Social Change and Creative Activism in the 21st Century


Book Description

This book is a large-scale study of global creative activism. It explores how activists facilitate the cultivation of societal alternatives. Harrebye shows that social activism has got a creative new edge that is blurring the boundaries between artist and activist, and pop, prank, and protest.




Popular Culture and the Civic Imagination


Book Description

How popular culture is engaged by activists to effect emancipatory political change One cannot change the world unless one can imagine what a better world might look like. Civic imagination is the capacity to conceptualize alternatives to current cultural, social, political, or economic conditions; it also requires the ability to see oneself as a civic agent capable of making change, as a participant in a larger democratic culture. Popular Culture and the Civic Imagination represents a call for greater clarity about what we’re fighting for—not just what we’re fighting against. Across more than thirty examples from social movements around the world, this casebook proposes “civic imagination” as a framework that can help us identify, support, and practice new kinds of communal participation. As the contributors demonstrate, young people, in particular, are turning to popular culture—from Beyoncé to Bollywood, from Smokey Bear to Hamilton, from comic books to VR—for the vernacular through which they can express their discontent with current conditions. A young activist uses YouTube to speak back against J. K. Rowling in the voice of Cho Chang in order to challenge the superficial representation of Asian Americans in children’s literature. Murals in Los Angeles are employed to construct a mythic imagination of Chicano identity. Twitter users have turned to #BlackGirlMagic to highlight the black radical imagination and construct new visions of female empowerment. In each instance, activists demonstrate what happens when the creative energies of fans are infused with deep political commitment, mobilizing new visions of what a better democracy might look like.




Creative Social Change


Book Description

What is our role in creating healthy organizations and a healthy world? This book fosters a unique dialogue on the interconnections between leadership, sustainability, the long-term viability of the planet, and organizational development. Together, these areas of research and action can contribute to creating a healthy society.




Finding Voice


Book Description

A model for cultural activism and pedagogy through art and community engagement




Art as an Agent for Social Change


Book Description

Art as an Agent for Social Change explores through original research, experiences, and personal narratives the role of the arts in bringing forth social change within three interconnected themes: community building, collaborations, and teaching and pedagogy.




Handbook of Communication for Development and Social Change


Book Description

This handbook provides a single reference resource for communication for development and social change. Increasingly, one considers communication to be crucial to effectively tackle the major problems of today. Hence, the question being addressed in this handbook is, is there a right communication strategy? Perspectives on sustainability, participation, and culture in communication have changed over time in line with the evolution of development approaches and trends, and in response to the need for effective applications of communication methods and tools to new issues and priorities. Divided into prominent themes comprising relevant chapters written by experts in the field and reviewed by renowned editors, the book addresses topics where communication and social change converge in both theory and praxis. Specific concerns and issues include food security, climate change, poverty reduction, health, equity and gender, sustainable development goals, and information and communication technologies (ICTs). The book shows how communication is essential at all levels of society. It helps readers understand the processes that underlie attitude change and decision-making and the work uses powerful models and methods to explain the processes that lead to sustainable development and social change. This is essential reading for academics and practitioners, students and policy makers alike.




Social Change 2.0


Book Description

If "change" is the mantra of our moment in history, Social Change 2.0 may be poised to become its bible. Drawing on his three decades in the trenches of large-scale societal transformation, David Gershon--founder and president of Empowerment Institute, and described by the United Nations as a "graceful revolutionary"--offers an original and comprehensive roadmap to bring about fundamental change in our world. His goal is to empower change agents to tackle pressing social problems or unmet social needs by providing them with strategies and tools to effect transformative change at any level of scale.From his initiation as architect of the United Nations-sponsored First Earth Run--a mythic passing of fire around the world symbolizing humanity's quest for peace on earth that drew tens of millions of participants, the planet's political leaders and, through the media, over a billion people at the height of the cold war--to his recent climate-change work helping citizens, cities, and entire states measurably reduce their carbon footprint (using his book Low Carbon Diet), Gershon offers readers strategies to evolve an effective new model for social change. These include: The first comprehensive social-change model with proven, practical strategies and tools to either launch a social change initiative or improve the efficacy of any existing change program. A "Practitioner's Guide" accompanying each chapter, to help readers apply this social change framework to their initiative. The result is a riveting, enlightening, and inspiring book that will quickly find its way onto the desks--and into the hearts--of the tens of thousands of change agents engaged in the work of building a better world. Social Change 2.0 speaks to a wide range of practitioners across the spectrum of social change including social and environmental activists, social entrepreneurs, community organizers, and civic, government, and business leaders, as well as the vast number of baby boomers looking for a way to give back and the millennials just raring to go.




The Barefoot Guide to Working with Organisations and Social Change


Book Description

"This is a practical, do-it-yourself guide for leaders and facilitators wanting to help organisations to function and to develop in more healthy, human and effective ways as they strive to make their contributions to a more humane society. It has been developed by the Barefoot Collective. The guide, with its supporting website, includes tried and tested concepts, approaches, stories and activities. It's purpose is to help stimulate and enrich the practice of anyone supporting organisations and social movements in their challenges of working, learning, growing and changing to meet the needs of our complex world. Although it is aimed at leaders and facilitators of civil society organisations, we hope it will be useful to anyone interested in fostering healthy human organisation in any sphere of life"--Barefoot Collective website.




Art in Action


Book Description

The field of expressive arts is closely tied to the work of therapeutic change. As well as being beneficial for the individual or small group, expressive arts therapy has the potential for a much wider impact, to inspire social action and bring about social change. The book's contributors explore the transformative power of the arts therapies in areas stricken by conflict, political unrest, poverty or natural disaster and discuss how and why expressive arts works. They look at the ways it can be used to engage community consciousness and improve social conditions whilst taking into account the issues that arise within different contexts and populations. Leading expressive arts therapy practitioners give inspiring accounts of their work, from using poetry as a tool in trauma intervention with Iraqi survivors of war and torture, to setting up storytelling workshops to aid the integration of Ethiopian Jewish immigrants in Israel. Offering visionary perspectives on the role of the arts in inspiring change at the community or social level, this is essential reading for students and practitioners of creative and expressive arts therapies, as well as psychotherapists, counsellors, artists and others working to effect social change.




Designing For Social Change


Book Description

This newest title in the design briefs series is a compact, hands-on guide for graphic design professionals who want to start helping communities and effectuating social change in the world. Author Andrew Shea presents ten strategies for successful community engagement, grounding each one in two real world case studies. The twenty projects featured in the book are by both design professionals and students and range from creating a map of services for the homeless community in Santa Monica, helping Chicago's Humboldt Park community by designing a website where donors can buy essential items for community members, to encouraging LA's Latina community to go for an annual PAP exam in an attempt to prevent cervical cancer through carefully designed posters, murals, and other material. Designing for Social Change is both an inspiration and a how-to book that encourages graphic designers everywhere to go out and do good with their work, providing them with the tools to complete successful projects in their communities.