Resources: Activating The Cultural Power of a Movement

"Art is Business"

On Oct 9, 2020, Arts & Democracy, The U.S. Department of Arts and Culture and NOCD-NY hosted Activating the Cultural Power of a Movement, an event that showcased inspiring, movement based organizations across the country. Leaders from racial justice, environmental justice, immigrant rights, and economic justice groups shared best practices, lessons learned, and strategies for building movement power with arts and culture. Here's a link to the event recording. Participants also shared resources on the non-partisan call, which we have compiled below.

Alternate ROOTS Alternate ROOTS supports the creation and presentation of original art that is rooted in community, place, tradition, or spirit. We are a group of artists and cultural organizers based in the South creating a better world together. ROOTS calls for social and economic justice and works to dismantle all forms of oppression – everywhere. Founded at the Highlander Research and Education Center, ROOTS shares resources and information and amplifies creative organizing in the South such as: Women Engaged, (Georgia); Spirit House (North Carolina), Art to Action (working in Tampa, Tennessee, Houston), and the BlackRadioProject (Mississippi). Artists are engaging through street theater, PSAs, virtual space animations, poetry slams, performances at lines at the polls, and more. You can find arts and activism tools on their website here.

Highlander Research and Education Center Highlander serves as a catalyst for grassroots organizing and movement building in Appalachia and the South, working with people fighting for justice, equality and sustainability, supporting their efforts to take collective action to shape their own destiny. Through popular education, language justice, participatory research, cultural work, and intergenerational organizing, they help create spaces where people gain knowledge, hope and courage, expanding their ideas of what is possible.

Make the Road New York Make the Road New York is building the power of immigrant and working class communities to achieve dignity and justice. Their model integrates four core strategies for concrete change that millions of families feel every day: legal and survival services; transformative education; community organizing; and policy innovation.

The Movement for Black Lives The Movement for Black Lives was created as a space for Black organizations across the country to debate and discuss the current political conditions, develop shared assessments of what political interventions are necessary in order to achieve key policy, cultural and political wins, and convene organizational leadership in order to debate and co-create a shared movement wide strategy. Art and artists are committed to helping the world reimagine public safety. The BREATHE Act and The Frontline are part of M4BL’s Electoral Justice Project. The Frontline Election Defenders is connecting thousands of volunteers with voters to overcome suppression, prepare to turn out on election day, and prepare together for whatever scenario comes next.