Gateways: International Journal of Community Research and Engagement

Vol. 18, No. 2
December 2025

Research article (peer-reviewed)

Creative Civics in Higher Education: Evaluating Implementation of Artistic Activism Pedagogy through the Unstoppable Voters Faculty Fellowship

Brandon Bauer

Associate Professor of Art, St. Norbert College, De Pere, WI, USA

Corresponding author: Brandon Bauer, brandon.bauer@snc.edu

DOI: https://doi.org/10.5130/yhf51167

Article History: Received 25/04/2025; Revised 23/10/2025; Accepted 18/11/2025; Published 12/2025

Abstract

This study evaluates the pedagogical impact of the Center for Artistic Activism’s (C4AA) Creative Campaign Framework, as implemented through the 2024 Unstoppable Voters Faculty Fellowship. The fellowship was a United States-based initiative designed to foster creative, non-partisan civic engagement in higher education using C4AA trainings and materials as outlined in their Creative Campaign Framework. The fellowship supported a cohort of nine faculty members across seven institutions, ranging from research universities to liberal arts colleges and a historically black university, that integrated C4AA materials into courses spanning clinical psychology, political science, theatre, design and the visual arts. Using a Faculty Learning Community (FLC) model and grounded in the Scholarship of Teaching and Learning (SoTL), the study employed qualitative methods to examine how fellows adapted the Creative Campaign Framework, the strategies they used to engage students and the outcomes of their campus-based civic engagement projects. Key findings include the Framework’s adaptability across disciplines, student responses to this approach to creative civic learning and the opportunities and challenges of translating activist language to academic settings. This is the first study to assess the application of the C4AA’s artistic activism pedagogy in a coordinated higher education initiative, offering new insights into the potential of creative civics pedagogy using the C4AA Creative Campaign Framework as an impactful and adaptable approach to teaching democratic habits and civic engagement.

Keywords

Center for Artistic Activism; Creative Campaign Framework; Creative Civic Engagement; Arts-Based Pedagogy; Higher Education and Democracy

Introduction

In the United States, trust in democratic institutions is in decline, civic participation is uneven and disillusionment with electoral systems continues to rise. Evidence shows that support for democracy in the United States suffers from a long-term generational decline, particularly among young people (Claassen & Magalhães 2023), which is exacerbated by political polarisation and misinformation. In this context, higher education faces an urgent responsibility not only to foster critical thinking in students but to help students develop as engaged participants in democratic life. Traditional models of civic education, grounded in procedural and content-based instruction, tend to privilege knowledge acquisition over the affective and participatory dimensions essential to democratic life. This is where creative civics pedagogy offers a compelling way forward.

One foundational source for this is found in the work of the American educational reformer and philosopher, John Dewey. In 1939, witnessing the rise of fascism in Europe, Dewey wrote an essay titled ‘Creative Democracy: The Task Before Us’, describing the need for democracy to be an active and engaged creative practice (Simpson & Stack 2010). In his view, creativity is a fundamental democratic practice that must be cultivated (Crick 2019). Today, creative approaches to civics education are needed more than ever, as democracy in the United States and around the world is under strain (International IDEA 2024). Given these challenges, a new sense of civic imagination must be nurtured by developing and implementing new creative forms of civic engagement. While the significance of arts-based approaches to civics is well-established, the past 10 years have brought a marked expansion of scholarship highlighting their effectiveness in civic and social justice education (Dewhurst 2014; Keifer-Boyd et al. 2023; Sholette & Bass 2018). Employing the tools and training of the arts in combination with other high-impact practices has the potential to be a powerful approach for teaching democratic habits.

As an artist, scholar and educator, much of my work focuses on the intersection of art and democracy. I have been working to bring creativity to civics education through arts-based approaches (Bauer 2025). During the 2024 presidential election cycle in the United States, I partnered with the Center for Artistic Activism (C4AA) to co-lead a US-based faculty fellowship in association with their Unstoppable Voters program. The C4AA is a 501(c)(3) non-profit organisation based in New York. C4AA has worked in 38 countries, bringing creativity to advocacy work on various issues. Through the Unstoppable Voters program, established in 2020, C4AA has worked with over 115 voting advocacy organisations in the United States and supported pro-voter projects in 29 of the 50 states. The faculty fellowship was part of a range of Unstoppable Voters program offerings developed by the C4AA to engage in the 2024 election, which also included a fellowship program for pro-voting civic organisations, a partnership program for civic-engagement organisations and other opportunities (C4AA 2023a). The Unstoppable Voters Faculty Fellowship is the first program to focus specifically on engaging higher education with the C4AA Creative Campaign Framework and related training materials and methods.

This study investigates a novel arts-based civics pedagogy intervention through the Unstoppable Voters Faculty Fellowship. The fellowship supported a cohort of nine faculty members from seven institutions, ranging from liberal arts colleges to a historically black university and research universities, who were trained to implement C4AA’s Creative Campaign Framework in their teaching (see Table 1). The Creative Campaign Framework offers a valuable lens for understanding the C4AA’s methodology. Grounded in the theory and practice of artistic activism, the framework provides a structured yet adaptable process for ideating, prototyping and implementing creative advocacy campaigns. The fellowship aimed to foster non-partisan student engagement with the electoral process by embedding creative civic strategies into a range of disciplines. Faculty participants were not only introduced to C4AA’s training methods and resources, including the Art of Activism book (Duncombe & Lambert 2021) and associated workbook, and the Unleashing Unstoppable Voters Toolkit (C4AA 2023b), but also encouraged to adapt these resources to their specific institutional contexts, curricular goals and course-based learning outcomes. To assess the pedagogical impact of this intervention, the study employed a qualitative research design grounded in the Scholarship of Teaching and Learning (SoTL). Using a Faculty Learning Community (FLC) cohort model, faculty members documented, shared and discussed their planning, implementation and evaluation processes through regular virtual meetings, reports and implementation reflections.

