What We Do

Our in-depth, in-person, 2 – 5 day workshops are highly regarded by our alumni.

• Unstoppable Voters offers a range of trainings to help organizations bring more creativity and innovation to their civic engagement work, including and through our unique Unstoppable Voters Fellowship.
• Art of Activism Learning Labs are our remote trainings supported by our tried-and-tested lessons, global team of some of the top practitioners in the world, and The Art of Activism book and workbook. The course is made up of weekly meetings, very small class sizes, discussions, and exercises, as well as activities you can do on your own schedule throughout the week. Apply now.
• Advocacy Innovation Labs collectively develop new advocacy methods through online training with hundreds of participants
• The School for Creative Activism for activists and advocacy organizations
• The Art Action Academy for artists and art organizations
• Creative Grantmaking for funders supporting creative activism and advocacy
• Creative Action Master Classes a train-the-trainers program to enable artists and activists to train their peers in effective creative activism.

A decade refining this curriculum and training people around the world to use the tools and techniques of artistic activism has shown us that this creative methodology has the power to significantly increase the quality and quantity of community-led work that leads to larger and more vibrant movements. This is because artistic activism combines the creative power of the arts to move us emotionally with the strategic planning of activism necessary to bring about social change.

More on our training

“You are amazing (and effective). The whole workshop was informative, engaging, and strategically crafted. I’ve done organizing trainings, artist-activist trainings, etc. and you all have this down to a science!”

Workshop Participant from Arts Action Academy at the Queens Museum

Through our consulting practice, the Center for Artistic Activism can help your organization think and create in new ways. We provide mentoring and consulting to organizations and groups on strategic planning around creative actions and campaigns, including through our intensive Accelerator Mentoring Program and Artistic Activism Assessment Advising. We don’t have a “one size fits all” philosophy of artistic activism, but will work with you on developing the best, most creative course of action for your group, your issue, your creative resources and your unique cultural context. We have helped funders who want to support arts + activism, advocacy orgs who need to innovate their campaigns, and arts organizations who want to support their artists who seek to have more political and social impact.

I am so grateful for your time and your precious advice and guidance, the way you framed the process, your questions and your feedback have been transformative and thanks to you I am tweaking the project.

Dani

To make artistic activism more impactful, the the Center for Artistic Activism conducts research on the effect and affect — the Æffect — of artistic activism. We conduct research through fieldwork and application, interviews with artistic activists, and even public experiments. We share our research through talks, presentations, podcasts, reports, articles, and books. Among other things, we use this research to develop Creative Action Planning and Assessment Tools and Methodologies that enable individuals and groups to self-evaluate and strengthen their creative activist projects.

“Thanks for sharing this fascinating report. It’s such a helpful study to have done! I’ve added it to our ‘WNV Top Reads’ section.”

Bryan Farrell, Editor at Waging Nonviolence

We create and share resources to help everyone learn how artistic activism works, and how to deploy it. From podcasts to free webinars to training exercises and publications, we have a slew of tools we like to give away for free. We also give talks, presentations and serve on panels as expert public speakers on Artistic Activism, using examples and lessons from around the world. And we involve workshop alumni and others in a global network of practitioners and connect a community of creative activists through sharing success stories and methodologies.

“The webinar is amazing. I’m so thankful to be part of it.”

Webinar viewer and Center for Artistic Activism Donor