An attendee views a display at the I’m Literally Taking It Out of the Mud exhibition at the Delaware Historical Society. ©Wendell Sisnett/VSSLS, 2023.
A photograph in a gallery depicting protests in response to state-sponsored violence. An open-mic spoken word piece demanding an end to racism. A living room gathering to develop new music that resists apathy toward political polarization.
Every setting where art is found is ripe for conversations about social justice. Infusing art with a call to take action against injustice—known as arts-based activism, or artivism—is an effective tool to connect more deeply to disaster-affected communities and cultivate better solutions to the social and systemic issues that lie at the root of disasters.
Applying these creative methods to disaster research provides a platform that allows the stories of those impacted to be heard. Disasters are increasing in frequency and severity, leaving communities increasingly more exposed. Artivism is a way forward for community-led and community-driven research to capture their impacts.
Why Artivism?
It is necessary to know how disasters affect the most marginalized people in our society if we want to design innovative approaches to prepare for and respond to them, as well as build individual and community resilience. Artivism is one strategy that addresses that. It gives us the ability to more fully recognize the humanity of those around us, thereby tapping into limitless ingenuity and creativity to achieve social justice and reduce suffering.
Creative methodologies should not be separate from the theories used to interpret disaster phenomena. Indeed, these non-traditional techniques help uncover what traditional approaches cannot completely account for. Genuinely representative research and engagement, as encouraged by artivism, centers how people engage in the world from their social perspective. Paying attention to personal accounts of both extraordinary and everyday experiences of injustice can drive home the true extent of disaster impacts.
Artivism as an Analytic Strategy
Art is dynamic and expansive and so artivism can take many forms in disaster research. For instance, it can be used as a process within an analytic research strategy. I used artivism in this way in my research on Black women under community supervision (i.e., probation, parole, and electronic monitoring) during the COVID-19 pandemic to better understand their involvement in the criminal legal (formerly termed criminal justice) system and how they made meaning of it during the pandemic.
The author (center) converses with other panelists at the I’m Literally Taking It Out of the Mud exhibition at the Delaware Historical Society. ©Wendell Sisnett/VSSLS, 2023
Using a poetic inquiry method, I immersed myself in the qualitative interview transcripts of Black women describing their community supervision experiences and the specific challenges of their status during COVID-19. This helped me to understand their perspectives and create poetry that interpreted and aligned with those experiences. This methodology allowed for an iterative analysis that amplified each participant's personal stories while illuminating the broader experiences shared by all participants.
Additionally, the poem itself was a text that could be analyzed. What language was used to describe an experience? To what extent did it come directly from a participant’s words? What creative liberties were taken? How I interpreted Black women’s experiences through poetry led to a more refined analysis that better encapsulated the myriad impacts of COVID-19.
Artivism as a Research Outcome
Artivism can also be a research and engagement outcome that results in creative projects that bring together audiences who may not always be in community with one another—academics, activists, advocates, community members, decision-makers, and those who are directly and disproportionately impacted by disasters.
I—along with my research participants and colleagues—used my social justice arts organization, Behind the Walls, Between the Lines, to co-curate and co-host I'm Literally Taking It Out the Mud. This exhibition used audio, visual, and spoken word representations to celebrate Black women’s spirit of resistance as they rebuilt their lives after being involved in the criminal legal system.
It was a powerful demonstration of how creative methodologies allow for direct engagement with research participants. It also amplified the stories and tellings of Black women, showing that they had agency to shape their worlds. The women’s calls to transform the criminal legal system underscored how research can be used as a political tool to bring about change based on the needs of community members. The exhibition also allowed the audience to experience their stories in a way that stripped away barriers and humanized the women.
A World of Possibilities
In Sister Outsider, Audre Lorde argued that poems serve as a vehicle for imagination. That is the essence of artivism in disaster research. Using creative methodologies expands the possibilities of how we prepare for, respond to, and recover from disasters. They offer an alternative existence—one that marginalized communities may or may not already embrace—that is achievable. In this way, artivism serves as an intentional strategy for social justice. It fosters empathy and understanding and connects the audience more deeply to the experiences of those marginalized by society. The solutions to the most pressing disaster challenges lie with those most deeply affected by them. Artivism amplifies their voices.
Felicia A. Henry is an artivist scholar whose research concentrates on the racialized and gendered aspects of the carceral state. Her scholarship also uses disasters as social occasions to study the strains of criminal legal involvement. Henry is the founder of Behind the Walls, Between the Lines, an arts-based movement to deepen the awareness of the legacy of racial inequity in America and inspire activism aimed at its dismantlement. Her work challenges systems of power that fuel anti-Blackness and advances creative solutions to promote the well-being of Black communities.