**Table 1. Unstoppable Voters Faculty Fellowship cohort (Note: participating faculty fellows gave informed consent to be identified by name and institutional affiliation.)**
Fellow	Institution type	Location (State)	Academic discipline	Course level for intervention
Fellow 1: Beck	Private research intensive	Pennsylvania	Visual art / Printmaking & photography	Undergraduate
Fellow 2: Berman	Private religious affiliated liberal arts	Minnesota	Clinical psychology	Graduate
Fellow 3: Burns	Private comprehensive	Pennsylvania	Theatre	Undergraduate
Fellows 4 & 5 (Team): Galvin & Sale	Public research intensive	Arizona	Visual art / Socially-engaged art	Undergraduate & Graduate
Fellow 6: Harris	Public research intensive	Virginia	Theatre	Undergraduate
Fellow 7: Hughes	Private research intensive	Pennsylvania	Design	Undergraduate
Fellow 8: Mascarenhas	Private religious affiliated historically black university	Louisiana	Political science	Undergraduate
Fellow 9: Smith	Public research intensive	Maine	Visual art / Intermedia	Undergraduate & Graduate

Research question

How did faculty fellows implement and/or adapt the C4AA Creative Campaign Framework to promote civic learning in their courses and what pedagogical outcomes resulted? In answering this question, the study offers insights into the strategies faculty fellows used to foster civic imagination and action, the challenges they faced in adapting activist tools for academic settings and the impact these creative approaches had on student learning and engagement. By examining the implementation of the Creative Campaign Framework across a diverse yet coordinated higher education context, the study contributes to a growing body of work on innovative, arts-based approaches to civic education.

Description of the C4AA Creative Campaign Framework

Echoing Dewey’s call to creative democracy, C4AA’s Creative Campaign Framework is both creative and pragmatic. It provides a structure to mobilise creativity to achieve a goal. It creates a clear and flexible pathway through a five-step process that harnesses creativity and developmentally builds it into individual and collective agency for action. Artistic activism as a concept was popularised in scholarship by the Belgian political theorist, Chantal Mouffe, and further developed in the field by the C4AA (Duncombe & Lambert 2021; Mouffe 2007), alongside contributions from art education scholars who have foreground the concept of artistic activism and its pedagogical potential in higher education (Black et al. 2023; Buller 2021).

The Creative Campaign Framework creates a clear and accessible process for engaging in artistic activism. While this framework is not a formal pedagogical model, it offers a valuable lens for understanding the C4AA’s methodology as articulated in its Creative Campaign Checklist (see Table 2).

**Table 2. Center for Artistic Activism Creative Campaign Checklist**
Creative Campaign Checklist	Unleashing Unstoppable Voters Toolkit chapter
Utopic goal	Step 1: Set goals & objectives (Page 16)
SMARTIE objective(s)	Step 1: Set goals & objectives (Page 22)
Primary audience	Step 2: Find audiences (Page 30)
Think feel do	Step 2: Find audiences (Page 32)
Audience personas	Step 2: Find audiences (Page 34)
Cost-benefit analysis	Step 2: Find audiences (Page 36)
Cultural terrain analysis	Step 2: Find audiences (Page 39)
At least 10 tactic ideas	Step 3: Develop terrific tactics (Page 44)
Selected tactic(s)	Step 3: Develop terrific tactics (Page 47)
Enhanced tactic(s) that are more celebratory, hopeful, joyous, mysterious, whimsical, surprising, irresistible, spectacular, personal, risky, innovative, participatory, interactive etc.	Step 4: Level up your civic engagement actions (Page 52)
Prototyped tactic(s)	Step 5: Take action (Page 64)
Evaluation plan	Step 5: Take action (Page 66)
Assessment methods	Step 5: Take action (Page 68)
Iteration & future plans	Step 5: Take action (Page 74)
Celebration & continuation	Step 5: Take action (Page 75)

Embedded in the framework is an adapted version of the SMART goal criteria, initially developed for project management (Doran 1981). ‘SMART’ stands for ‘Specific, Measurable, Achievable, Relevant and Time-Bound’. C4AA added ‘I’ and ‘E’ for ‘Inclusive’ and ‘Equitable’, transforming SMART goals into SMARTIE goals. This adaptation of SMART goals in the framework creates a scaffolded assessment guide. Beyond the embedded assessment, the framework guides the user through creative ideation and iteration, as well as addressing practical issues such as audience, cost-benefit analysis and the evaluation of creative projects. The Creative Campaign Checklist serves as a map to the framework and to the various training materials and methods employed in the fellowship. Checklist items are tied directly to material in the Unleashing Unstoppable Voters Toolkit. The fellows were given access to C4AA materials as they developed lessons to adopt the Creative Campaign Framework. They were provided with a spreadsheet of Artistic Activism Civic Engagement Lessons that included a description of specific lessons, their learning objectives, a link to a slide deck with specific slides for resources and templates covering the lessons, links to related exercises and resources, as well as related material found in the book, workbook, Toolkit and homework prompts (see Table 3).

