4Humanities solicits ideas and suggestions for effective advocacy of the humanities from the humanities community and the public. Both specific ideas for projects or resources, and broader ideas for the best approach to the problem, are welcome.
Please add your ideas by leaving a comment here. (You may also be interested in the task sheet we use to track main development and other tasks along with volunteers. If you wish to volunteer for a task, you can add a comment on the task sheet page.)
This is great stuff.
A few ideas that occurred to me
1) A gallery of successful figures (in business, law, politics as well as culture and education) who studied the humanities at university and act as good examples of where careers in the humanities can lead you
2) It would be good to have some visual evidence as well as textual evidence. I think there are a few reports on the economic benefits of the humanities (and the arts) in existence – there is certainly one in the UK. If feasible, it would be good to extract the data and have some ‘information is beautiful’ type visualisations.
3) Do you need a communications plan? Ie , who is 4Humanities trying to reach and with what precise argument? Government, educational funders, philanthropists, business, current students, potential students and the general public are all potential audiences? And following on from this – Is the 4Humanities organisation global in its reach? If so fine, but will it need to have national chapters so that evidence can be refined to win arguments within specific countries?
One model for using digital media as an effective advocacy “statement” might be the recent Otis Report on the creative economy in Southern California.
http://www.otis.edu/creative_economy/