Mission

ART WORKS Projects’ mission is to use design and the arts to raise awareness of and educate the public about significant human rights and environmental issues.

ART WORKS provides visual advocacy tools which produce action on human rights crises at the grassroots, media, and policy levels. Conceptualized and created in conjunction with established humanitarian and human rights advocacy organizations, ART WORKS’ art and design exhibitions, books, recordings, films, and other initiatives provide opportunities for large numbers of the general population to engage in ending major human rights violations.

In its first five years of existence, ART WORKS’ agenda includes projects exposing genocide, extreme sexual violence against women, the global shortage of potable water, forced labor and human trafficking, and ethnic cleansing and anti-democracy actions. ART WORKS selects topics which are the most intractable, the least covered in the mainstream media, and the most abusive for victims.

Objective

• Create widespread media attention exposing a given issue.
• Direct viewers and readers to significant opportunities to impact the situation and create lasting change.

Process

• Develop visual advocacy tools with guidance from major humanitarian and advocacy organizations who address the same topics, ensuring that a given project is useful in creating change.
• Conceptualize and fabricate the design which most achieves the goal at hand.
• Partner with a range of organizations and cultural institutions in order to present the issue widely and deliver far-reaching results.
• Work closely with partner organizations to elicit media coverage.