**Table 3. Artistic Activism Civic Engagement lessons and resources**
Lesson	Learning objective	Slide deck resources?	Book, workbook & toolkit resources?	Other resources
What is artistic activism	Understanding artistic activism	Yes	Book, workbook and toolkit	Stepping off the curb exercise & case studies
The powers of art: Tools of creativity	Understand the powers of art and how to utilise them	Yes	Book, workbook and toolkit	N/A
Affect, effect, æffect	Key concepts for how artistic activism works	Yes	Book, workbook and toolkit	N/A
The creative process	The process by which to develop æffective artistic activism projects	Yes	Book, workbook and toolkit	Self-evaluation exercise
Beyond raising awareness	Raising awareness is not enough	Yes	Book, workbook and toolkit	Think, feel, do exercise
How to build a creative campaign	Learn the elements needed to develop an æffective artistic activism campaign	Yes	Book, workbook and toolkit	Draft SMARTIE objectives
Engaging audiences	Learn how to define your audience and create a campaign with specificity	Yes	Book, workbook and toolkit	Audience persona, talk to a stranger and cost/benefit exercises
Brainstorming tactics	Brainstorm the most imaginative, innovative, impactful tactics possible	Yes	Workbook and toolkit	Impossible/possible exercise
Choosing tactics	Learn how to select the most æffective tactic from many choices	Yes	Book, workbook and toolkit	Tactic mapping exercise
Prototyping	Iterating ideas into form	Yes	Book, workbook and toolkit	Prototype and get feedback
Experience design	Take your prototypes further	Yes	Book, workbook and toolkit	Let’s step it up! (handout)
Evaluation and assessment	How to track the impact of your campaign in traditional and creative ways	Yes	Book, workbook and toolkit	Æffect planning and assessment toolset

Training Goals and Methods

The Creative Campaign Framework serves as shorthand for a wide range of expandable ideas that C4AA’s training materials and methods encompass. The Creative Campaign Checklist refers to specific chapters in their Unleashing Unstoppable Voters Toolkit. This Toolkit was an essential resource to which the faculty fellows were exposed during their training. C4AA trainings have assisted many activist and advocacy campaigns around the world on issues as widely varied as Scottish Independence, faith-based social justice work, sex work decriminalisation, police surveillance, youth incarceration, COVID-19 vaccine access and more. Organisations and activist groups look to the C4AA and its trainings to bring creativity to their specific campaigns. Students, on the other hand, do not necessarily consider themselves to be either artists or activists, and any given course in a college or university is not a topical issue-focused campaign. While this is true, there have been educational resources developed that make the case that every academic discipline has a stake in elections. Projects like Ask Every Student — Your major on the ballot make it clear that the outcome of elections has implications for every student regardless of their field of study (Ask Every Student 2022). This is where the pragmatism and flexibility of the Creative Campaign Framework can be applied and approached from many angles, depending on the focus and learning outcomes associated with the individual course in which the materials are introduced.

The primary goal of the Unstoppable Voters Faculty Fellowship was to train a cohort of faculty fellows across various disciplines to foster civic engagement and encourage political participation among their students through creative methods and non-partisan pro-voting initiatives. This included encouraging students to develop a deeper understanding of democratic processes and utilising C4AA materials to help students create actionable pro-voting campaigns that extended beyond awareness-raising. The fellows were asked to evaluate the impact of this educational intervention on student learning, political awareness and voting participation and to provide insights on the adaptability of C4AA materials in their specific disciplines and educational settings.

Literature review: Creative civics pedagogy in higher education

CREATIVE DEMOCRACY AND CIVIC IMAGINATION

The concept of creative democracy, first articulated by John Dewey in the early 20th century, frames democracy not as a fixed system but as a dynamic, participatory process rooted in imagination, ethical inquiry and collaborative action (Simpson & Stack 2010). For Dewey, education plays a foundational role in sustaining democratic life, particularly when it fosters the habits of reflection, engagement and creative problem-solving. In today’s climate of democratic backsliding and civic disillusionment, Dewey’s concept remains both visionary and urgent. Recent scholars have expanded Dewey’s legacy by emphasising civic imagination, the capacity to envision alternative futures and more just forms of public life, as a key civic skill (Crick 2019). This notion of cultivating a civic imagination is not abstract; it is cultivated through everyday acts of political engagement. Civic imagination offers a conceptual bridge between civic education and arts-based learning, making the case for why creativity is not peripheral to democratic life but essential to its renewal.

ARTISTIC ACTIVISM AS PEDAGOGY

Artistic activism, the combination of creative practice and strategic civic action, has emerged as a powerful method for engaging communities through creative advocacy strategies (Duncombe & Lambert 2021). Long practised by artists and organisers, it has also gained traction as a pedagogical strategy, with developments in both K–12 education (Anderson et al. 2010; Beyerbach & Davis 2011; Naidus 2009; Tavin & Ballengee Morris 2013) and higher education (Black et al. 2023; Buller 2021). The Creative Campaign method developed by C4AA offers a novel and formal approach to artistic activism, combining elements of campaign planning, creative ideation and evaluation through tools such as the SMARTIE goal model and the scaffolding of these methods in the Creative Campaign Checklist.

Artistic activism has evolved considerably in higher education, especially over the past 20 years, reflecting a growing recognition of its pedagogical and civic potential. Sholette and Bass (2018) and Dewhurst (2014) have emphasised the importance of arts-based approaches in teaching for social justice, noting their capacity to activate students’ critical and emotional faculties while also fostering collaborative and civic learning. Buller (2021) demonstrates how art and design curricula can be structured around activism to bring social justice into higher education, while Black et al. (2023) highlight the role of critical dialogue and student-centred practices in cultivating civic agency. Together, these pedagogical modes blur the boundaries between learning and action, enabling students to see themselves as agents of change. The Creative Campaign Framework formalises artistic activist methods into a novel, clear, accessible and user-friendly structure that guides participants from imaginative ideation to actionable civic engagement.

