Untitled, Grecia Carey Ortega, 2018

Identifying and Planning Advocacy

Grade levels:
9 - 12

Duration:
Minimum one 45-minute classroom period

About this Exploration

Who can help with advocacy goals?

Creating and pursuing a vision for change is a tall order. Broken down into smaller steps, though, the task can feel more attainable. Changemakers of all ages can find themselves feeling in one moment the urgency to personally do something (anything!) now, and in the next moment, the conviction that collective action over time is the best approach.

This lesson focuses on the tactics and execution of advocacy. To begin, you will consider two photographs that speak to finding and making opportunities for advocacy. Then, you will pair community issues with advocacy opportunities and consider the communities or causes you wish to support and affect. You'll craft a statement of purpose, identify community partners, and finally, draft a general plan of advocacy. You will then use photography to spotlight a possible community partner. The final reflection focuses on considering strategies for working with a community partner in preparation for taking action

Vocabulary

  • Advocate, Advocacy

    Someone who publicly supports and speaks up for an idea, a cause, or members of an identity group. Efforts to make positive change for individuals or communities that deserve support.

  • Agency

    Denotes an individual’s power to think independently and act freely in a social context, in ways that determine their experiences and life trajectories. Can also take collective forms.

  • Community

    A network or group of people, sometimes living in a particular place, who share interests, values, characteristics, responsibilities, or physical spaces.

  • Discrimination

    Actions stemming from conscious or unconscious prejudice, which favor and empower one group over others based on differences of race, gender, economic class, sexual orientation, physical ability, religion, language, age, national identity, and other categories.

  • Disenfranchised

    Deprived of access to rights, opportunities, and services.

  • Equity

    When all people or groups gain access to the resources needed to realize equal results. Differs from equality, which focuses on the equal distribution of resources rather than equal results.

  • Gentrification

    A demographic shift, in which upper- or middle-class or racially privileged individuals and businesses move into historically working-class or racially oppressed neighborhoods. Typically an urban phenomenon.

  • Social Justice

    The practice of advocacy and taking action to promote equality, equity, respect, and the assurance of rights to fair treatment and resources, both within and between communities and social groups.

  • Sustainable, Sustainability

    The idea that both human and material resources are finite, and therefore should be used with attention to long-term consequences. Also refers to practices that support the long-term viability of the community, humanity, and the environment.

  • Upstander

    A person who chooses to take positive action in the face of injustice. Can refer to individual incidents or broader societal situations. The opposite of a bystander.

Lesson

Introduction

Social justice advocacy requires planning as well as passion. But remember, you’re not in it alone! In this lesson, you'll harness information about your community's assets to identify opportunities for advocacy and begin to plan.

Key questions in this lesson include:

  • What are the opportunities for advocacy in my community?
  • Who can help with my goals?
  • How do I create a plan for advocacy that is doable and has a reasonable chance of success?
  • How can my photography add to the effort of advocacy?
  • Where do my identity and my work as a photographer fit into the plan?

Set the Stage

Untitled, Grecia Carey Ortega, 2018

Look at the image shown here. Or, download the image in the Resources section.

Questions for Discussion:

  • What do you notice first about this image?
    • What do you notice about the artwork shown?
    • What do you know about Trayvon Martin?
    • What does it mean to you that the photo shows both a Justice for Trayvon Martin poster and other objects that seem to situate the scene in the Los Angeles Latinx community?
  • What compositional and photographic elements do you notice, and why?
    • How is the photo framed? (The image uses a landscape aspect ratio and includes no people, only ephemera and the wall.)
    • What other compositional elements did the photographer use?
    • Are there any other artistic traditions that this photograph brings to mind?
  • Do you think the photographer has a message with this photograph?
  • Do you get the sense that the photographer came upon this scene or staged it in some way? Would you consider the photo as a collaboration in some way?

About the Photographer and Subject

Grecia Carey Ortega began taking photos in middle school with her dad’s camera and credits her time in the Getty Unshuttered Program as an opportunity to learn more of the technical skills. “I tend to focus on telling stories, whether it’s my own or others’, about love, trust, forgiveness, and other themes. I use a lot of symbolism or the materials I have around me that have influenced me or reflect what I want to showcase in my photos.”

Discuss: Pairing Community Issues with Opportunities for Advocacy

New York City, 1963, Leonard Freed, gelatin silver print. The J. Paul Getty Museum. © Leonard Freed/Magnum Photos

Now that you’ve looked at how a student photographer used their photograph to both document their community and call for advocacy, let’s look at an example from the Getty collection. How do professional photographers find and create opportunities for advocacy?

