This year’s CCA@CCA theme asks, "Where do we go from here?" During a time of high conflict in the world around us, how can we come together for discussion, reflection, and growth? How can the CCA Community enact positive change?

TAKE ACTION: A CCA@CCA Exhibition is a group exhibition highlighting work by CCA faculty and alumni who address these questions by creating work about the issues they care about most. This CCA@CCA Teaching Module is designed to accompany CCA class visits to TAKE ACTION, on view at the Novack Gallery October 19–November 15, 2024.

TAKE ACTION includes work by:

• Arleene Correa Valencia
• Chris Johnson and Hank Willis Thomas
• Maia Kobabe
• Michele Pred
• Michael Wertz
• Neeraj Bhatia / THE OPEN WORKSHOP
• Sarah Bird
• Sita Kuratomi Bhaumik

CCA@CCA maintains an ongoing partnership with For Freedoms, an artist-led organization that centers art as a catalyst for creative civic engagement, discourse, and direct action. Founded in 2016 by CCA alumnus Hank Willis Thomas in collaboration with Eric Gottesman, Michelle Woo, and Wyatt Gallery, For Freedoms works closely with a variety of artists, organizations, and institutions to expand what participation in a democracy looks like and reshape conversations about politics.

This year’s CCA@CCA theme borrows the question Where do we go from here? from For Freedoms' new book. Published in the lead-up to the 2024 presidential election, For Freedoms: Where Do We Go From Here? marks one of the largest public creative collaborations in American history: a series of over 550 artist billboards created between 2016 and 2023. These billboards emphasize the For Freedoms mission to model how art can urge communities into greater participation and action and foster nuanced discourse.

The title of For Freedom's book, in turn, references the 1967 book by Martin Luther King, Jr., Where Do We Go From Here: Community or Chaos?, which was King’s analysis of the state of American race relations and the civil rights movement after a decade of struggles. Both books are available to peruse at the Novack Gallery.

Question Bridge: Black Males is a project by Chris Johnson (Professor Emeritus, Photography Program) and Hank Willis Thomas (MFA Photography and MA Visual Criticism, 2004) that explores critically challenging issues within the African American male community by instigating a trans-media conversation among black men across the geographic, economic, generational, educational and social strata of American society. Over the course of four years, the creators traveled the nation collecting questions and answers from over 150 Black men in eight cities (New York, Chicago, Oakland, San Francisco, Birmingham, Atlanta, New Orleans, and Philadelphia) that comprise a video catalog of 1,500 exchanges.

The installation, on view at the Deborah and Kenneth Novack Gallery through November 16, opens a window onto the complex and often unspoken dialogue among African American men, creating an intimate and essentially genuine experience for viewers and subjects and providing new opportunities for understanding and healing. This project brings the full spectrum of what it means to be “black” and “male” in America to the forefront. “Blackness” ceases to be a simple, monochromatic concept.

Chris, Hank, and their collaborators designed an educational resource to accompany the installation, with six modules that explore the question: “How do we create equitable environments of inclusion in a diverse society, both within and between identity groups?” Module 1 asks students to develop a framework for what “human commonality” really means (both within and between identity groups) and critically think about healthy and unhealthy pressures to conform to social norms. 

Watch the Module 1 video, The Human Condition.

Engage in dialogue about the video.

• What answers in the video resonated with you? Why?
• What do all human beings have in common?
• Name one identity group you belong to (students in your school, cultural group, social group, sports group, etc.). What is common to everyone in the group and where are there differences?
• What kind of pressure do you feel to conform to the social norms of your identity group?
• What frameworks were used to define commonality, when asked the above questions?

Dive deeper.

For additional talking points, creative assignments, a glossery of terms, and more, visit the Question Bridge Curricular Tools homepage.

Each artist in the TAKE ACTION exhibition has suggested actions that members of the CCA Community can take right now to enact positive change:

• Arleene Correa Valencia: Help Unaccompanied Immigrant Children. Add your name to Kids in Need of Defense’s (KIND) Keeping Kids Safe campaign, a ten-year initiative that aims to reform the outdated systems that fail to protect unaccompanied children in the United States and globally.
• Chris Johnson and Hank Willis Thomas: Explore Question Bridge Curricular Tools. Question assumptions about yourself and others.
• Maia Kobabe: Volunteer for or donate to Fabulosa Books' Books Not Bans program. Fabulosa Books is an indie bookstore in the Castro neighborhood that sends queer books to community centers in the states most affected by book challenges.
• Michele Pred: Share information about the option of medical abortion with your friends and family. Affordable pills can still be obtained by mail in all 50 states via aidaccess.org.
• Michael Wertz: Get informed on the issues and make a voting plan. Find out what’s on your ballot, get nonpartisan information across all 50 states, and learn where candidates running for office in your community stand on the issues.
• Neeraj Bhatia / THE OPEN WORKSHOP: Find your local chapter of the Architecture Lobby. The Architecture Lobby is a grassroots organization of architectural workers that advocates for just labor practices and an equitable built environment.
• Sarah Bird: Learn about Save the Redwoods League and, if you’re a CA voter, consider voting yes on Proposition 4. If passed, Prop 4 would fund agencies and programs that protect our air, water, and public lands from immediate climate threats, while building long-term resilience for the Golden State.
• Sita Kuratomi Bhaumik: Contribute to mutual aid groups on the ground who are providing direct material support to those in need.

Visit the TAKE ACTION wall at the Novack Gallery for a dozen more suggested actions you can take if you're feeling stalemated by the current social and political climate!