CIVIC LEARNING AND STUDENT ENGAGEMENT IN HIGHER EDUCATION

Higher education has long been recognised as a vital site for cultivating civic engagement. However, evidence indicates that traditional approaches, such as lecture-based instruction on political institutions, often fail to inspire students or deepen their commitment to democratic engagement (Colby et al. 2010). Civic learning that emphasises experiential and participatory methods has shown more promise, particularly when it involves real-world relevance and opportunities for collective action (Saltmarsh & Hartley 2011).

Emerging research highlights the importance of cultivating early voting behaviour, as participation in a first election is strongly correlated with long-term civic engagement (Dinas et al. 2024). This makes college campuses not only appropriate but strategically vital spaces for cultivating political participation. Programs that combine civic action with creativity, especially those rooted in students’ disciplines or local or cultural contexts, can engage students in ways that more conventional models of civic education cannot.

Despite the proliferation of civic engagement initiatives on campuses, a gap remains in evidence-based models that integrate creativity, discipline-specific inquiry and civic skill-building. This study aims to address this gap by testing a structured yet adaptable model of artistic activism in a range of higher education contexts.

FACULTY DEVELOPMENT AND THE SOTL APPROACH

Transforming civic learning in higher education requires not only new pedagogical tools but also faculty support structures that promote experimentation, collaboration and reflection. The FLC model has proven to be an effective structure for supporting such innovation (Cox 2004). When paired with the principles of the SoTL, this type of faculty development becomes a site not just for professional growth but for knowledge creation about teaching itself (Felten 2013).

Faculty fellows that engage in SoTL practice develop the capacity to reflect on their teaching critically, collect evidence of student learning and contribute findings to the broader educational community. Yet relatively few SoTL studies address creative or arts-based civic engagement in interdisciplinary contexts. Moreover, most faculty development programs do not prepare educators to teach for civic outcomes using tools drawn from artistic activism or design justice (Costanza-Chock 2020). This study contributes to filling that gap by analysing how faculty fellows interpreted, adapted and assessed the effectiveness of the C4AA materials in their own courses.

Synthesis and contribution

This literature review is intentionally synthetic rather than exhaustive, offering a summary that foregrounds the novel contribution of applying the C4AA Creative Campaign Framework, rather than providing a comprehensive mapping of every point of overlap or divergence with prior scholarship. This review identifies a convergence of ideas, ranging from creative democracy and civic imagination to artistic activism and civic learning, that collectively frame the field of creative civics pedagogy.

By examining the experiences of nine faculty fellows who implemented the Creative Campaign Framework in courses spanning psychology, theatre, political science and visual art, this study provides new evidence on how creative civic strategies can be adapted across disciplines. It further demonstrates how structured faculty development models and SoTL methods can support the effective integration of artistic activism into academic teaching, fostering civic learning in innovative ways.

Methods

This study employed a qualitative SoTL research design. The aim was to assess the pedagogical effectiveness of the C4AA framework for fostering civic learning and student engagement during the 2024 US election cycle.

Faculty Learning Community model

The study was structured as a FLC, a model commonly used in SoTL to foster collaborative pedagogical inquiry and innovation. Throughout the fellowship, the cohort met regularly in facilitated virtual sessions to explore the C4AA’s Creative Campaign approach and to exchange ideas about its classroom implementation. Fellows shared educational resources they developed, such as syllabi, assignments and project designs, offering feedback and reflecting collectively on their pedagogical ideation and implementation within their specific contexts. The ongoing dialogue between theory and practice mirrored the kind of reflective exchange central to effective teaching and learning models, where iterative cycles of design, action and reflection deepen participants’ understanding. This community-based approach fostered cross-disciplinary dialogue, supported iterative adaptation of creative civic learning strategies across diverse educational contexts and cultivated a shared sense of trust and purpose as participants engaged with this form of artistic activist pedagogy.

DATA SOURCES

The study drew from multiple qualitative data sources throughout the fellowship to capture both the faculty experience and the reported impact on student learning (see Table 4). The collected data enabled a multi-perspectival analysis of how creative civics pedagogy was interpreted, enacted and evaluated in various contexts. The data sources collected included:

Pre-, mid- and post-fellowship surveys

Fellows completed surveys at the beginning, middle and end of the program to assess their familiarity with C4AA materials, teaching goals and reflections on pedagogical outcomes.

Monthly reflections

Fellows submitted monthly narrative updates documenting their planning, implementation, classroom activities and reflections on student engagement and learning. These updates were shared in a collaborative online forum that enabled peers to exchange feedback and support one another’s ongoing projects.

Final reports

At the conclusion of the fellowship, participants submitted comprehensive final reflections, which included a qualitative analysis of their teaching, an assessment of student outcomes and insights on adapting C4AA materials for their specific courses and institutional contexts.

Student artefacts

Faculty fellows shared representative examples of student work produced during the projects, including campaign prototypes, creative assignments and reflections on civic engagement, as well as photographic documentation of student projects. In some cases, faculty fellows also collected informal student feedback or survey data.

Cohort session notes and communications

Recordings and notes from the FLC’s virtual meetings were used to contextualise and triangulate findings.

