Artivism: Exploring the Motivations and Impact of Socially Engaged Artists in Promoting Social Change

Background and Purpose: Although social work has a history of working with communities through creative and innovative approaches, as a profession, social work has not often employed socially engaged art as a mezzo/macro-level change method. Social work community-level efforts can benefit from art-based approaches. Art can facilitate creative engagement with social issues and stimulate new insights and knowledge of participatory processes. This is meaningful for social justice issues because it gives people a sense of being supported in their efforts to make changes. This phenomenological qualitative study explores the motivations, expectations of impact, and experiences of socially engaged artists. Gaining a deeper understanding of the factors that motivate and support socially engaged artists in promoting social change through their art is helpful for developing artivism logic models for social work mezzo/macro practice.

Methods: This study utilized a qualitative phenomenological research design to explore the experiences of socially engaged artists. Participants were selected using snowball sampling and included 10 socially engaged artists. The sample included 7 women with participants ranging in age from 25 to 68. Data were collected through in-depth semi-structured interviews and then analyzed using thematic analysis in ATLAS.ti. This analysis approach aims to uncover the participants’ lived experiences and subjective perspectives.

Results: The results of this study revealed that socially engaged artists have a strong sense of place and belonging to the communities they work with. They view their work as a way to create positive change and to bring people together. Many artists described feeling a sense of connection to something larger than themselves. The artists identified a range of impacts resulting from their work, including raising awareness of social issues, creating community engagement and dialogue, and effecting positive change.

“ Others might not be in a position to tell those [social justice] stories, so I am motivated most days to get up and to say, All right. How can I share this story in a way that is meaningful and relevant and inspiring for others?”

”We're like canaries in the coal mine, and we play a really important role in physically experiencing what's happening, whether it's war, it's poverty or it's waste, or destruction of any kind. Whatever it is, we feel it. And in the act of processing those visceral experiences they are giving these gifts to the world, these invitations to experience and look at the world differently.”

Conclusions and Implications: This study highlights the importance of considering the perspectives of socially engaged artists and the role that social workers can play in supporting their work. The findings of this study suggest that socially engaged artists can provide insights into the potential outcomes and impact of artivism projects. They can discuss the ways in which the project is intended to create social change, as well as the indicators or measures of success that will be used to evaluate the project's impact. This has implications for social workers collaborating with socially engaged artists and begins to inform the development of logic models for artivism projects.