We’re unleashing the working-class creativity desperately needed for our times
Every successful movement for lasting social change requires arts and culture. Artists give us joy and life in dark times, cutting through the noise and fostering the creative thinking that allows us to imagine a better future. So much of the most enduring and popular forms of art and culture have come from working-class communities. Detroit’s autoworkers made Motown. Spirituals sustained the Montgomery Bus Boycott. Quilters unveiled the truth about HIV/AIDS.
This year, we’re igniting a new wave of art through the labor movement.
We are tapping into the countless numbers of artists within the union movement and thinking broadly about where creativity lives. Union Hall Arts brings new voices and established artists together to make art for our movement and become the labor arts leaders for our time.
It’s been decades since the labor movement has centered the arts, but the next best time is NOW.
Authoritarian regimes past and present—and the ruling classes that support them—have understood the power of culture to keep workers divided and distracted, using art and new technologies to create mass appeal for anti-worker politics.
But workers create a better world.
Unions keep us human, mobilizing worker power so that people can lead full, healthy lives with time to do the things we love. Culture is how people make life livable, creating joy in otherwise oppressive systems. Art is how we survive and thrive. We are making space to create again.
UNION HALL ARTS
The UNITE HERE Education and Support Fund (UHESF) is launching Union Hall Arts in partnership with other unions and community allies to expand the model for how to build broad, durable coalitions that have the power to make more systemic change.
Our vision includes:
- Sponsoring cultural opportunities for workers as part of a broad campaign of storytelling to bring new voices to light.
- Collaborating with creatives in our communities (music, visual arts/design, fashion, film and more) to create art that inspires a broad coalition of people to join together.
- Bringing together workers across different sectors of the economy to explore new forms of power building.
- Establishing a multi-media creative studio and maker space in Detroit that is a home for collaborations and innovation.
“While I have a deep love for coffee, my true passion lies in art. Despite my supervisors initially discouraging me from sketching during work, I couldn’t resist the challenge and started using coffee cups as my canvas. The clients were amazed by my artwork, and it even got displayed at my station. I realized that my art could also be my voice.”
Gordon Osborne, a barista in NYC, draws Black history on the coffee cups at work with the same ink pens customers use to sign receipts.
Union Hall Arts is a Project of the UNITE HERE Education and Support Fund (501c3)
275 7th Avenue, 16th Floor, New York, NY 10001
Contact us at [email protected]