We are developing an approach called ‘Creative Advocacy Partnerships’, where artists partner with communities who are experiencing injustice, and use creative practice to advocate for positive change. There are three principles of the CAP approach, and as the name suggests these are; Creative practice, advocacy and partnerships, the aims of these are outlined below.

Creative practice 

We use creative practice as the main vehicle to form partnerships and engage in advocacy work. This means:  

• The experience of creative practice is used to connect artists and communities together – utilising storytelling, co-design and collaborative making to support people to learn, heal, create and dream together   
• The physical outcomes of creative practice (media, artworks or spaces) are used to tell stories, connect audiences and advocate for change in moving and impactful ways. 
• Utilising materials and craft practices from focus communities supports to strengthen culture and tell rich stories of people and place   

Advocacy 

The focus of our work is advocating for positive change (which looks different in each context). 

Advocacy traditionally focuses on highlighting problems, presenting evidence and defining clear actions, while this plays an important role our approach to advocacy works on a different level.  We aim to strengthen the communities involved, amplify their voices, and encourage decision makers and the public to build care and connection with these communities (aiming to foster deeper motivation for allyship). We approach this through storywork where the creative process and artworks aim to shift the stories that define people and their experiences. This includes: 

• Challenging harmful narratives – e.g. stories that stereotype, victimise or de-humanise
• Amplifying alternative narratives – e.g. stories that highlight strengths, celebrate culture, allow people to describe problems in their own language and the public to bare witness in meaningful ways   
• Supporting community storywork – involving community storytellers and building on the way they’re already using storytelling and creative practice to shift the stories in their community. 

Partnerships

Works are produced in a series of partnerships, these aim to create transformative relationships and strengthen community’s capability to lead creative advocacy work. Partnership happen on three levels:    

• In the creative team – bringing diverse artists together, including 50% artists from the focus communities, aiming to weave diverse stories and creative practices together and support mutual learning, healing and collective action 
• Within community – creative workshops invite people from focus communities and the broader public to contribute to crafting the stories and making the physical work, aiming to add nuance to the story, connecting community in creative ways and building an engaged audience around the work   
• With supporting orgs – inviting orgs to support and take part in creative projects, encouraging them to work with the communities they support in creative and human ways

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Learn more about Creative Advocacy

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Work we’re building on

Using creative practice to shed light on injustice and mobalise people toward positive change is not a new thing! This is the work we’ve been building on: