About TakePart

TakePart is the digital division of Participant Media. You can see exactly what they do above. They’re amazing people doing amazing work and are really a joy to work with.

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The talk, so moving. The artist, so inspiring. It MUST spread to communities across the world. It is up to us. It is time to act, to do, to make change.

• JR, a semi-anonymous French street artist, uses his camera to show the world its true face, by pasting photos of the human face across massive canvases. At TED2011, he makes his audacious TED Prize wish: to use art to turn the world inside out. Learn more about his work and learn how you can join in at insideoutproject.net.

TED Prize Winner JR & INSIDE OUT from TED Prize on Vimeo.

2011 TED Prize winner JR has made his wish: “I wish for you to stand up for what you care about by participating in a global art project. And together we’ll turn the world INSIDE OUT.”

To participate, upload your portrait: InsideOutProject.net.

The first talk posted from TED2011, and one of my favorites from Day 1; Monumental, Majestic, Mindblowing.

• As a democratic revolution led by tech-empowered young people sweeps the Arab world, Wadah Khanfar, the head of Al Jazeera, shares a profoundly optimistic view of what’s happening in Egypt, Tunisia, Libya and beyond — at this powerful moment when people realized they could step out of their houses and ask for change.

HOW Magazine’s Blog features The Haiti Poster Project, now with over 510 artists:

• Over a year ago, in the wake of a tragedy, designers and artists were called to action by The Haiti Poster Project. Limited edition posters are donated and signed by their creators, and funds from their sales benefit Doctors without Borders for Haiti’s relief efforts.

The Image Gallery

100 Days of Active Resistance Every day for one hundred days, one image representing ideas of Active Resistance in the world will be selected from submissions and shared online.

• ‘The principal idea of Active Resistance is that you get out of life what you put in and that real experience of the world involves thinking’ – Vivienne Westwood.
• 100 days of positive thought, active change, speaking up and being heard. From small personal actions to larger collective moments of change, Vivienne Westwood Anglomania and Lee Jeans encourage communication and individuality through an online installation, sharing interpretations of Vivienne Westwood’s Active Resistance.

Day 87: Don’t just sit there. What would you make better?

Designer Emily Pilloton moved to rural Bertie County, in North Carolina, to engage in a bold experiment of design-led community transformation. She’s teaching a design-build class called Studio H that engages high schoolers’ minds and bodies while bringing smart design and new opportunities to the poorest county in the state.

Placing People Above Profit

HOW Magazine (September/October 2010) recently featured the Battle for Whiteclay project as part of their Designing Change column, which highlights designers influencing social change. A nice piece written by Jessica Kuhn, which helps continue to draw attention to the issue.

“Design as activism sits right in the middle of everything else made to influence people: trying to motivate the caring, turn on the oblivious and battle against those who just don’t give a damn.”

Let’s just get this out there. I think Al Gore kicks ass. Straight up. And his newest book that came out last year does as well. Our Choice is a plan to solve the climate crisis with all sorts of information about our energy sources, living systems, how we use energy, how we can go far quickly and the obstacles we need to overcome.

Obstacles meaning how we think and behave now, and what we need to do to change. We can start with putting a price on carbon. Thinking not about short-term profits but long-run investment. Moving past that overly simplistic idea we call GDP and focusing on our genuine progress which includes benefits like volunteering or costs like air pollution. Understanding that fossil fuel companies spend millions every year to trick people into not believing in a very strong scientific consensus. To be done with the market fundamentalism and realize that for our system to work, we need both markets and democracy.

We can overcome those obstacles. It’s our choice. We’ve got maybe a 2-3 year window to make up our minds. Then we’re moving forward, whether we’re ready or not. Hopefully we pick the blue side.

Fight the Fremont Law! Bright Eyes, Desaparecidos, Cursive, Lullaby for the Working Class and more will perform at an ACLU Benefit Concert in Omaha, Nebraska. On Saturday July 31st people will gather together to fight for equality. The show benefits ACLU Nebraska.

At the intersection of art and politics in an effort to make change: “This way of thinking and legislating is so dangerous, and such a threat to our basic ideals as Americans and humans, that we cannot stand by and do nothing. We cannot play on as if nothing is wrong.“

Always one to recognize the importance of not remaining neutral on a moving train, Conor Oberst is also part of the The Sound Strike, an artists call to boycott Arizona. You can read his thoughts in an open letter on the Arizona law and watch the video below.

This is about a just and humane immigration system. This is about holding true to the idea of America. In Nebraska this about “the Good Life” for everybody. And it’s about beautiful music performed to galvanize a movement for equality to make all of this possible.