What is Creative Advocacy?

Although we have spent a considerable amount of time talking about the issues surrounding creative advocacy, we have yet to provide a specific definition of this concept. This term is at once straightforward and surprisingly complex. Although one can fairly easily recognize creative advocacy when they see it, sorting out just where the boundaries are for what constitutes creative advocacy is somewhat more difficult than one might think. Recognizing that our definition is emerging and represents only an approximation, what follows is what we hope to be a helpful account of how we understand creative advocacy.

Toward a Definition of Creative Advocacy

As we understand and use the term throughout this document, creative advocacy is a public and intentional form of engagement that employs artistic practice to disrupt prevailing narratives and strengthen community movement toward an identified goal.

While it is certainly true that advocacy can function to reinforce existing narratives that are currently serving communities well, we have focused our attention primarily on situations where prevailing narratives are making it hard for stakeholders to become appropriately informed, inspired, connected, mobilized, and resourced to undertake community building activities. This approach to advocacy is focused on providing fresh insights and new ways of considering possibilities and problems, generating cultural movement and community action, while growing and balancing community capitals towards new preferred futures (mindset or paradigm shift) among the public.

As a way of unpacking this definition, let us briefly focus on each of its elements in turn.

Creative advocacy is public

Advocacy happens all around us all the time. Parents advocate at home for their children to clean their room. Friends advocate on the phone for their peers to join them at a party. And individuals can even advocate internally to themselves, seeking to generate motivation or will to accomplish a task. All of these — and much more — constitute a form of advocacy. But, they do not rise to the level of what we are here referring to as creative advocacy. When using this term, we are envisioning a kind of action that deliberately and self-consciously exists in the public sphere. So, we have things in mind like an editorial in a local newspaper, a social media campaign, a satirical advertising blitz, a work of public performance art, the launching of a community magazine, a sit-in, or other similar kinds of actions that can be observed by the community at large.

Creative advocacy is intentional

Sometimes advocacy can occur that is neither planned nor intentional. Casually picking up trash at a public park, for example, might encourage others around you to do the same. Or wearing an “I voted” sticker might remind others to get to the polls and cast their ballot. Although these kinds of actions may move others toward action, they do not rise to the level of intentional activity that we are referring to as creative advocacy. What we have in mind when using this term is a kind of action that deliberately sets out to bring about change as a direct result of the advocacy being undertaken.

Creative advocacy employs artistic practice

In more or less mundane ways, the entire world is filled with public acts of advocacy. A stop sign represents a form of highly effective, though straightforward, example of advocacy. An alert on your phone is advocating for you to check to see who or what is vying for your attention. And the outfit worn by a date is presumably intent on eliciting a positive response about their appearance. These are all, in some way or another, forms of public advocacy. But they are not creative advocacy in the sense we are using it here. When we refer to “creative advocacy,” we are thinking of a kind of goal-directed action that is deeply and intentionally informed by artists (or what we regularly call ‘creatives’ throughout this document), artistic practices, and artistic forms. Examples of what we have in mind are things like public murals, engaging documentaries, interactive art installations, unexpected flash mobs, innovative uses of fashion, publicly-directed forms of music, and much more. As creative and expansive as the artists who are involved in generating it, creative advocacy can take on an infinite number of forms in numerous contexts. The common thread of such activity, however, is the artistic (or creative) engine behind these intentional public acts.

Jay Manning

JM the Poet, Creative Advocacy Advisor

Creative advocacy engages and builds community

When we refer to creative advocacy, we are envisioning a public creative act that is directed toward a more or less identifiable community. We say “more or less identifiable audience” here because the degree of specificity may vary significantly from one situation to another. On the one hand, one can imagine an act of creative advocacy aimed at changing the minds of a specific elected official. Here the size and scope of the identified community is small and fully identified. On the other hand, one could envision a campaign focused on “paying it forward,” in which the goal is to get the members of one’s community thinking more deliberately about engaging in acts of kindness toward others. In this second instance, the number of people being targeted is significantly broader and may end up including all members of the community, be it geographic or issue-based. In both instances, however, the act of creative advocacy is directed toward an identified community or what one might also refer to as a “target audience.” Creative advocacy, to say it a bit differently, places community concerns and community formation at the very center.

Creative advocacy is goal directed

At its core, creative advocacy is intent upon bringing about an identified goal in the life of a community. Sometimes this goal can be very specific. For instance, an act of creative advocacy could be focused on getting one’s city to reopen the community pool. Or, the goal can be considerably more broad. One could conduct a campaign aimed at raising awareness about childhood hunger in western Pennsylvania. In either case, there is a clearly defined objective motivating the deployment of creative thinking, tactics, and media. It is the goal-directed nature of public advocacy that distinguishes it from mere information sharing or storytelling. Creative advocacy, wherever and whenever it occurs, is seeking to spark something within the life of a community, generating transformation in one or more elements of public life. In this way, creative advocacy seeks to act as a tool for constructive community formation and maintenance, generating more vibrant and focused residents that are intentionally moving toward the kinds of sustainable, equitable communities they seek to create together.

When undertaken effectively and deployed wisely, creative advocacy will help to produce communities that are better informed, inspired, connected, mobilized, and resourced to realize their shared vision for the future. We will have much more to say about these goals in the pages below. While there are undoubtedly many different ways that these five goals can be accomplished, we are convinced that most nonprofit organizations can generally become much more effective at arriving at these ends if they understand and grow in their use of creative advocacy as described here. To grow in such awareness, it is first critical to understand the key components, or ‘tools’ of creative advocacy.

The Tools of Creative Advocacy

As you are hopefully beginning to realize, the concept of creative advocacy is both relatively straightforward and yet incredibly complex. In fact, one might make the argument — and some have — that all human interaction is a form of advocacy. Over two millennia ago, a famous Greek philosopher named Aristotle was also interested in this concept, though he referred to it under the name of “rhetoric” instead of advocacy.

