Announcing the 2020 Artistic Activism Awards!

Hi! Rebecca here, announcing the 2020 Artistic Activism Awards (fanfare! confetti cannons! rainbows!) 
 

🎺 🎺 🎉 🏆 🏆 🏆 🌈 🎺 🎺

It's award season everybody! Movies have the Oscars. Music has the Grammies. Theater has the Tonys. But there's something missing. Where are the awards for the most important art form, artistic activism?

Artistic activism is all about pre-figuring the future and bringing our ideal world into being. That's why we've created:

The 1st ever Artistic Activism Awards! 

We don't have big (ahem, any) prize money, or fancy statues... yet. But that won't stop us from having some fun and recognizing the great work people are doing.

The Awards will be in the form of very special honorifics and much fanfare on our part. Winners will receive honor, fame, glory, and eternal admiration and maybe a surprise!

This Years Award Categories include (but are not limited to)

-Best Low Budget Action
-Most Likely to Piss Off the Authorities
-So Weird! In a Good Way
-Best Gut Punch Action
-Best Comedy
-Most Direct and Practical
-Best Press Coverage or Documentation
-Best Dramatic Action
-Best Supporting Unintended Role of Police
-Best Aesthetics/Design
-Best Dressed (aka costume design)
-Kids Choice! But also Packs a Whallop
-??? (You can help us create a category!)

Submit your nominations

What was your favorite artistic action from 2019? We’re looking for actions from cheap and fast to loud and enormous. We want the big actions you’ve been admiring recently, like that border wall see-saw, or that house that got floated down the River Thames, or one of a dozen things coming out of Hong Kong last year. But if it’s your neighbor’s kid making speed bumps out of colored noodles to slow down traffic, submit that too.

Not sure if the project you're thinking about qualifies? Don't worry about it, send it anyway!

Not sure what category your favorite may apply to? Don't worry, you can invent a category!

What exactly is an artistic action, you ask?

Well, we would say that artistic actions are planned actions that are creative and aimed at an objective to change the world for the better. They can involve any medium and can be at any scale. I think great artistic actions are often surprising, sometimes funny and usually get all kinds of people involved. 

But we want to know what you think artistic actions are, so submit anything you think qualifies.

The “Global Protest Wave of 2019”, was unprecedented, and there were lots of creative actions connected with those protests. Protesters in Beirut blocked roads with yoga classes, music and fire. Protesters in Hong Kong created a new national anthem and used umbrellas as statements and protection. Maybe you know about more surprising ways of protesting that happened in the Middle East, Hong Kong, Catalonia, Chile, France or elsewhere. Please nominate them!

But to kick things off, I nominate this humble project:

Rubber Ducks Get the Road Fixed

I love this one because it seems too easy. It’s so cheap and quick but also location-relevant (it was in front of a school and the kids loved playing with the ducks), culturally-relevant (this was in Macedonia and rubber ducks are a symbol of corruption in parts of the Balkans), and it worked (it got media coverage and this massive pothole was fixed days later)!

I have so many more I love, so I’ll be nominating others. You can nominate more than one too - go here to do it! 

We’re Being Frank. Join us?

Steve Lambert and I are headed to frank: the gathering. We are extremely excited to be giving a talk and workshop at this renowned excellent convening of people who care about communicating to change the world.

Read our post about it here.

One of my favorite Frank talks, from last year:

Elsa Waithe: Comedy is Power

I really love that she recommends to the young women comedians she teaches that they should try a joke at least 10 times, and then should only keep using it if it gets 75% approval (laughter) from the audience. Tough standards! And here also is Roy Wood talking about audience testing.

I’m into these because I believe in audience testing so deeply as a way to refine any work that is meant to engage people, and it’s part of what we talk about when we train people to do higher quality artistic activism. 

Do you conduct testing of your creative and/or activist work? We’d like to know. We have some tools and techniques, and we’d love to know about yours.

#artisticactions on our social media

We get a lot of requests for case studies about impactful projects, so we are sharing some of what we have (from the embarrassment of riches out there) on our social media.  They will come from your awards submissions (woot woot), actipedia, mini-grantees we are working with in West Africa and the Balkans, and from our amazing alumni network. In the next few week, look out for posts on food & drink, public transport hacks, and drone projects. 

First up from Amber Ginsburg and (Alumni) Aaron Hughes, "Tea Project".

"Taking as its starting point the curious love story of a Guantanamo Bay guard who fell in love with the drawings on the Styrofoam cups carved by detainees, the Tea Project is an ongoing series of exhibitions and performances that offers counter-narratives to disrupt the numbing effects of war and detention."

For more, check out the Tea Project and read our interview with Aaron.

And if you aren't already following us, do it!  We have a lot of stories to share.

Okay, go ahead and nominate some projects! 

We’re looking forward to finding out what you’re loving. And if you've got questions, you can always reach out to me and ask.

Best,

Rebecca (and with love from Steve, Steve and Jo)

And yeah you! Special thanks to everyone who donated during our end of year campaign.