**Table 4. Unstoppable Voters Faculty Fellowship timeline and schedule**
Spring 2024 pilot timeline	Spring fellowship schedule
December 2023	Initial virtual fellowship cohort meeting and training, C4AA materials distributed to fellows
January 2024	Informed consent for participation in a SoTL research project and pre-fellowship survey sent
Early January	Pre-fellowship survey completed and informed consent collected
Mid January	Project proposals for the spring semester due, fellows provided with feedback by project leads
Early February	Fellows report on progress and are provided with feedback from cohort and leads
Early March	Fellows report on progress and are provided with feedback from cohort and leads
Mid March	Virtual fellowship cohort meeting with cohort discussion and feedback
Early April	Fellows report on progress and are provided with feedback from cohort and leads
May	Final pilot project reporting with reflection and self-assessment
Late May	Final spring virtual cohort meeting with cohort discussion and feedback
Fall 2024 project timeline	Fall fellowship schedule
Mid August	Initial fall virtual cohort meeting with cohort discussion and feedback
End of August	Project proposals for the fall semester due, fellows are provided with feedback by project leads
September	Fellows report on progress and are provided with feedback from cohort and leads
Fall 2024 project timeline	Fall fellowship schedule
October	Fellows report on progress and are provided with feedback from cohort and leads
Early November	Post-election virtual cohort meeting with cohort discussion and feedback
December	Final fellowship project reflection, self-assessment and reporting
January 2025	Submission of final fellowship portfolio (including plans, documentation of projects, reflections, student and partner reflections), fellows submit individual post-fellowship scholarship plans and complete the post-fellowship survey

Ethical considerations and Institutional Review Board

The study was reviewed and approved by the Institutional Review Board (IRB) at the Principal Investigator’s institution. The study qualified as a pedagogical research project under SoTL and Community-Engaged Scholarship (CES) standards. In accordance with IRB approval and CES principles, fellows were aware that their contributions would be used as part of a study. The IRB granted a waiver for de-identification of participants, recognising the importance of context and attribution in collaborative, reflective teaching research. All participating faculty fellows gave informed consent to be identified by name and institutional affiliation. For the purposes of this manuscript, fellows have been identified only by their last name, the type of institution they represent and the state in which the institution is located. Student data was shared in aggregate or through anonymised artefacts when referenced in reports or reflections. No student names or identifying information were used in the reporting material provided by the fellows, and therefore, have not been included in the analysis for this study.

Community-engaged and contextual variability

While the fellowship used a common training, materials and shared goals, each fellow’s implementation work was highly contextualised, reflecting the diversity of disciplinary learning objectives, student populations, institutional missions and local political climates. Some fellows partnered with campus civic engagement offices or community organisations, while others embedded creative civic action within discipline-specific coursework. For example, one fellow collaborated with a local youth voting coalition, while another facilitated in-class campaign design as part of a psychology practicum on voter behaviour. This variability enriched the study, offering insight into how a structured artistic activism framework can be adapted flexibly across disciplines and institutional contexts.

The community-engaged nature of the projects was further reinforced by the expectation that fellows would move beyond voter awareness toward participatory civic action. Projects were designed to encourage students not only to learn about democratic systems, but to actively contribute to them, through creative public-facing non-partisan pro-voting campaigns grounded in regional, local or campus specific culture.

SPRING PILOT PROJECTS

The spring was intended as a pilot period in which the fellows experimented with C4AA materials while receiving feedback and support as they developed their projects. The spring projects were being developed in a variety of courses and included: a collaborative art and environmentalism project; teaching policy advocacy for psychologists which included visits to state legislative and congressional offices; creating public performance works to encourage students to register to vote; using artistic activism methods to engage campus voting through community engaged design; an ‘Amplify the Polls’ public performance project, and more. One fellow’s spring pilot project included the development of a pop-up event with political party games that engaged participants with locating their representatives, polling locations and issues on the ballot. This project was developed as part of a political science student club and events were held both on campus and in the community. Another project sought to leverage relational dialogue to engage students in the upcoming election and a ‘dialogue cafe’ was created with interactive art to draw people to the event and into conversation. One fellow used the pilot period to engage in deep community-based research, working with various community-based non-partisan voting organisations to learn more about their work, and how best to utilise design students to assist in community get-out-to-vote efforts. The fellows’ spring projects were reported through a C4AA newsletter on their websites which discussed key takeaways from the spring pilots (C4AA 2024).

Through the pilot projects, the fellows used various C4AA training materials in their courses. They reflected on which materials were most useful and assessed their effectiveness in achieving the stated learning outcomes of the projects they developed (see Table 5).

**Table 5. Unstoppable Voters Faculty Fellowship spring pilot projects**
Fellow	Course(s) & level (UG/G)	Pilot project	Intended outcome	Most useful C4AA material
Fellow 1: Beck	Wanderlust: Art and Nature (UG)	Development of speculative environmental art installations and interventions	To have students see themselves as engaged artist-citizens	Actipedia
Fellow 2: Berman	Social Justice Advocacy for Psychologists (G)	Creativity in activism and advocacy	To learn advocacy by doing	How to Build a Creative Campaign lesson
Fellow 3: Burns	Playwriting 2, Intro to Performance Studies and Devised Theatre 2 (UG)	Public performance interventions	Election engagement through public performance	How to Build a Creative Campaign and Engaging Audiences lessons
Fellows 4 & 5 (Team): Galvin & Sale	Art and Community (UG/G)	Artists Who Vote	Introduce C4AA methods to engage in the election	Art of Activism workbook
Fellow 6: Harris	Communication, Performance and Activism (UG)	Amplify the Poll	Implement performative pro-voting campaign on campus and in the community	SMARTIE Framework
Fellow 7: Hughes	Count Us by Connecting US (UG)	Learning, listening and planning	Deep listening and learning from campus and community groups to aid in the design of a pro-voting communication design project for the general election	Powers of Art: Tools of Creativity, Beyond Raising Awareness, How to Build a Creative Campaign lessons and SMARTIE Framework
Fellow 8: Mascarenhas	Introduction to American Government (UG)	Political party pop-up event	Register students to vote, know their polling location and educate about the general election	SMARTIE Framework
Fellow 9: Smith	Social Practice and Feminist Theory (G)	Suffrage March and Dialogue Cafe	Election engagement through public performance and engaged community dialogue about the election	The Creative Process, Experience Design and Engaging Audiences lessons, the SMARTIE Framework and Actipedia

