A clear, concise list of prompts to remind us of important things to remember when planning an action. We offer this to you and hope it helps. Your Foundation Dream Where are we headed? Have you wandered through your imagined utopia lately? First Steps Which path will get you to your objective the fastest: Individual …
Category Archives: Research Blog
The Copenhagen Experiment: The Report
This is the first ever public experiment on the comparative efficacy and afficacy of artistic activism vs more traditional forms of activist intervention.
The Center for Artistic Activism Reading List
Update: We wrote a book! The Art of Activism: Your All Purpose Guide to Making the Impossible Possible Here, in dazzling red and black words and pictures, is an all-purpose guide that shows how to bring about effective social change by combining the emotional power of the arts with the strategic planning of activism. Join …
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Politics of Humor in an Age of Fools
Notes from Stephen Duncombe’s presentation Politics of Humor in an Age of Fools HEMI Encuentro at UNAM, Mexico City, 10 June 2019 I’ve been thinking a lot about the politics of humor in these very dire and serious times. So what do I think? A great deal of humor points out the absurdity of the normal, …
Phoebe Davies
In this interview, C4AA research fellow Sarah J Halford talks with Phoebe Davies, a social practice artist based in London. In it, Davies discusses her work on constructing social spaces that provide an environment for productive, and often difficult, conversations about politics, sex, gender, and more. She also shares her thoughts on the importance of more collaboration and thoughtful reflection in and around art and activism.
Owen Griffiths
In this interview, C4AA research fellow Sarah J Halford talks with Owen Griffiths, a social practice artist based in Swansea, Wales in the UK. Griffiths shares his strategy for using art projects as tactics to enter into publicly-owned spaces. He collaborates with others to transform these spaces into beautiful and useful landscapes that are co-authored by people in the community. Ultimately, he argues that the art is used to beautify the space, create community buy-in, and keep the space in the hands of the people – rather than sold to a private corporation.
Ben Davis
In this interview, Ben Davis, radical art critic and author of 9.5 Theses on Art and Class, talks with C4AA co-founder Stephen Duncombe about his “constructively critical” view of art’s role in activism. Davis discusses some of the trends he sees in contemporary political art and considers the realistic scope of art’s impact on change.
Pam Korza
In this interview, C4AA co-director Steve Duncombe talks with Pam Korza about methods of evaluation in artistic activism. They consider the resistance that some artists have to quantitative evaluation, as well how we might evaluate the work from a perspective of aesthetic excellence. Korza also shares her extensive knowledge as co-director of Animating Democracy, an organization that fosters art for social change projects, and the six outcomes that she looks for when evaluating the success (or failure) of a project.
Marlène Ramírez-Cancio
In this interview, C4AA co-founder Steve Duncombe talks with Marlene Ramirez-Cancio, Associate Director of Arts and Media at the Hemispheric Institute. They discuss the elusive nature of evaluating artistic activism through qualitative frameworks. What is the vocabulary for doing so? And why is that vocabulary so difficult to find? Marlene shares her thoughts on these questions and challenges arts funders to become more comfortable with metrics that measure qualities beyond material successes.
Gan Golan
In this interview, George Perlov talks with Gan Golan, artistic activist and author of the bestselling children’s book parody “Goodnight Bush” and “The Adventures of Unemployed Man,” the critically-acclaimed graphic novel about the economic crisis. Golan discusses the importance of movement narratives and calls for artists and activists, alike, to figure out ways to measure what a movement means to the public.
Fernando Garcia-Dory
In this interview, Fernando Garcia-Dory talks with C4AA student fellow Emily Bellor about his practice of incorporating art into collaborative projects for social change. They discuss his work in cooperative farming as well as the tensions that can arise when the art world meets the activist world.
Favianna Rodriguez
In this interview, C4AA co-founder Steve Duncombe talks with Favianna Rodriguez, prolific art activist and Executive Director of CultureStrike. She shares her creative process behind the “Migration is Beautiful” butterfly, an image that has been widely adopted as a symbol of the migrant rights movement. They also discuss Rodriguez’s theory of change, which involves a strategic focus on cultural change over policy change, as she argues that policy is “the final manifestation of an idea,” that stems directly from culture.
Jan Cohen-Cruz
“t’s kind of a witnessing. It’s kind of an active witnessing where someone is giving you feedback. It’s dialogic as you go, and that to me is a lot of the value. There’s much to be said for dialogue in many contexts and I’d say that dialogue is a component of the way I do …
Elaine Forde
I think that the arts, in terms of social change, create an indirect way for people to be able to speak and express themselves. So, you can use theatre, spoken word, visual art, contemporary art, dance, movement, to relay your message, but you can also involve the people who need to relay their messages in …
Alumni Spotlight: Ummi A. Yakubu
Ummi Yakubu is a young professional in the interactive multimedia and design industry and is currently working on a mobile game that’s aimed at increasing civic responsibility.
Why Support Center for Artistic Activism this year?
Why support artistic activism right now? What does artistic activism do? And how does it help? And what the heck is C4AA doing about it?
Alumni Spotlight: Ibrahima Amadou Niang, IBOU
Ibrahima Amadou Niang (@IbrahimaANiang) is the Head of the Guinea Country Office at Open Society Initiative for West Africa (OSIWA) and participated in C4AAs 2016 School for Creative Activism in New York City. The following year he performed at two major literary festivals. Originally from Senegal, Ibou works on social justice issues through his work as an NGO activist and through his writing.
Alumni Spotlight: Victoria Catalina
Victoria Catalina brought her creative activism and graphic artist skills to C4AA’s 2016 Art Action Academy in Dublin, working to decriminalize sex work and workers, and has been working as a graphic designer and illustrator since then, often going back to sex worker rights and other activist themes in personal and commercial projects. Catalina has been designing for the Dutch sex workers union PROUD, and P&G292, a health organisation for sex workers in Amsterdam, among other collaborations.
Alumni Spotlight: CODO Cédric Wilfrid
Art Action Academy alumni Cédric Wilfrid Codo has been using media for social change, working with African youth, women and girls. “I am working on a cultural education project for girls and children in schools, on the presence of women in culture and sport (promotion and training) and finally on media that gives visibility to all this. I am convinced that the projects of the future will be projects that will bring together Anglophones and Francophones on projects in French. It will change the world.”
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