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iDEA: DREXEL LIBRARIES E-REPOSITORY AND ARCHIVES

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Can arts advocacy become a social movement?

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Title
Can arts advocacy become a social movement?: A case study of the AIDS movement and the use of the arts to convey change
Author(s)
Gearhart, Lindsey E.
Advisor(s)
Goodman, Julie
Keywords
Arts--Management; Arts and society; Social movements in art; AIDS (Disease) and the arts
Date
2016-07
Publisher
Drexel University
Thesis
M.S., Arts Administration -- Drexel University, 2016
Abstract
As arts advocates, we are plagued with the never-ending task of communicating the importance of the arts, with the primary goal of fostering public support and creating sustainability for our sector. Over the past two decades, advocates have created a number of arguments to address this need for support, such as economic, intrinsic and instrumental. But what is lacking in each of these tactics is the use of one key element: the arts themselves. In embarking on this study, I set out to review all the various communication tactics utilized by the arts sector in order to understand why, as advocates, we often fail to utilize the actual arts to advocate for greater public support and societal change. In order to gain an understanding of how art has been utilized as a tactic by other social issues, I proceeded to identify and research a social movement that was effective in employing art to create public support. In choosing the AIDS epidemic for this case study, I set out to investigate specific examples of art that were created at the inception of the movement and continuously employed. Through the examination of the AIDS Quilt and ACT UP, what I ultimately discovered was that art was an employable tactic for communication of a social issue but was not the only strategy. Both examples enabled the AIDS movement to create lasting social change through the use of diverse advocacy tactics, including art. In focusing on the art of each example, then, I aim to make the argument that the sector must utilize art and a unified message alongside other strategies to communicate the value of and need for lasting public support.
URI
http://hdl.handle.net/1860/idea:7682
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Theses, Dissertations, and Projects

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