Two ways to "create the feel" for democratic innovation and activism, taken from hip hop and radio drama
Our new “Create The Feel” theme on this relaunched site is a straightforward appeal to the creative communities - and any community - to think about the arts-and-media forms that can unleash our full humanity into a broken politics.
What creative approaches can tap into emotions and sensibilities beyond the fear-anger-panic buttons of harsh populist politics?
If you’re already a co-creator, click here. And if you can, please contribute!
We’ve been exploring this in the DA for ages with our “Artists” and “A Better Media” categories - but we hope to take this to a new level. If you think you can help, mail us.
Meantime, here’s two very divergent (but pretty effective) creations of a new political feel. Above is a video from the US rapper Yellopain, titled My Vote Don’t Count. Yellopain’s cousin, Desiree Tims, is running for Congress for Ohio’s 10th District.
A conversation with her inspired the rapper to use his skills to connect the structures of US government to specific voting ambitions, like a national minimum wage and police brutality (a report from Forbes, and the full lyric is here). More about Yellopain:
He’s relatively new to the political world and is just getting started. After learning more about the voting process more in-depth, it felt “mandatory” to motivate others to vote. He anticipates being inspired as he learns more, and he anticipates making more music in response.
“To me, this is the most important song I ever made,” he said. “I aspire for this song to reach all of the people who feel like they don’t know why things are not working out for us as a whole.”
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Click on image above, or listen here
In a completely different register, we enjoyed finding this Radio 4 drama, A Fair Shot, available over the next month, based on one women’s campaign for proportional representation (percentage of votes matching numbers of seats, in a parliament or elected body). Here’s the blurb:
Millionaire business-woman Maria Wild launches a new brand of centrist politics promising a fairer shot for voters and minority parties and is met with a curiously mixed response.
Maria is a celebrity entrepreneur, television personality and UN Goodwill Ambassador. For most of her life she has been the force behind a successful beauty brand that combines social enterprise and impressive profits.
In recent years she has become a popular figure on television, heading up the judging panel on a hit TV show about entrepreneurship. She's the sort of person people want to see in politics — but who never survives for long.
Recently appointed as leader of a fledgling centrist party in the UK, she has the perfect opportunity to set out her stall with a game-changing speech at the United Nations. But is she the real deal? Or a false dawn?
Tamara Travis is Maria’s new speechwriter. A former lobby journalist and Parliamentary adviser, she’s a rising star in the world of political speech writing. Tamara believes it's her life’s work to make Maria Wild into a figure who can galvanise the political system and re-invigorate the centre.
The only difficulty is that Maria is—in Tamara’s eyes—more right-wing and old-fashioned than she seems.