In his germinal work titled simply Rhetoric, Aristotle was the first to examine systematically what advocacy is, how it functions as the machinery of democracy, and how best to go about employing advocacy in service to bringing about changes in the public sphere.

Aristotle described advocacy as thepowerofdiscoveringthetoolsavailable forpersuadingothers. At least three critical assumptions were baked into this definition, each of which are important for us to remember as we undertake the work of creative advocacy.

First, Aristotle reminds us that creativeadvocacyisaprocessofdiscovery . At his core, Aristotle was a student of the natural world. He was a careful observer of whatever situation he found himself in, and his observations served as resources and insight that helped him to generate persuasive appeals.

Second, Aristotle believed that there are discernible toolsavailabletooneseekingtobecomeanadvocate Creative advocacy, though undoubtedly an artistic undertaking, nevertheless employs surprisingly predictable patterns of thought, albeit in very different contexts.

Third, and finally, as Aristotle understood things, every situationpresentsopportunitiesforthedeployment ofadvocacy . The skilled advocate is one who is able to observe carefully enough to understand the levers of influence that present themselves in a given situation, recognize the tools that can best be used in the situation, and then craft appeals that activate the relevant levers of change. This, in a nutshell, is what is happening each and every time advocacy is successfully deployed, even if the advocate might use different language to explain what is taking place from one situation to another.

At least one of the reasons for Aristotle’s continued popularity and utility stems from his commitment to public education. Convinced that the health of public life hinged on the presence of adept creative advocates, Aristotle is said to have offered courses in advocacy to the general public as part of a school he founded called The Academy. When enrolled in these courses, students would be introduced to this understanding of advocacy as well as the practical tools for becoming an effective advocate.

At the very core of Aristotle’s curriculum was the study of three core ideas: ethics, emotions, and logic. According to Aristotle, discovering the tools available for persuading others always boiled down, in one way or another, to some combination of these three ideas. When deploying creative appeals based on ethics, emotions, and logic, the advocate was using what Aristotle called the “artistic proofs.” This combination of creativity (the artistic element) and arguments (the so-called proofs) is instructive to us even today as we seek to craft appeals that move our communities toward an identified position or action. Since much of this document focuses on the creative side, we thought it important to focus briefly on the other other elements of Aristotle’s framework for advocacy: ethics, logic, emotion.

Ethics

When seeking to persuade an audience, one must always keep in mind the broad concept of ethics. According to Aristotle, the successful advocate must craft appeals that take into account the target audience’s assumptions about what the world should be like and what counts as right or noble actions. Does the target audience prioritize a world where individual freedom is paramount? If so, then the creative advocate must somehow amplify the relationship between their campaign and individual freedom. Or, is it the case that the target audience is instead concerned about the collective good? In this case, the advocate must craft their appeals with the idea of corporate responsibility in mind. Accurately assessing this ethical framework of one’s target audience is a vital step in the creative process, for if one misunderstands the ethical worldview of their audience, then the appeals they create are likely to remain unpersuasive and ineffective.

Logic

In addition to being a consummate rhetorician, Aristotle is also considered the father of modern logic. The first to systematize the process of making arguments, Aristotle created processes and methods by which arguments could be evaluated. It is not surprising, therefore, that Aristotle thought that advocacy hinged on making strong and valid arguments about one’s position.

Though logical arguments may rarely be wholly sufficient for persuading another, they are very often necessary for ensuring the effectiveness of a given appeal. Even in the current climate, in which logic has regularly been deprivileged in the public sphere, the creative advocate must remain thoughtful about the arguments being made (either explicitly or implicitly), the evidence being presented (or assumed), and the conclusions being drawn as a result. While the collective value placed on logic may wax and wane from era to era, the structure and strength of one’s arguments remain a vital and important element for the ongoing work of advocacy.

Emotion

The third and final tool for persuasion is human emotion. As a student of what we would today call human psychology, Aristotle spent considerable time and effort cataloging the various human emotions that cause people to act the way they do. Anger, fear, hope, pride — all of these and more represent levers that the creative advocate can pull to help ensure that their message is heard and that their outcomes are achieved. If the target audience is unsure of their future, then connect your appeal to the idea of stability and certainty. If the audience is optimistic and hopeful, consider the value of creating a campaign that activates such optimism and hope. Regardless of the prevailing emotions — and all target audiences demonstrate these to one degree or another — one finds within the audience itself clues about what is most likely to move them toward action. The goal of the creative advocate is to uncover which combination of emotions are most important, and then craft appeals that leverage this understanding to bring about identified campaign goals.

The Dynamic Nature of Ethics, Logic, and Emotion

One of the more helpful features of Aristotle’s understanding of creative advocacy is the adaptive and contextual understanding he had of the matter. It is this adaptive and contextual element to advocacy that makes it truly creative and not merely formulaic. The most critical element of ensuring the success of a given campaign is the ability to discern which of the three elements described above is most important to the identified target audience. In some instances, the creative advocate will craft appeals that are almost entirely built upon logic. A legal brief, for instance, will tend very heavily in this direction. In other cases, the most effective campaign might downplay logic and instead rely most heavily on human emotions. In today’s climate, and as briefly mentioned above, many of the most persuasive messages in culture owe their successes to the use of emotional appeals.

At various times, in different contexts, and via distinct types of media, each of these three elements of advocacy may need to be employed to different degrees. The key to a successful advocacy campaign involves learning when, and in what combinations, such appeals are likely to be effective. Assembling a thoughtful and informed team of advocates can go a long way to making that happen.

and Magic City Fashion Week, Creative Advocacy Advisor