by the Western Regional Advocacy Project
From the time WRAP created Without Housing, we have used art as a fundamental organizing tool. Our goal in “Without Housing” was to show data with more appeal than a bar chart. We gave artists the charts and asked them to come up with imagery that showed the real effects of that data on people’s lives. An image can quickly capture and communicate a vital statistic and help reinforce the meaning of those numbers.
Since then, our art has served several functions: street placards, announcements for actions, visualizing information, opposing or supporting legislation, statements of our core issues, giving life to campaigns. People identify with the visuals. They think of WRAP, and they think of a potent image. We are making our own culture against the mainstream narrative, and unifying our message across cities. The art is not a decoration to the movement, but a way to say who we are.
How we create together: We treat art as a part of the campaign. First, we create the messaging. Then artists meet with organizers, and we go back and forth drafting and giving feedback until we come to a final creation.
In a nutshell, the community tells the organizers what’s going on in the streets; organizers create messaging around that; then organizers work with artists to give visual life to the message, which we use to fight for changes we need.