Look at the image shown here. Or, view the image on getty.edu. Read the caption to situate the photograph in time and place.

Questions for Discussion:

  • What do you notice first about this image?
  • What do you notice about the setting, background, and foreground?
  • What compositional and photographic elements do you notice, and why?
    • How is the photo framed?
    • What other artistic choices did the photographer make?
    • What does the use of black-and-white do?
  • Do you think the woman’s action is a successful example of advocacy in the form of protest?
  • What do you feel are some of the messages of this photograph?
  • Do you think the photographer was undertaking advocacy with this work?

About Leonard Freed

Born in New York to working-class Jewish parents, Leonard Freed (1926-2006) focused his photography on discrimination. In the 1950s he depicted a range of communities: Jewish settlers in Amsterdam, Holland, African Americans in the US, and Asian immigrants in England. His coverage of the civil rights movement gave him the opportunity to travel with Martin Luther King, Jr., and he produced the book Black in White America in 1968. “Ultimately photography is about who you are,” he once said. “It’s the seeking of truth in relation to yourself. And seeking truth becomes a habit.”[1]

View Leonard Freed photographs in the Getty collection.

Exercise: Writing a Statement of Purpose and Plan of Advocacy

For the following exercise, you will need to have a societal cause or issue that is important to you in mind. It can be an issue that you have done extensive research on and are already engaged with, or something you have always been curious about. In this exercise, you will take the big step of creating a plan of advocacy.

You will use a step-by-step approach to planning your advocacy, and identify and photograph a community partner.

Use the first page of the Statement of Purpose and Inventory of Assets Organizer to capture your ideas. [See Resources section.] Individually or in small teams, first, write a statement of purpose for your advocacy around your chosen issue. Next, list the available resources around the advocacy opportunity. You may want to jump into creating your advocacy plan right away. However, pausing to consider your assets and using photography to solidify your community partnership are important steps that strengthen your advocacy plans and remind you that you’re not alone in the work.

Next, set out your goals for advocacy. These goals are not a detailed plan of action, but a chance to identify what is doable. Use the second page of the Statement of Purpose and Inventory of Assets Organizer as a place to capture your ideas. The organizer follows the SMART framework, a planning tool used in settings such as business, the arts, nonprofits, and academia. In this context, “SMART” is an acronym that stands for specific, measurable, attainable, relevant, and time-based. It is meant to offer a structure for setting objectives.

Discuss your Statement of Purpose and Inventory of Assets with your teacher or your class in order to sharpen your ideas. Focus on people and organizations identified as community agents of change.

Questions for Discussion:

  • What opportunities for partnership exist?
  • How can you help to further mutual goals?
  • How will you start conversations about potential partnerships with individuals or organizations?

Practice: Highlighting Community Partners through Photography

Review photographic elements such as framing, perspective or angle, foreground and background, and presence or absence of a subject, as well as the subject’s position and pose. The related photography skill videos listed under Resources also provide quick skill refreshers. Think about how you will apply these skills and understandings.

Review your resource inventory to choose who or what to showcase, and explain why you think this subject would be a good partner.

Next, take a portrait (broadly defined) of a person or organization in the community who is a possible partner.

Continue your practice at home and in your neighborhood, taking the opportunity outside of class to reach out to potential community partners.

Reflect

Sharing your work can feel vulnerable, so creating a safe space for sharing is important for this exercise. In small groups or with a partner, share one to three of your photographs. You may choose to speak about your intention with the photograph(s), or not. Alternatively, this exercise can be done on your own as an individual reflection.

Consider the following questions as you look at each others' photographs and think about what it was like to make them. As you discuss them with your peers, think about ways you can share positive feedback with them.

Questions for Discussion:

  • What is the first thing you notice about the photograph?
  • What works artistically in the photograph?
  • What story is the photographer telling about the community partner?
  • What do you think is the photographer’s point of view on the community partner? Is the photographer documenting or advocating?
  • Where do you see yourself in relationship to your community partner?
  • What part are you most proud of, and why?
  • What would you do differently next time?

Banner image: Untitled, Grecia Carey Ortega, 2018


[1] “Leonard Freed,” Magnum Photos, 2014, https://pro.magnumphotos.com/C.aspx?VP3=CMS3&VF=MAGO31_9_VForm&ERID=24KL535UHJ