Our Unstoppable Voters project is fighting voter suppression through creativity, joy, humor,and innovation.
Find out more at:
Unstoppable Voters Info Session
Friday, May 21, 3-3:45pm EST
Register via Zoom
We support and fund wild, experimental, funny and joyful projects and
help make them more impactful through training, research and community building.
If you can’t make it at this time, register anyway, and we’ll send notes afterwards, and a recording.
Who’s This For?
For Voter Advocacy Organizations
If you work for an organization and want support to make fresh, fun voter campaigns, get in touch, and attend the info session.
For Artists and Creative People
If you want to use your creative skills to help defend democracy, join the info session.
For Anyone Who Cares about U.S. Democracy
If you like this idea and want to support it, join the info session to learn more and be sure to sign up for our newsletter for updates soon. And donate!
What is Unstoppable Voters?
Unstoppable Voters celebrates voting rights and counters U.S. voter suppression through experimental, innovative advocacy. It is run by the Center for Artistic Activism, a leader in the field of research and training around creative campaigns. Effective advocacy must be waged on multiple fronts, and we bring a focus on the cultural change that is critical. We also bring new voices to advocacy – artists, cultural workers, and other creatives who contribute unique perspectives and revitalize movements with joy, humor and art. You may have seen our work in the press right before and after the 2020 election, like the feature in CBS This Morning.
If you’re not sure creative activism is effective, just look to our most recent huge win: we started the Free the Vaccine for COVID-19 campaign last year, to use creative activism to make COVID vaccines free and accessible globally–and the Biden administration just announced its historic support for what we’ve been fighting for!
Here’s what will happen in the next few months:
Creative Activism + Voting Info Session – May 21
This is the kickoff. We’ll discuss creative activism responses to voter suppression and how you can help. The session will include an extravaganza of voting rights experts, We’ll talk about how organizations, artists, activists and others can help.
Unstoppable Voters Workshop – Mid-June (exact dates TBA)
A three-session, online workshop where participants learn our trade secrets about creative activism, and refine ideas for anti-voter suppression projects. Great for staff and volunteers at voter advocacy orgs, for artists, creatives, and more. This is a chance to experience our popular Creative Activism Academy training that we’ve been honing for 12+ years in workshops around the world. You’ll learn lots of examples of inspiring and truly effective creative actions, plus processes and tools you can apply for years. Applications for the workshop will open by May 21.
Applications open for funding Unstoppable Voters Projects – June 11-25
We invite you to submit your best, wildest, most impactful project ideas.
You do not need to participate in the workshop to submit an application, but it will help you refine your proposal and make it more successful!
We’re especially looking for projects that:
- Are creative, risk-taking, innovative ideas that might not be supported elsewhere
- Feel relevant, exciting, pressing, and get new people to show up and get out
- Motivate people to act on calls from advocacy organizations
- Help advocacy organizations do a great job engaging people in voting issues
- Help other people express themselves through creative activism
- Are collaborations between artists and voting advocacy organizations
- Are nonpartisan
Some questions that we have, and that you can ask yourself:
- Will it have real impact against voter suppression, especially in key states like Georgia, Pennsylvania and Arizona? Does it align with real needs in communities most impacted by voter suppression?
- Does it do more than “raise awareness,” meaning, the project has strong potential to change people’s behavior?
- Does it empower and create community? Does it welcome people to participate?
How does this work for advocacy organizations?
In 2021 we are providing creative advocacy support – funding, artist fellows, training, outreach – to organizations working against voter suppression. Right now, thanks to a generous funder, we can give some of this support for free to a small number of advocacy organizations.
Some of the benefits that orgs see when they work with us are increased engagement among new audiences, more high-quality volunteer assistance, new leadership skills and organizing confidence among staff and volunteers, and more creative and successful campaigns.
How will it work? One or some of your staff should join the info session and sign up for the workshop. Or contact us.
Past Unstoppable Voters Projects
Some of the projects from 2020:
Cirque d’Vote organized dozens of circus performances at early voting locations and on Election Day. Courting Voters with Court Fees was a North Carolina effort focused on the approximate 100,000 formerly incarcerated people who could newly vote. Float the Vote organized Detroit food and ice cream trucks to educate people about registration, early voting and polling locations. #MyJamMyVote was a songwriting contest to amplify civic engagement in the 2020 election cycle. Project Your Vote projected voting information and narrative imagery in dozens of locations. Drawing Out the Vote was a voter mobilization campaign in Georgia that used music and animation to illustrate Fair Fight’s information about voting access. Voter Suppression Interventions drew attention to voter suppression tactics through satirical interventions and videos. Fuck Talking, Go Vote mobilized diverse cowboys and cowgirls across the country in 11 rides to the ballot boxes before election day. Delivering Democracy were troupes of dancing mailboxes throughout Pennsylvania. My Vote Won’t Bite took the form of stickers, flags, and posters in a dozen locations. Packing and Cracking is an interactive mapmaking event about gerrymandering.
More details about these and other Unstoppable Voters projects are here.
Unstoppable Voters is a project of the Center for Artistic Activism and has been made possible through the generous support of Andrea Soros Colombel and Open Society Foundations.
Thank you hugely to our generous Unstoppable Voters anchor funder Andrea Soros Colombel for knowing that artistic activism is the future of advocacy, and for caring so deeply about democracy.
The photos on this page are from the Unstoppable Voters projects in 2020.
This post was originally published on News – The Center for Artistic Activism.