OUR FRAMEWORK
How We Think About This Work
The Centre for Creative Changemaking grounds its work in the concept of Social Change Creativity (Luria & Kaufman, 2025)—the use of creative strengths, processes, and imagination to combat social injustice and manifest equitable social outcomes.
This framework helps us recognize and celebrate the many different ways people engage in creative changemaking. It also helps us connect people whose work might seem different on the surface but shares common creative approaches or goals.
Five Ways Creative Changemaking Shows Up
Social Change Creativity research identifies
FIVE “MICRODOMAINS”
distinct but overlapping areas where creative changemaking happens
Aesthetic Persuasion
Using images, performance, beauty, or shock to engage audiences and inspire action
Might Look Like
- Documentary filmmaking for truth and reconciliation
- Community theatre addressing social issues
- Visual arts exhibitions highlighting injustice
- Public art installations that provoke dialogue
- Performance that challenges dominant narratives
Cultural Preservation & Resurgence
Documenting, sustaining, and evolving cultural practices, languages, and ways of knowing—often as resistance to forces that threaten their existence
Might Look Like
- Oral history projects
- Language revitalization programs
- Storytelling initiatives
- Archiving community knowledge
- Creating counternarratives that challenge dominant histories
Civic Activism
Developing new policies, laws, procedures, or economic structures aimed at addressing systemic inequities
Might Look Like
- Policy innovation
- Movement building
- Legislative advocacy
- Creative approaches to governance
- Economic models that redistribute power
- Grassroots organizing
Community Outreach
Building connections, leadership, and collective capacity within communities—often leveraging local strengths to address local challenges
Might Look Like
- Coalition building
- Participatory research
- Community-led programming
- Intergenerational initiatives
- Co-design with community partners
- Mobilization efforts
Digital Dissemination
Using media, journalism, and digital platforms to raise awareness, counter disinformation, amplify marginalized voices, and mobilize for change
Might Look Like
- Digital activism
- Investigative journalism
- Social media campaigns
- Open access publishing
- Podcasting
- Documentary distribution
- Knowledge mobilization platforms
Evolving the Framework:
What's Missing?
We're actively iterating this framework based on conversations with our community. Through our consultation process, important dimensions that don't fit neatly into these five categories have been identified:
Process-Centered Approaches
The framework emphasizes what people create but may not fully capture how they work. Many changemakers focus explicitly on:
- Conflict engagement and mediation
- Facilitation methodologies
- Relational and contemplative practices
- Building trust and authentic connection
- Creating "warm" spaces that nourish rather than deplete
Land, Spirit, and Intergenerational Responsibility
Indigenous colleagues, along with those rooted in nature-based creativity, have helped us recognize that the framework, as currently conceived, doesn’t adequately center:
- Land-based practices and relationship to territory
- Spiritual and ceremonial dimensions of changemaking
- Intergenerational knowledge transmission (seven generations thinking)
- Restoration and renewal (not just equity, but healing)
- Relationality and reciprocity as foundational rather than supplementary