FALL GENERAL ELECTION PROJECTS

Many unprecedented political events happened in the United States between the end of the spring semester and the return to campus in the fall making for a historic election cycle. Polls consistently showed the race to be a toss-up between the two major party candidates. This fellowship included five of the nine fellows working in states considered swing states in national elections in the United States. With the polls showing such a close race, the focus on those states was magnified.

In this context, the fellows prepared themselves to develop pro-voting projects with their students. Taking what they learned about implementing C4AA materials in their classes from the spring pilots, the fellows expressed feeling more prepared to develop pro-voting projects with their classes and on their campuses in the fall. The fellows again employed a variety of C4AA training materials in their courses and at the end of the semester reflected on which materials were of most use, as well as reflecting on and assessing the effectiveness of these materials for the stated learning outcomes of the projects (see Table 6).

**Table 6. Unstoppable Voters Faculty Fellowship fall general election projects**
Fellow	Course(s) & level (UG/G)	Fall project	Intended outcome	Most useful C4AA material
Fellow 1: Beck	Print to the People (UG)	Creating pro-voting print-based public art to be posted around the city	To have students engage deeply with specific issues that resonate with them	SMARTIE Framework, Iterative process, Toolkit readings
Fellow 2: Berman	Social Psychology (G)	Social justice advocacy and civic engagement	To work through the Creative Campaign Framework to develop an advocacy project	The Unstoppable Voters Toolkit, How To Build a Creative Campaign, Prototyping, Tactics and the ‘Imagine Winning’ exercise
Fellow 3: Burns	Playwriting I (UG)	Public performance interventions	Election engagement through public performance	Stepping off the Curb and Creating the Irresistible Image
Fellows 4 & 5 (Team): Galvin & Sale	Art and Community (UG/G)	Artists Who Vote and Partnership with National Voter Education Week	Develop artistic intervention projects both in public and through online spaces of engagement	How to Build a Creative Campaign, Engaging Audiences and Brainstorming Tactics
Fellow 6: Harris	Introduction to Applied Collaborative Technique (UG)	Hear Us Out and Walk In My Shoes: Polls, public performances	Implement community performative pre- and post-election spaces for care and reflection	SMARTIE Framework
Fellow 7: Hughes	Communications Studio III: Advocacy and Action (UG)	Our Vote Our Future voter education pop-up exhibition	Creation of a flexible visual system to promote campus voting	Æffect worksheet, What is Creative Activism lesson, Becoming a Superhero, Stirring Emotions into Action, From Awareness to Action lesson
Fellow 8: Mascarenhas	Introduction to American Government (UG)	Social media video interviews and sharing voter registration resources	Using artistic activism to reinforce the political participation unit	What is Artistic Activism & SMARTIE Framework
Fellow 9: Smith	Creative Concepts, Social Practice and Feminist Theory (G)	Suffragette March, Dialogue Cafe, There is no US without U voter registration project, Right to Read banned book box project	Election engagement through public performance and engaged community dialogue about the election	Art as Activism book, the SMARTIE Framework, and C4AA website

With this deeper understanding gained from their spring pilots, the fellows took on more ambitious projects or further developed projects they had undertaken in the spring with greater focus. The fall projects were developed in a variety of courses including: a printmaking course exploring the history of political printmaking and propaganda; a graduate level social psychology course; an introductory playwriting course; a combined undergraduate and graduate course on art and community; a theatre course in applied collaborative technique; a design course focusing on advocacy and action; an introduction to American government course; and a graduate level social practice art and feminist theory course.

Findings

This study analysed qualitative data collected from faculty fellows at the conclusion of the fellowship, including final reflections, survey responses and student project documentation. Seven core themes emerged from the data:

1. student engagement and empowerment through creativity;

2. the adaptability of the Creative Campaign Framework as a pedagogical structure;

3. faculty pedagogical growth;

4. students overcoming political discomfort;

5. contextual adaptability of the framework across disciplines;

6. civic impact beyond the classroom; and

7. the value of the fellowship structure itself.

Together, these findings offer insight into the pedagogical potential of creative civics approaches in higher education settings.

1. STUDENT ENGAGEMENT AND EMPOWERMENT THROUGH CREATIVITY

Fellows consistently reported that integrating C4AA’s Creative Campaign Framework into their teaching significantly increased student engagement and ownership. Faculty fellows observed that students responded with heightened motivation and purpose when given the opportunity to express civic concerns through creative, public-facing projects:

They created innovative ideas and projects that addressed the environment, immigration, reproductive rights, trans issues and bodily autonomy, voting access and more. They liked both the freedom and the iterative structure as a means to express their ideas (Beck).

