Watch the recording, read key takeaways, and get helpful resources
On Thursday, April 17, 2025, we partnered with Project Pericles for Teaching Creativity to Inspire Social Good. This uplifting webinar focused on how creativity is a powerful tool for civic engagement and inspiring social good.
During the event, participants:
- Heard from faculty about how they’ve used innovative creative expression in the classroom.
- Learned how students have been inspired to engage with civic issues in meaningful and joyful ways — like through a giant pierogi mascot and the ethical use of AI.
- Received practical resources to implement in their own work.
The webinar was for faculty and staff in higher education, along with anyone looking for inspiration in this moment. While it focused on faculty experiences, the approaches shared can be adapted beyond academia.
EVENT RECORDING
The speakers shared compelling imagery during their presentations. Click here to view the slides to follow along with the recording.
KEY TAKEAWAYS
Our featured speakers shared these tips for inspiring social good in the classroom by using creativity:
- Start with inspiration — when engaging students in creative projects, give them examples of exciting work made by other creatives.
- Tap into local traditions and culture.
- Draw on the idea of irresistible imagery that locks people in and makes them want to figure out what’s going on.
- Engage in role playing — put students in the roles of other folks with perspectives and hurdles they don’t have. Use the Student Voting Challenge by Project Pericles as a guide.
- Survey students at the start of the semester about any obstacles they may have in relation to civic engagement and voting. Gather information right from the students so you’re not hypothesizing what problems may need solving.
- Ask students what issues they are passionate about and connect those issues to voting and civic engagement. You can start by asking, “What do you wish was different in the world?”
- Develop community guidelines for your classroom with your students. Include guidelines of being kind and respectful, allowing for creative and expressive risks, and feeling safe to engage with politics and civic issues.
- Students are eager for creativity, and sometimes they just need permission to tap into that creativity.
RESOURCES
Our Unleashing Unstoppable Voters is being used by faculty across the nation to drive impactful change. This creative campaign toolkit is packed with:
- fun, interactive exercises,
- helpful tools,
- interesting case studies, and
- much, much more!
FEATURED SPEAKERS
Shannon Zenner
Assistant Professor of Communications Design, Elon University and Periclean Fellow
Shannon Zenner, Ph.D., is an assistant professor in the communication design program at Elon University, where she teaches courses in graphic design, art direction, and web and mobile communication. Her research explores the intersection of visual aesthetics, political identity, and artificial intelligence, with a focus on how design influences public perception, persuasion, and civic engagement. Before entering academia, she worked in advertising and design for clients ranging from global banks to Western wear brands. She is a recent recipient of a Civic and Voter Engagement Fellowship and has presented nationally on creative risk-taking, labor-based assessment, and the ethical use of AI in design education.
D.T. Burns
Adjunct Professor of Theatre, Point Park University and Unstoppable Voters Faculty Fellow
D.T. Burns (they/them) is a writer, artist, and theatre-maker. They create performances that playfully explorate complex subjects, colliding topics from science and civics with elements of puppetry, spectacle, and role-playing games. D.T.’s performance work has been featured at venues like the Children’s Museum of Pittsburgh, the Prague Quadrennial of Space and Design, the Pittsburgh Opera, TEDx Point Park, and the Boulder International Fringe Festival. They participated as an Unstoppable Voters Faculty Fellow with The Center for Artistic Activism in 2024. D.T. holds a BA from Rice University, an MFA from Carnegie Mellon University, and currently works as an Adjunct Professor at Point Park University.
UNSTOPPABLE VOTERS FACULTY FELLOWSHIP
Last year, D.T. Burns was a part of our Unstoppable Voters Faculty Fellowship. The program engaged a cohort of faculty nationwide to develop creative pro-voting, campaigns on their campuses using our creative campaign framework. The Fellows represented a variety of institutions across the U.S., and came from the fields of Art, Design, Theatre, Political Science, and Clinical Psychology.
Learn more about the Faculty Fellows here:
And, check out these past events with some of our other Faculty Fellows:
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