Crafting Social Change and Catalysing Social Action through Creative Power and Artistic Expression

“The social reaction that will make change and progress society will happen with or without us, sooner or later; history bears witness to that”.  This is the opening statement of Comrade Omole Ibukun when he facilitated a workshop at the Camp 2023 on how to use creative expression for social change by crafting social change and catalysing social action through creative power and artistic.

In his presentation, he highlighted the noticeable increase in polarization among various sectors of society, particularly in relation to identities. This, he said, has posed challenges in fostering a collective approach for social change. The statement acknowledges that criticism plays a crucial role, despite its potential to deepen existing divisions. However, it emphasizes the necessity of diluting criticism without diminishing its value, employing creativity as a means to achieve this balance. The combination of creativity and criticism is identified as a unifying force, bringing together individuals of various demographics, including the young and old, women and men, and diverse activist tendencies

He gave interesting statistics to the fact that the attention span of the average person has markedly decreased in just 15 years from 12 seconds in 2000 to 8.25 seconds. But in contrast to the statistics given for the reading attention, he showed that the average viewed length of a single internet video is 2.7 minutes and that 59% of senior executives would prefer to watch video than read text where both were available. This picture pointed to the usefulness of videos for telling compelling stories.

Comrade Omole thereafter took the participants through the process of not only telling compelling stories but also to use these stories to mobilise, advocate and advance our campaigns and campaign messages.

See full slide HERE