By offering a space that integrates creative expression as a tool for empowerment, students responded positively to activities such as creating embodied works, tableaux and short monologues. These exercises allowed them to explore and express their personal relationship with voting while fostering meaningful collective dialogue (Harris).

Many fellows described students gaining a stronger sense of civic agency, particularly when engaging with unfamiliar or intimidating political content in a supportive and creative environment.

2. THE FRAMEWORK PROVIDED A CLEAR AND ADAPTABLE PEDAGOGICAL STRUCTURE

Fellows widely praised the C4AA Creative Campaign Framework, especially the SMARTIE goals and the Creative Campaign Checklist, for helping students break down abstract civic challenges into specific, manageable and imaginative campaign plans. The structure supported scaffolded learning and encouraged rigorous, creative thinking:

The SMARTIE objectives really helped students work through prototyping projects. Students were able to also use these to assess the projects in our debrief and reflection sessions (Smith).

The curriculum library significantly enhanced my course learning objectives by bridging conceptual understanding with practical application. For example, the lesson on ‘What is Artistic Activism’ introduced students to the concept of integrating art into political engagement. This lesson reinforced ideas from our political participation unit, helping students connect institutional and non-institutional forms of civic engagement and see how creative approaches amplify political action (Mascarenhas).

Having ongoing student-led spring projects to use as examples of what was being done was helpful for fall projects, and started to show what creating a culture of ongoing student artistic activism on campus could look like if this were an ongoing aspect of coursework (Burns).

In disciplines where creativity or public engagement were not commonly foregrounded, the framework served as a flexible entry point to explore civic action.

3. FACULTY REFLECTED ON GROWTH IN THEIR OWN PEDAGOGY

Several fellows noted a transformation in their teaching approaches. Participating in the fellowship encouraged them to shift their roles from instructors to facilitators of student-led civic action and to value the creative process over polished final outcomes:

Through teaching artistic activism and creative civic engagement, I learned that my students are capable of far more than I initially anticipated. Many of them, especially as mostly freshmen, surprised me with their level of motivation and practical skills. I didn’t realise how resourceful they could be when it came to applying what they learned to real-world scenarios. I also discovered that the creative process itself is just as valuable as the final performance. When students were given the freedom to express themselves and explore their own ideas, they became far more engaged in the work. Overall, I learned that allowing students creative autonomy fosters deeper engagement and results in higher quality work (Mascarenhas).

Students are hungry for opportunities to feel hopeful about their futures, political and otherwise, and they have been systematically disempowered by a variety of features of our present historical moment. I was surprised at how easy it was to rekindle, both in myself and in my students, a sense of hopeful empowerment simply through creating some dedicated space and time to engage with our (flawed) democracy. In practice what that meant was reaching out to legislators at the local and federal levels, setting up meetings, creating briefs, attending hearings and lobby days, doing the work (beyond voting) of civic engagement and finding creative ways to put our voice into these actions. From these experiences, students and I learned that civic engagement means seeing voting as just the beginning, not the end goal (Berman).

These shifts often included more intentional opportunities for reflection, risk-taking and democratic classroom dynamics.

4. STUDENTS ENCOUNTERED AND OVERCAME POLITICAL DISCOMFORT

Some faculty fellows reported that students were initially hesitant to engage in politically oriented or public-facing work. Concerns included fears of being perceived as ‘too political’, a lack of identification with the label ‘activist’, a lack of prior civic experience or unfamiliarity with the tools of the creative process.

The students were intimidated by the thought of doing something ‘political’. As we approached the election, they became less so. I think the curriculum is great, any obstacles we faced were really a hesitancy to take risks, and to be visible in a public way (Smith).

Many students entered the course feeling apathetic or powerless about the electoral process, often expressing that their voices didn’t matter or that the complexity of societal systems left them overwhelmed. Interestingly, many students were more inclined to engage with the material from a reflective space, using the methodologies to process and examine their own experiences and values. This reflective approach was especially apparent in their final project. They collaborated to create a potluck in the park centred on themes of grief and collective care, inviting friends and community members to participate in creating a reflective and welcoming space (Galvin & Sale).

Faculty fellows addressed this discomfort by building trust, scaffolding civic concepts and encouraging students to explore personal stakes and local relevance.

5. PROJECTS WERE ADAPTED ACROSS DIVERSE CONTEXTS AND DISCIPLINES

While all fellows engaged with the same framework and core resources, their courses and student populations varied widely. The adaptability of the C4AA approach enabled its integration across diverse institutional types and disciplines, including psychology, design, political science, performance and socially engaged art.

For non-artists it’s a way of thinking about making ideas manifest. For artists it’s a way to make visual ideas more explicit and engaging in a social context (Beck).

This program empowers faculty and students by providing curricular resources and funding to pursue utopian goals for a better future and to learn how to engage in social justice advocacy, even in disciplines where that may be unfamiliar. In a time of unprecedented student debt and other stressors facing our students, learning skills to leverage their social capital and political power in an atmosphere that is hopeful and empowering, is supportive of their survival, not just their educations (Berman).

This disciplinary flexibility supports the claim that creative civics pedagogy can be integrated across arts, liberal arts and professional disciplines.

