Annual Bridging Art and Awareness Challenge:
"Katrina in Our Lives"

The University of Michigan's Edward Ginsberg Center for Community Service and Learning (Division of Student Affairs), in partnership with Arts at Michigan, invited original poster submissions that bridged art and social awareness.

2006's theme was "Katrina in Our Lives." We invited art that challenged apathy and would not allow the physical and community devastation and weak governmental response to Hurricane Katrina fade from our memories. We sought art that communicated a sense of urgency about the inequities that seethe below the surface of America's prosperity. We called for art that put a new face on our outrage, raised our expectations that existing injustices are not only sad but unacceptable, and moved us to action.

Artist-activist Bob Marley instructed us, "Some people have hopes and dreams; some people have ways and means." With a social justice perspective, we see some individuals and communities blocked from access to life-affirming resources, and targeted for quality-of-life-threatening conditions such as job cutbacks, pollution, and profiling. A social change perspective demands we recognize, act on, and change these conditions that adversely affect our communities and others. This call for art will encourage the U-M Ann Arbor campus community to create public awareness of social injustices. (For a broader statement about social justice, click here.)

The theme or message the poster context explored included the environment; corporate pollution; luxury and poverty; war; tax cuts; crumbling infrastructure; immigrant issues; racial profiling; media mis-representation; and the American "dream."

The following were the two winning posters.

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