How to Win #14: Learn from Hollywood

With a savvy entertainer in the White House, we need to really understand how entertainment works, and wield that knowledge like a flaming sword on a windy but beautiful hilltop. With a savvy entertainer in the White House, we need to really understand how entertainment works, and wield that knowledge like a flaming sword on a windy but beautiful hilltop. What …

How to Win #13: Learn from South Africa

While having an autocratic, erratic and narcissistic madman as a president might be new to artistic activists in the US, this is standard operating procedure for activists in other parts of the world. In this webinar we talked with veteran South African activists Ishtar Makhani and Marlise Richter to learn how to navigate, and effectively operate in, …

How to Win Webinar #11: Recalibrate Reality

Why Recalibrate Reality? Should artistic activists use our work to hold a mirror up to reality to make the invisible visible? Or should we use our talents to imagine new possibilities of what reality could be? Or can we do both? Steve and Steve give a brief course on the latest aesthetic and cultural theory, and …

How To Win Webinar #10: Make Your Meetings Inventive

Why a Webinar about Meetings? We’ve all been in a lot of action planning meetings lately, and some of them… are less than productive. This training is on how to lead Action Planning Meetings that don’t suck and are super creative and effective. Steve Lambert and Steve Duncombe give you tricks from their years of artistic …

How to Win Webinar #9: Mine Pop Culture

How can progressives borrow and steal from pop culture to make real change? Pop culture can be read as a map to popular desire. In this video of our live webinar, Co-founder Steve Duncombe and Chair of our Board Pat Jerido of Leadership Matters Consulting show how to read the map and exploit the phantasmagoric …

How to Win Webinar #8: Change Minds

Our founders (The Artist! The Historian!) got deep into the Slap Chop, the Snuggie, and the Ginsu 2000! They shared what they’ve learned from infomercials (and some heavy communications theory) and revealed some simple tools to better understand audiences and communicate persuasively to people who don’t already agree. Notes from the webinar Lambert will be …

C4AA Fundamentals #7: Stay Hopeful & Avoid Burnout

In the Star Trek universe, Vulcans like Dr. Spock always think objectively and rationally. We’re not Vulcans. Human beings have a tendency toward self-deception – a trait that was a valuable part of human evolution and helped us survive over centuries. But fight or flight responses aren’t as needed or useful in everyday 2017. Steve …

C4AA Fundamentals #5: Cognitive Science

The co-founders of the C4AA discussed human cognition – how people think and process information. The Questions Why is it that people don’t seem to care about truth and the facts? Why is it so hard to change people’s political opinions? How do we introduce new ideas in audiences when their way of thinking doesn’t …

C4AA Fundamentals Webinar #4: What we’ve learned from history

Stephen Duncombe and Steve Lambert dug back into social movements through the ages. What did they discover? All successful activism has been artistic activism. Through examples, going back thousands of years, we examine the lessons from creative movements of the past, finding the kernels of ideas you can apply in your work today. Many workshop …

C4AA Fundamentals Webinar #3: What is Artistic Activism?

Founders of the Center for Artistic Activism answer the question, what do we mean when we say “artistic activism” anyway? Through looking at disparate examples, we expand our thinking on the the ways creativity can affect power. (Many past participants cite this section as one of the most inspiring.) But we’ll also talk about common …

C4AA Fundamentals Webinar #2: Building a Creative Campaign

Founders of the Center for Artistic Activism discuss how an effective campaign for change is structured. We cover goals, objectives, tactics, and strategy and how you can use these concepts in your creative practice and/or collective organizing. C4AA Fundamentals is a free webinar series is designed to cover the core concepts of artistic activism for …

C4AA Fundamentals Webinar: How to Use Creativity in Organizing

The founders of the Center for Artistic Activism discuss some basic principles of using creativity in organizing and pitfalls to avoid. This webinar is designed to provide some structure to your thinking and planning around how to creatively, and effectively, respond in the weeks to come. The webinar is done and we have a video …