The Creative Advocacy Partnership (CAP) is a collective of Australian advocates, artists, designers and curators who use creative practice to bring heart and humanity to advocacy work. The CAP has four core members Tasman Munro, Arunn Jegan, Caitlin Gibson and Simone Chua, and four community seats (each project we invite people from the community who are the focus of the advocacy work to join the core team). Around this core group there is an outer ring of collaborators who support to develop, implement and share the projects. The CAP was established in 2022 with support from Médecins Sans Frontières and Amigo & Amigo.
“Creative advocacy does not take away from our engagements with decision-makers, but aims to raise awareness in ways we haven’t tried before”- Arunn Jegan (MSF Humanitarian Affairs Lead)
Working with the Rohingya Community
Since 2022 the CAP have been working with the Rohingya community on a series of projects to share experiences of statelessness and support the community to strengthen a culture that is at threat of disappearing. Three Rohingya folks stepped into the community seats including Asma Nayim Ullah (poet and human rights and youth leader in Sydney), Sujauddin Karimuddin (poet and community leader in Malaysia) and Ruhul (advocate in Kutupalong refugee camp), and a range of great folks have stepped into the callaborator seats, including Adela Lines (art director at Amigo&Amigo), Eloise Liddy (Communications at MSFA), Victor Caringal (photographer and media designer at MSFA), Noor Azizah (founder of the Rohingya Maìyafuìnor Collaborative Network) and Noor Uddin.
Projects
Over the past few years we have developed the following projects building connection with Rohingya stories:
Exhibition and film night exhibiting work from Kutupalong
Our Approach
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
All work and images Copyright Tasman Munro 2023 unless stated otherwise
