Artful Activism Toolkit (ActionAid)
https://actionaid.org/publications/2021/artful-activism-toolkit-creative-activism
Body
The Artful Activism: A Toolkit for Creative Activism is a 21-tool practitioner handbook drawn from a three-year research process co-hosted by ActionAid (international NGO), the Centre for Human Rights at the University of York (UK), and partners in Uganda and Bangladesh - collectively branded the Creative Arts and Activism project [source: artful-activism]. The toolkit’s stated audience is artists, activists, development practitioners, and theorists who want to “do” development differently - including youth activists and practitioners seeking alternative creative strategies [source: artful-activism]. The publisher on the title page is ActionAid, dated 2021, and the public URL points at the actionaid.org publications hub [source: artful-activism].
Coverage: the toolkit distinguishes symbolic interventions (changing the meaning of an object or space - e.g. wrapping a building in protest cloth) from dramatic interventions (creating a new event or spectacle - e.g. a street-theatre flash, a public reading, a choreographed die-in) and supplies 21 tools structured around those categories, with worked examples from the Uganda/Bangladesh project sites, the underlying theories (cultural-studies and participatory-action-research framings), and pointers to wider resources and inspirational organisations [source: artful-activism]. The toolkit also gives contact details (Mary Wandia at ActionAid) for groups interested in piloting or adapting the tools, signalling that the publisher intended it to be reused in practice, not just read [source: artful-activism].
A campaigner reaches for it when designing an arts-based intervention in a development or rights context and wants a tested toolkit rather than to start from scratch - the 21-tool structure makes it usable as a workshop menu, and the UK/Uganda/Bangladesh examples help a new group benchmark what “good” looks like in similar field conditions. Treat as link-only. [source: artful-activism]
Use it for
Designing a creative-activism intervention; sourcing arts-based campaign methodology.
Related
- affinity-groups
- boycotts-and-strikes
- dilemma-actions
- escalation
- framing-and-narrative
- leadership-development
- methods-of-nonviolent-action
- noncooperation
- nonviolent-direct-action
- one-to-ones
- pillars-of-support
- public-narrative
- structure-tests
- the-tactic-star
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