6. CIVIC IMPACT EXTENDED BEYOND THE CLASSROOM

Fellows reported significant public engagement resulting from student projects. These included voter education events, zine publications, performances, design interventions and online campaigns. Collectively, projects reached thousands of peers and community members:

• Hughes’ design students reached approximately 1500 people through ‘Our Vote Our Future’ voter education pop-up event;

• Berman’s psychology students collected over 300 signed voting commitments for their #GENVOTE2024 campus voter mobilisation drive;

• Galvin and Sale’s #ArtistsWhoVote campaign engaged students through public events and digital storytelling, in coordination with the National Voter Education Week initiative with videos reaching approximately 21 000 people through social media channels with large followings; and

• Burns’ giant pierogi mascot ‘Reggie’ (for ‘Reggie-ster to Vote’) reached hundreds at in-person events and parades, thousands through social media and tens of thousands through features in local print and broadcast media outlets in a major metropolitan area.

• These outcomes highlight the potential of creative approaches to assist in the transition from student awareness to civic action and community participation.

7. THE FELLOWSHIP STRUCTURE SUPPORTED COLLABORATION AND LEARNING

Finally, faculty fellows affirmed the value of the fellowship’s community structure. The FLC model fostered peer exchange, mentorship and accountability, while curriculum resources and modest financial support enabled experimentation and risk-taking.

I felt truly supported throughout the process, especially in the feedback and suggestions provided on my reports. Even individual communication was quick, thoughtful and encouraging, which made a big difference in keeping me motivated and on track (Mascarenhas).

The project-based goals are great. Focusing on actionable, measurable outcomes was really inspiring. I loved meeting and learning from the other fellows (Hughes).

The community of fellows and C4AA gathering and sharing was so valuable as we find ourselves teaching and responding to these challenging times. Having the resources and the fact that I was not alone in this was so important (Smith).

Faculty fellows reported that the community and tools they gained through the fellowship would continue to inform their teaching beyond the 2024 election cycle.

Discussion

This study explored how faculty fellows from diverse contexts implemented the C4AA’s Creative Campaign Framework in their classrooms during the 2024 US election cycle. The findings offer new insights into how creative civic engagement strategies can empower students, support faculty pedagogical development and foster democratic participation in higher education. The results affirm and expand upon emerging scholarship in creative civics pedagogy, artistic activism and community-engaged learning.

ADAPTABILITY ACROSS DISCIPLINES AND INSTITUTIONS

A notable finding was the adaptability of the C4AA materials across a range of institutional types and academic fields. This flexibility suggests that the Creative Campaign Framework functions as a portable pedagogical model, one that can be customised without losing its civic grounding. Similarly to Pablo Helguera’s (2011) concept of ‘transpedagogy’ in socially engaged art, fellows found that civic learning could be integrated into their existing disciplinary frameworks in ways that expanded, rather than detracted from, core course goals and learning outcomes. This signals a developing area of inquiry that would benefit from deeper theoretical articulation and continued scholarly attention.

CIVIC IMPACT AND STUDENT LEARNING BEYOND THE CLASSROOM

The reach of student projects extended beyond classroom walls. Fellows documented hundreds of peer interactions, public performances, campus events, social media campaigns and local media features. These outcomes speak to the growing recognition that civic learning should be experiential, public and action-oriented (Saltmarsh & Hartley 2011). Importantly, students learned that voting is not an end in itself but part of a larger, ongoing process of civic participation, a key marker of what Levine (2013) calls ‘civic renewal’.

LIMITATIONS AND FUTURE DIRECTIONS

This study has limitations typical of qualitative SoTL research. The sample was small and self-selecting, and most of the data were based on faculty reflections rather than direct student assessments. Moreover, outcomes such as student voting behaviour or long-term civic engagement were not measured. Future research should include student interviews, focus groups and pre- and post-civic learning surveys to triangulate faculty insights with student experience. Longitudinal studies could also examine whether creative civic learning influences students’ future participation or civic identity development. Further research is also needed to deepen the theoretical framework supporting this area of inquiry. In this, the potential exists to develop a formalised portable pedagogical model of the Creative Campaign Framework to build on this study. Beyond that, a forthcoming secondary analysis will present in-depth case studies from this fellowship.

Conclusion

This study demonstrates that creative civics pedagogy, when supported by intentional faculty development and adaptable frameworks like those offered by the C4AA, can foster meaningful civic learning in higher education. Students became more confident, expressive and politically aware, faculty fellows reimagined their teaching practices and institutions benefited from public, student-led engagement projects that activated campus democratic culture. The Unstoppable Voters Faculty Fellowship occurred at a time when American democracy is facing acute challenges. With the election of Donald Trump to a second non-consecutive term, and the rash of executive orders issued from the White House in an attempt to circumvent checks and balances and assert executive authority, a recent survey of over 500 political scientists found that the vast majority believe the United States is rapidly shifting away from liberal democracy toward a more authoritarian model (Langfitt 2025). In this context, the work of cultivating civic engagement through creative, non-partisan and student-centred approaches is not simply valuable, it is essential.

This study demonstrates how integrating the C4AA’s Creative Campaign Framework and materials into higher education not only supported faculty fellows in developing impactful pro-voting projects but also fostered meaningful political engagement among students across disciplines. From experimental public performances to design-based advocacy and dialogue-centred community events, these projects exemplify how creativity can reinvigorate democracy and make civic participation feel accessible, relevant and urgent. As the re-elected Trump administration advances policies and rhetoric that erode democratic norms by dismantling institutional checks and balances, concentrating executive power, restricting civil liberties and undermining higher education through attacks on academic freedom, DEI initiatives and public funding, the urgency of equipping students with the knowledge, tools, imagination and agency to sustain democracy becomes ever more pressing. When creativity aligns with civic purpose, we can transcend mere awareness-raising and begin to cultivate a new democratic culture. As Dewey wrote nearly a century ago, and it continues to resonate today, creative democracy remains the task before us.