19 campaign last year, to use creative activism to make COVID vaccines free and accessible globally–and the Biden administration just announced its historic support for what we’ve been fighting for!
Here’s what’s happening!
Creative Activism + Voting Info Session – May 21
This was the kickoff. We discussed creative activism responses to anti-voter efforts and how you can help. The session included past Unstoppable Voters participants and voting experts. We talked about how organizations, artists, activists and others can be involved. A recording of the info session is here.
Unstoppable Voters Workshop – June 8-22
A three-session, online workshop where participants learned all about creative activism, and refined ideas for pro-voter projects. Great for staff and volunteers at voter advocacy orgs, for artists, creatives, and more. This was a chance to experience our popular Creative Activism Academy training that we’ve been honing for 12+ years in workshops around the world. Learn more here.
Applications open for funding Unstoppable Voters Projects – June 11-25
We invited you to submit your best, wildest, most impactful project ideas. Applications closed on June 25th.
We’re especially looking for projects that:
- Are creatively risk-taking, innovative ideas that might not be supported elsewhere
- Feel relevant, exciting, pressing, and get new people to show up and get out
- Motivate people to act on calls from advocacy organizations
- Help advocacy organizations engage, inspire, and retain their audiences around voting issues
- Are deep, exciting collaborations between advocacy organizations and artists
- Help other people express themselves through creative activism
- Could be repeated and amplified by other artists and groups
- Happen out in the world and in person (COVID allowing)
Some questions that we have, and that you can ask yourself:
- Will it have real impact in protecting the freedom to vote, especially in key states like Georgia, Pennsylvania and Arizona? Does it align with real needs in communities most impacted by voter suppression?
- Does it do more than “raise awareness,” meaning the project has strong potential to change people’s behavior?
- Does it empower and create community? Does it welcome people to participate and inspire people to take specific actions?
- Is it funny, weird, borderline impossible and also clear, direct, achievable within the timeframe and resources provided?
How does this work for advocacy organizations?
In 2021 we are providing creative advocacy support – funding, artist fellows, training, outreach – to organizations working to protect the freedom to vote. Right now, thanks to a generous funder, we can give some of this support for free to a small number of advocacy organizations.
Some of the benefits that organizations see when they work with us are increased engagement among new audiences, more high-quality volunteer assistance, new leadership skills and organizing confidence among staff and volunteers, and more creative and successful campaigns.
How will it work? One or some of your staff should join the info session and sign up for the workshop. Or contact us.
Past Unstoppable Voters Projects
Some of the projects from 2020:
Cirque d’Vote organized dozens of circus performances at early voting locations and on Election Day. Courting Voters with Court Fees was a North Carolina effort focused on the approximate 100,000 formerly incarcerated people who could newly vote. Float the Vote organized Detroit food and ice cream trucks to educate people about registration, early voting and polling locations. #MyJamMyVote was a songwriting contest to amplify civic engagement in the 2020 election cycle. Project Your Vote projected voting information and narrative imagery in dozens of locations. Drawing Out the Vote was a voter mobilization campaign in Georgia that used music and animation to illustrate Fair Fight’s information about voting access. Voter Suppression Interventions drew attention to voter suppression tactics through satirical interventions and videos. Fuck Talking, Go Vote mobilized diverse cowboys and cowgirls across the country in 11 rides to the ballot boxes before election day. Delivering Democracy were troupes of dancing mailboxes throughout Pennsylvania. My Vote Won’t Bite took the form of stickers, flags, and posters in a dozen locations. Packing and Cracking is an interactive mapmaking event about gerrymandering.
More details about these and other Unstoppable Voters projects are here.
Unstoppable Voters is a project of the Center for Artistic Activism and has been made possible through the generous support of Andrea Soros Colombel and Open Society Foundations.
Thank you hugely to our generous Unstoppable Voters anchor funder Andrea Soros Colombel for knowing that artistic activism is the future of advocacy, and for caring so deeply about democracy.
The photos on this page are from the Unstoppable Voters projects in 2020.