Prompts for Creatives
teach in follow up - summary + notes
substack #41
Hi, I’m Bianca — Artist, Professor, & Creative Strategist in Los Angeles. In case you are new here or if a reminder could help, this newsletter began as an exploration of figuring things out, one day at a time. Upgrade to a paid subscription to make sure you never miss out on the really good stuff.
Hi All,
There are a lot of new folks here who are receiving this newsletter from last week’s teach in! Welcome! You can grab a summary of highlights from my teach-in lecture here.
A big thank you to our partners, our tech and support volunteers, and everyone who joined us. We know there were issues with the livestream, we appreciate ya’ll being so patient with our capacity and troubleshooting in real-time. I’m so happy so many creatives were hungry to build a better understanding of organizing and add their skill sets to this important moment of building power for Palestinian Liberation. If you’d like to be added to our volunteer list please fill out this form.
When we announced this training offering for Palestine, we got overwhelmingly great feedback. A few people questioned whether or not this would “actually help anyone.” For me this comment we received makes me feel like we were successful:
“This was a great intro to community organizing for me, a world that has always intimidated me, I am eager to explore and practice more ways to make an impact with my work - through design, through stories, through conversations.”
I hope you’ll stick around - I send out newsletters weekly to biweekly with updates on offering, programming, and resources. I’m a practicing artist, I teach interdisciplinary studios and intensives on design, futurism, and political education at ArtCenter College of Design, and I was a nonprofit Creative Director for over half a decade.
Posts on here range from “In the Lab” - my research, lectures, resources - to “In The Studio” my creative work, art, and process - to “In the After” special projects, writing, and culture work.
If I could run last week’s training again, here are some things I’d add…
I’ve been thinking a lot about the things I could not fit into this teach in. I had to cut out so much. The last time I ran this series we did a 101, 102, 103 session and an additional five weeks of summer school deep dive working sessions.
And while there are endless technical tools I could review what I really keep coming back to is culture. And I’m not just talking about the “creative” work we produce. Every time we gather, whether it is for learning, organizing, dancing, whatever, we are creating culture together. Specifically, I’ve been thinking about the ways we recreate harmful culture in organizing and creative space.
I constantly revisit this document on White Supremacy Culture. It’s a tool to understand how we unconsciously use these characteristics as norms and standards. I’ve brought that document to so many difficult conversations, both professional and interpersonal. It doesn’t matter who or where we are. I’ve worked across space - advertising, nonprofits, artists collectives - we can all be guilty of creating or upholding characteristics listed in the document. It’s a great to use for group reflection, but also something I come back to when I need to keep myself accountable.
A note, that this document isn’t a perfect checklist, but more of a helpful starting place for intentionally building culture together. Maurice Mitchell wrote a great piece about some of these issues and the state of leftist organizing if you want to dig deeper.
How can creatives practice working differently, especially when we are contributing to social movements?
Here’s are some prompts I’d offer to artists entering movement spaces:
1. Feeling Pressure to Scale?
“Scale”: to increase the size, amount, or importance of something
Who are you making this work for? What is the goal? Is the goal to reach as many people as possible? To build new relationships? To deeply transform perspectives? Is it possible to all those things at the same time? If not, which is more important to your goal right now? Reach? Relationship? Transformation? What outcome are you happiest with? Why? What benefits are available working in large settings? What can only be accomplished in small settings?
One of my smartest friends once shared that to her, scale was repeatable ease.
How does it feel to hear that?
2. Expecting Perfection?
“Perfectionism”: being entirely without fault or defect
Where does your idea of perfect come from? Perfectionism isn’t required for success. What are some specifics of what success looks like for this project? For this campaign? For this win?
Someone once told me the opposite of scarcity actually isn’t abundance, it’s having enough. So, what is good enough to reach your shared goal?
3. Experiencing False Urgency?
”False Urgency”: pressure to act due to a fake time limitation
I use “false” urgency here because urgency does exist. People are really being murdered at this very moment. There are actions that need to be taken as soon as possible.
But it’s good to discern where urgency is coming from. Whose timeline are you using? As a creative if you feel the need to be the first to do something first, ask why? What are you sacrificing for the sake of urgency? Who benefits? Who is harmed?
For each characteristic listed in the document it also offers “antidotes” we might try. One of them is the Seventh Generation Principle, based on an ancient Haudenosaunee (Iroquois)* philosophy that the decisions we make today should result in a sustainable world seven generations into the future.
I’m currently putting together my syllabus for my spring course, Design Futures: Lessons from Social Justice and Science Fiction. My goal is to keep pulling these threads into my own arts practice and build stronger futures frameworks to teach young artist and designers of color.
That’s where I’ll end this week. Thanks for sitting here with me.
Talk soon,
Bianca
p.s. If you learn anything from these weekly posts please consider upgrading to a paid subscription to support my work.
📖 Teach-In Summary
✏️ 2020 RAD ORGANIZING
🧑🏻💻 White Supremacy Culture Website
📄 White Supremacy Characteristics PDF
🎧 Tema Okun Decades Later
🔥 Building Resilient Organizations
✨ Stvnding Strong
🌼🌼🌼🌼
🌼🌼🌼🌼