By Davi Jacobs
Artivism —the practice of transforming creativity into action for social change— is empowering a new wave of advocates. At a University of Maryland workshop, students learn to transform  this practice into a plan to confront rape culture, which governs society’s beliefs and attitudes that normalize sexual violence.

The “Creating Beautiful Trouble” workshop, led by Hannah Brancato, curator and American Studies PhD student, and Mora Fernández, a Mexican “artivist”, followed the opening of the “We Will Not Be Silent: Art Transforming Rape Culture” exhibition at the Adele H. Stamp Student Union’s art gallery. 

The pair founded the organization “Force: Upsetting Rape Culture,” also known as FORCE, an art and activist collective dedicated to ending sexual violence and building a culture of consent. 

The exhibition is rooted in FORCE’s Monument Quilt project, a community effort to create a public healing space by displaying over 3,000 survivor stories on red fabric squares. The show features the work of four artists who were a part of that project.

For Brancado, the purpose of the project was to engage people as participants, not solely as viewers. Although the Monument Quilt project is over, community involvement is what inspired her to design the workshop series. The first was a banner-making workshop that captured visions for the future in collaboration with the LGBTQ+ equity center and public art class students.

The “Creating Beautiful Trouble” workshop invites attendees to come up with ideas for their own creative actions on campus. 

“People talk about art as a tool or a platform. I think of it as something more deeply transformational,” Brancado said. “It changes the people who make it, the people who see it and the movements that engage with it.” 

For Brancato and Fernández, this belief is the foundation of their artivism. Both women are assault survivors themselves, and their work is informed by their personal experiences. 

Participants in the workshop learned about examples of resistance and art, in Mexico and Latin America specifically.

Fernández is the director of the nonprofit La Casa Mandarina, which established one of the first sexual violence advocacy programs in Mexico City. Some of La Casa Mandarina’s initiatives include organizing public actions such as “scratching” demonstrations to call out perpetrators and producing the play “Secret Survivors,” where six survivors of child sexual abuse told their stories on stage.

“It’s community, it’s power, it’s rage,” Fernández said. “I see how this helped me to survive and then thrive. I want people to have the same.” 

Fernández noted this work comes with profound risks and is systemically devalued. Beyond the emotional toll, activists in general face legal threats and physical danger and are often expected to work free of charge. 

“They will never call a lawyer or an influencer to give a talk for free, and they expect [me] to do that for free because I work with sexual violence,” Fernández said. “The system has to recognize this kind of job… it’s a job that shouldn’t be free.”

She described a double standard where women in these roles are expected to be soft-spoken. 

“If you’re a woman, they expect you to be protesting in silence,” Fernández said. “But what we are trying to do is disrupt.”

The workshop introduced students to “Beautiful Trouble,” an open-source toolkit that offers creative activist tactics, such as flash mobs, to help them build disruptive campaigns of their own. 

The workshop then shifted from learning to strategizing. Participants used tools like the “Social Change Ecosystem Map” to identify their unique roles in activism and began brainstorming how to apply similar creative tactics—from zines to public demonstrations—to confront rape culture within their own campus community.

For Isadora Quintana, a mentor for the Spanish cluster at the language house, the workshop provided a meaningful experience for her students who attended. 

“One of the big things I take away is giving them the opportunity to see that this is not just something that happens,” Quintana said. “People are taking a hard look at society and are trying to do something.” 

For Brancato, her work is built on a foundation of direct support for victims and survivors.

“This is a message that we want to make sure to leave you with to those who survived,” Brancato said at the end of the workshop. “We believe you. It wasn’t your fault, and you are not alone.”

Featured Image: Adele H. Stamp Student Union on a fall day. Photo by Anika Stikeleather.