Across the Curriculum and Across Your Campus This Fall
On Friday, September 27th, we teamed up with Project Pericles for Creative Election Engagement Across the Curriculum and Across Your Campus This Fall. This dynamic session explored fun and interactive ways to spark creativity and get students engaged with the upcoming 2024 election.
During the event, participants:
- Uncovered the power of creativity in driving civic engagement on campus.
- Walked away with practical, easy-to-use tools to bring electoral engagement to life in their classrooms.
- Heard inspiring stories from faculty who have used arts and creativity to boost election participation.
- Received innovative strategies to supercharge their efforts for National Voter Education Week.
Watch the event recording, read key takeaways, and get a handful of useful resources below.
EVENT RECORDING
KEY TAKEAWAYS
Our featured speakers shared these tips during Creative Election Engagement:
- Encourage students to move beyond raising awareness — show them how to take creative action to improve a problem
- Allow for open-ended class discussions while giving students ownership of the conversation
- Make civic engagement content and voting work relevant to issues students care about
- Bring in case studies of artistic activism as examples and inspiration
- Don’t stop voter education at voter registration — guide students through all aspects of civic participation and use art and creativity to get them to the next action steps
- Offer times for personal reflection and peer to peer feedback on voting activism projects
- Connect students across disciplines to collaborate and use each other’s creativity and innovative ideas
- Value the process, not only the product
- Use resources from the Center for Artistic Activism, Project Pericles, and National Voter Education Week to have fruitful conversations in the classroom and take action outside the classroom
“Art has a unique power to provoke thought, challenge perceptions, and drive change. It seems like a no-brainer to combine activism and art to send really powerful messages.”
– Daniella Mascarenhas, Unstoppable Voters Faculty Fellow
RESOURCES
Add all of these helpful resources shared during Creative Election Engagement to your teaching toolbox!
Our Unleashing Unstoppable Voters is being used by faculty across the nation to drive impactful change. This creative campaign toolkit is packed with:
- fun, interactive exercises,
- helpful tools,
- interesting case studies, and
- much, much more!
Check out the civic engagement resources Project Pericles offers for faculty across all disciplines. And learn more about their Civic and Voter Engagement Fellowship.
National Voter Education Week (NVEW) is October 7-11, 2024 and there are tons of helpful resources for faculty to use with their students including:
- Partnership Signup: Join a diverse community working together to reach potential voters across the country.
- Partner Toolkit: Help educate and mobilize your network for the 2024 elections. Use it to plan programming, social media, and more leading up to NVEW.
- NVEW Voter Checklist: Get practical steps and tools to help you and your students navigate the voting process with ease.
Ask Every Student Toolkit is for campus leaders to implement student voter registration on their campuses.
Your Major on the Ballot is designed to draw connections between democracy and different fields students are studying.
Stay up to date on our programming, resources, events, and more!
FEATURED SPEAKERS
Daniella Mascarenhas
Assistant Professor of Political Science, Xavier University of Louisiana
Daniella Mascarenhas has her PhD in political science and currently serves as an assistant professor of political science at Xavier University of Louisiana. She teaches courses on political theory and public law. Her scholarly work addresses questions of freedom within political theory especially applied to state punishment and incarceration. She also examines the role of civic engagement in normative theories of freedom. Her work has appeared in the Journal of Political Science Education. She is excited to be a 2024 Faculty Fellow with C4AA, bringing her scholarly interest in civic engagement into the classroom.
Erin Mysogland
Assistant Director of the Center for Community Action and Research and Adjunct Assistant Professor of Peace and Justice Studies, Pace University
Erin Mysogland is the Assistant Director of the Center for Community Action and Research and an Adjunct Assistant Professor of Peace and Justice Studies at Pace University. In both positions, Erin works with Pace students to empower them to take action on justice issues they are passionate about. Erin has a Master’s in International and World History from Columbia University and the London School of Economics where she studied strategies activists used in response to the policing of migrant children. Erin is passionate about youth voter engagement and movements for racial justice past and present!
Eliana Reed
Program & Communications Coordinator, Students Learn Students Vote Coalition
Eliana Reed began working in the youth organizing space in 2020 as the Creative & Social Media Organizer with Leaders Igniting Transformation (LIT) in Wisconsin. After the 2020 cycle, she transitioned to working with LIT’s national network, Alliance for Youth Organizing as Content Manager. In those roles, she cultivated relationships with local and state organizers across the country to create digital campaigns, trained young communications professionals on digital organizing tactics, and developed and executed social media strategies to grow the movement among young people. Now with the Students Learn Students Vote Coalition, Eliana provides communications support for several programs including National Voter Education Week and Campus Takeover.
Header photo: Daniella Mascarenhas’ students hosting a “political party”
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