Art, Social Change & Young Women Bloggers

This week Beth Kanter and I finished our week being mentors for the Young Caucasus Women Project. Last Sunday each of us wrote a post to answer the question, “Who is your favorite artist (visual, dancer, performer, writer or musician) and why?” Here is Beth's post and here is mine. During the week the young women in the program from Armenia, Azerbaijan and Georgia wrote their own posts answering the question, we commented on their posts and they commented on each other's posts. On Friday our mentor cycle ended and a new one will begin with a new mentor blogger tomorrow (Sunday). The project will continue through the spring and into early summer.

I am pretty sure all of the mentoring positions are taken for this project, but Ore, who was one of the mentors for this project, is going to be starting a similar project for young Nigerian women. If you are interested in getting involved you can email her at oreblogging@yahoo.com.

While writing my mentor post last Sunday I got to thinking about how artists use art for social change and accumulated a bunch of links for related projects, programs and organizations that I thought I'd share:

Change Me: The Power of Imagery to Create Change. This is a project of the Getty Museum. (I know I read about it in someone's blog this week, but now I've forgotten whose so my apologies for not giving a blogger out there credit for the find). Anyone can submit an image that inspires them and that they think will touch or affect the person viewing it. For every submission the Getty gets, they will donate $10 to Friends of the Global Fight Against AIDS, TB and Malaria.

California College of the Arts' Center for Art and Public Life "The Center for Art and Public Life creates community partnerships using the arts to address issues of social justice, diversity, community development, and education. Our programming is woven across disciplines at California College of the Arts and serves the diverse populations of the San Francisco Bay Area."

Institute for Social Ecology: "A ten-day program for artists, performers, activists, and media makers who wish to create and examine socially engaged art and media projects."

Film Your Issue This is a contest being sponsored by MSN Spaces, MSN Video, MSNC.com, USA Today, Entertainment Weekly and mtvU. They are looking for 30 to 60 second "issue films" (live action or animated) made by United States residents ages 18-26. I think we're going to see more and more corporations getting getting in on this action.

WITNESS: "WITNESS uses the power of video to open the eyes of the world to human rights abuses. By partnering with local organizations around the globe, WITNESS empowers human rights defenders to use video to shine a light on those most affected by human rights violations, and to transform personal stories of abuse into powerful tools of justice."

Fifty Crows Social Change Photography "FiftyCrows Foundation aims to bridge the gap between venues and distribution mediums for documentary photography, and encourage public dialogue on the issues raised through the photography."

Art Into Action: "Art Into Action is an international program of the Natural World Museum (NWM) designed to actualize sustainable culture using art as a catalyst to inspire, educate, and engage the public in environmental awareness and action."

If you know of more cool projects or individual artists using art for social change, I'd love to hear about them. You can put the info. in the comments or email me at britt AT brittbravo.com.

Thanks!


art
activism
social change