Even Harvard Business Review gets it: failure is a necessary part of creation and innovation. This blog post highlights how a few forward-thinking organizations build failure-friendly practices into their structure. One of our favorites is from DoSomething.org: DoSomething.Org, a nonprofit that helps young people take action on social change initiatives, has a “FailFest” once a …
Author Archives: The Center for Artistic Activism
Event: Paul Engler @ Creative Activism Thursdays
Thursday, May 2nd; 7 PM NYU Tisch, Performance Studies Dept.721 Broadway, 6th FloorFREEPhoto ID required Paul Engler, Director of the Center for the Working Poor, will speak about his experience in the anti-globalization movement after Seattle, immigrant rights marches, Occupy, how the Serbian nonviolent revolutionaries changed his life, a concrete plan to get high numbers of …
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Not An Alternative: Internship Opportunity
Not An Alternative is a hybrid arts collective and non-profit organization with a mission to affect popular understandings of events, symbols, and history. They curate and produce interventions on immaterial and material space, leveraging the tools of architecture, exhibit design, branding, and public relations. And they are great friends of the Center for Artistic Activism! See …
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Making Taxes Visible
In a recent New York Times editorial, Elizabeth Dunn and Michael Norton discussed America’s broad distaste for the institution of taxation, a phenomenon that plagues advocates of progressive taxation in this country. Rather than addressing the historical-political underpinnings of these contemporary attitudes, they approach the issue from a design perspective. Their conclusion? Taxes could benefit …
Tactics and Strategies
A directory of tactics and strategies for human rights activism: http://www.newtactics.org/tactics
Escrache in Spain
The term “escrache” comes from Argentina, where it was coined in in 1995 by the human rights activist group H.I.J.O.S, to condemn the genocides committed by members of the military dictatorship that had been pardoned by Carlos Menem, who was prime minister at the time. When justice fails to signal a violation of human rights, the …
Those in Charge
On August 2012, seven black Mercedes drove through the Gran Vía, one of Madrid´s main streets. This image reminded of a State funeral, or some kind of military or religious parade. On top of each of the luxurious cars, there was an academic-style painting of a person that had been in “in charge” of the …
Event: Experiments in Extra-Institutional Education
Apr 11, 2013, 6:30pm | Room 9206 Center for the Humanities The Graduate Center, CUNY 365 Fifth Avenue New York, NY 10016 Experiments in Extra-Institutional Education What are the theoretical and political repercussions of education outside of a traditional classroom? Whether spurred on by a tidal wave of student debt, changes in technology, …
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Hands-on Workshop TOMORROW!
Attention New Yorkers! This event is FREE and open to the public. Please join us as we meet and collaborate with aspiring and seasoned creative activists. Why is it that artists’ collectives typically focused on political activism have emerged in such numbers over the past few years? What are the specific advantages to working in …
Tonight! Leonidas Martin at Harvard School of Design
Monday, April 1 12:00 – 2:00 PM Stubbins (Room 112), Gund Hall, 48 Quincy Street, Cambridge, MA A visual tour of some of the most creative art/activist interventions performed in the context of the counter-globalization movement, and in contemporary urban struggles in Spain, including Las Agencias, Yomango, Pret a Revolter, and New Kids on the …
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Howitcouldbedifferent.org: A Wikipedia for Social Change
Looking for some inspiration for your next creative activist project? Look no further than howitcouldbedifferent.org, which is described as a wikipedia for social change allowing users to post and share visions for a better world and ideas of specific progressive changes they would like to see happen. It was founded on a simple …
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33 Ways to Stay Creative
Check out this list of 33 Ways to Stay Creative for small everyday suggestions on how to keep the creative juices flowing: What would happen if most people followed its recommendations instead of just clicking “like”? How would our society change if schools posted these and then operated accordingly? –Liz Dwyer via …
From the Congo to Panama, Beat Making Labs Creates Sustainable Music Studios in Unlikely Places
When most folks think of Africa, they automatically think of famine, disease, and war. But for those who understand how media works, knows that the Africa most people think of is only one side of the vastly diverse continent. It started as an experiment: what happens when you equip a vibrant youth community with the resources to express …
Comics in Kenya
We’ve been in Kenya for the last week, and have been honored to work with talented activists from Uganda, Zimbabwe, and Kenya. This is the first time the School for Creative Activism has traveled to Africa, and it’s been an incredible experience. One of the participants showed us a project he’s worked on for the …
Decaying Russian Buildings Transformed into Character Art
Russian artist Nikita Nomerz art series, “The Living Wall,” resurrects dilapidated buildings by turning them into pieces of art. In his interview with Global Street Art, Nikita explains the reasoning behind his series…. I paint in the street, in public spaces, but I do not position myself as an invader of the city or a destroyer. I position …
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Hip Hop for Healthy Eating
Real Food Justice: From Black Panther Party Roots to Hip Hop Activism, Foodies with Fists Youth attend a “Youth Hip Hop Green Dinners” where they enjoy performances by hip-hop artists and their first vegan meal! When his grandmother died from diabetes, Ashel Eldridge, a 32-year-old Oakland-based educator with the Alliance for Climate Education, set out …
Using Art to talk back to Unwanted “Compliments”
Posters on a wall on Tompkins Avenue in Bedford-Stuyvesant, Brooklyn, try to make the point that some comments to women aren’t welcome. “These things make you feel like your body isn’t yours,” the artist says. Shorty. Sweetie. Sweetheart. Baby. Boo. If you’re a woman, you’ve probably heard it. If you were to respond, what would …
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Crowdsourcing Change through Public Art
I Wish This Was began in New Orleans in November 2010. It was inspired by vacant storefronts. There are a lot of them where Candy lives in New Orleans. There are also a lot of people who need and want things. What if we could easily voice what we want, where we want it? How can …
Somalia Guerrilla Artists Dare to Paint Reality
MOGADISHU, Somalia — The guerrilla artists come out in the darkness of the Mogadishu night. Three of them are old hands with a brush, but they’ve never been out on such a crazy mission at a time when sensible people stay indoors. They gather for work in a converted garage, with a wildly paved floor …
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SCA Application Deadline EXTENDED
We’ve received a lot of pleas for extensions, and we get it. You’re really, really busy. We’re extending the deadline for applications to our School For Creative Activism until March 14. Go home, have some fun and get some rest, and make sure to get it into us in the next two weeks. Download 2013 …
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