Use art to turn the world inside out | JRWatch this video on YouTube “JR, a semi-anonymous French street artist, uses his camera to show the world its true face, by pasting photos of the human face across massive canvases. At TED2011, he makes his audacious TED Prize wish: to use art to turn the …
Category Archives: Research Blog
Digital Media Challenge Offers $100,000 in Prizes For Fresh Ideas on Democracy
Looking@Democracy is a national competition offering a total of $100,000 in prize money for short, provocative media submissions designed to spark a national conversation about why government is important to our lives, or how individuals and communities can come together to strengthen American democracy. Launching today, February 4, 2013, the challenge will award $25,000 …
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Artist Favianna Rodriguez Talks Immigrant Rights And Art’s Role In Politics
The Huffington Post interviewed artist and activist Favianna Rodriguez about her new documentary “Migration is Beautiful,” how she envisions the future role of artists in politics, and what she believes the role of art to be in activism. “Art is uniquely able to speak to our understanding of the world by delivering potent, powerful and empathetic …
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Participation, Not Marginalization: Using People’s Stories for Social Good
“Maybe sometimes we should be story facilitators and help others tell their own stories instead of doing it for them.” Filmmaker Jordan Byron reflects on the power of sharing stories and poses important questions about the ethics that accompany this growing movement. Read the full article at Good.is- Participation, Not Marginalization: Using People’s Stories for Social …
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Moore Exhibit Highlights: Activism’s Beautiful Byproducts
Say what? A shotgun-style house in Houston painted by artist/activist Rick Lowe. While provocative works may routinely fill the galleries at Moore College of Art and Design, their latest undertaking, Living As Form (The Nomadic Version) is certainly more complex than most. Perhaps the easiest way to wrap your head around the unprecedented, traveling exhibition is to …
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“The Kiss” in Syria Goes VIRAL
Syrian artist Tammam Azzam took the twittersphere by storm last week when he posted an image of Gustav Klimt’s “The Kiss” superimposed on the facade of a bullet-ridden building in Damascus. The photoshopped image — which some mistook for an actual street-side mural — brought the eye of the art world to the artist’s war-torn home country. Describing the …
Event: Direct Action Fashion Show
Join the Museum of Reclaimed Urban Space for the Direct Action Fashion Show Saturday, 02/09/2013 7:00pm 155 Ave C.
Brazil to give $25 monthly culture stipend to workers to go to movies, read books or visit museums
BRASILIA (AFP).- Despite the economic crisis, Brazil announced Thursday it planned to give workers here a 50-real ($25) monthly stipend for cultural expenses like movies, books or museums. “In all developed countries, culture plays a key role in the economy,” Culture Minister Marta Suplicy said in an interview on national television. She recalled that popular …
Black History Month at DS4SI
If you’re in the area, join our friends at the Design Studio for Social Intervention for their series of Black History Month programs, Black Love and the Black Image. Take advantage of the opportunity to meet some incredible activist-innovators and join in some good discussion.
Creative Activism: The Art of Social Change
For our friends in Denmark! Steve Duncombe will be speaking and participating in an event called Creative Activism: The Art of Social Change. The event is hosted by ActionAid Denmark, and will be held on January 23rd. If you’re in the neighborhood, roll on by…
The Joker Always Wins
One of my favorite lessons from the School for Creative Activism is this: fun can be powerful and comedy can be dead serious. The best activism is effective because it hits people at an emotional level – at that gut-level sweet spot where decisions are made before conscious thought. But it’s not an easy spot to reach …
George Lakoff in 3 minutes
Before anyone on the Left was talking about the importance of understanding the cognitive science of political decision making and action, and the necessity of framing, metaphor, story and association, there was George Lakoff. He’s been telling his story to anyone who will listen for more than a quarter-century. Here he is giving his rap …
Advertiser appropriates creative activism…for good, not evil
Sometimes having your creative activist methodology appropriated by the powers-that-be has an upside. Witness the Yes Men style pro-bono campaign the Chicago-based advertising heavy, Leo Burnett, waged to save a small library in Troy, Michigan from the Tea Party.
‘Be Wrong as Fast as You Can’ – NYTimes.com
I recently saw a Charlie Rose interview with John Lasseter, a founder of Pixar, about the creative process behind his movies. Pixar’s in-house theory is: Be wrong as fast as you can. Mistakes are an inevitable part of the creative process, so get right down to it and start making them. Even great ideas are …
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The Power of Failure – NYTimes.com
“The ironic thing,” said Schmitz of Public Allies, “is that you have donors who took major risks in their own fortunes, but are very risk averse when giving to charity. People rightly want their dollars to have the maximum impact, but don’t apply the same logic model that they give to their private sector investment.” …
Laughing at Dictators
From Good.is: The small former-Soviet republic Belarus is considered to be Europe’s last surviving dictatorship. Protestors and the political opposition are jailed. Journalists are harassed. But that doesn’t mean stories from that small, landlocked nation—or the dissidents trying to bring democracy and free speech there—get much airtime in the West. Last week the Swedish advertising …
Rethinking the Protest Sign
Our friends at the Overpass Light Brigade use LED lights for a new take on an old tool in the activist arsenal. The novelty of the technology involved is enough to garner attention from the media – and Fox News, no less. Our favorite part of their work? They show you how to do it …
“It Was a Good Day” Ice Cube and Politics
“It Was a Good Day” is rapper Ice Cube’s biggest hit — a solid rap song with a great beat, it’s easy to see why this record was so successful. What makes this song truly great, however, isn’t Ice Cube’s vivid description of his good day, but looming, omnipresent possibility of a much worse day. …
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The stories you aren’t reading…
The CAA has been reading a lot about cognitive science lately. Confirmation bias – the tendency of individuals to filter out those stories and facts that challenge what they already believe – has been on my mind ever since I learned of it during a School for Creative Activism this summer. The concept is shockingly …
An Archive of Desire
The name sounds vaguely like a catalog of clippings from the back of the Village Voice. Fortunately it’s not: The Archive of Desire documents evidence of everyday visionary imagination. Ideas for a future thriving sustainable society, from the practical to the impossible, are collected and documented in physical and digital form. These posts are snippets …
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