Here are the latest additions to our Liberatory Craft Library! Craft tools, inspiration, & insights for our next world. Some just remembered, some newly discovered.
📖 Books
👉 Albert Camus’ Create Dangerously
“Camus’s powerful lecture, as relevant today as ever, argues against ‘art for art’s sake’, while his Nobel Prize speech brilliantly sets out his vision of the artist’s role and responsibilities.”
👉 Damien John O’Meara’s Queer Stories in Australian TV drama: Production Culture, Policy, and Distribution
“This book examines how queer representations are negotiated by creatives and executives for distribution through mainstream television networks.”
👉 Ellen Kirkpatrick’s Recovering the Radical Promise of Superheroes: Unmaking Worlds (free & paid)
“Why, when set against otherwise unbounded, and often extreme, transformation—human to machine, human to animal, human to god—are certain categories seemingly untouchable?”
👉 Maria Tatar’s The Heroine with 1001 Faces
“The Heroine with 1,001 Faces dismantles the cult of warrior heroes, revealing a secret history of heroinism at the very heart of our collective cultural imagination.”
📜 Articles
👉 Alyssa Smith’s ‘Whitewashing v. Blackwashing: Structural Racism and Anti-Racist Praxis in Hollywood Cinema‘
“This study aims to dissect how whitewashing and blackwashing differ, as well as discuss how blackwashing succumbs to the racist history of the Hollywood film industry despite its attempt at leading a brighter future for Black representation in film.”
👉 Amber Case’s ‘How Design is Governance‘
“At a fundamental level, all design is governance. We encounter inconveniences like this coffee shop every day, both offline and in the apps we use. But it’s not enough to say it’s the result of bad design. It’s also a result of governance decisions made on behalf of the customers during the design process.”
👉 Amity Paye’s ‘Belief Arc‘
“What does it take to change people’s hearts and minds at scale? How do we meet people where they’re at, while staying laser-focused on where we want them to go?”
👉 Collective participants’ ‘Manifesto for Community Film Distribution and Exhibition in Latin America‘
“Collective Document Created by 183 Participants from 12 Countries at the III Latin American Forum on Film and Social Impact in Bogotá, Colombia, 2024.”
👉 DS4SI’s ‘No More Fairy Tales‘
“How do we go about telling ourselves the truth? How do we intervene in our own narrative devices? What stories have swallowed whole…about ourselves, about heroes and villains, about what it means to win? There is gut wrenching work to be done here.”
👉 Stayci Taylor’s ‘Not getting your story straight: queering heroes’ journeys and heteronormative timelines‘
“This article offers queer temporality as a lens through which to unravel the 12 steps of Vogler’s hero’s journey, informed by queer theory’s critiques of the 8 steps of the heteronormative life journey.”
👉 Quanice G. Floyd’s ‘We Need To Talk About Power & Control In The Arts And Culture Sector‘
“In this article, I’ll introduce the Arts & Culture Power and Control Wheel and the Arts & Culture Liberation Wheel. I’ll begin with the historical context behind the wheels before digging into the frameworks themselves.”
📺 Audio Visual
👉 Amabel Holland’s ‘Do Board Games Need Victory Conditions?‘
“Game designer Amabel Holland asks what kinds of human things the medium of board games can express and explore once we let go of winning or losing as sources of meaning.”
👉 James Dunlop’s ‘What the Gurus Leave Out‘
“If you’ve ever wondered whether successful writers possess secret knowledge (or simply a higher tolerance for ambiguity, repetition, and occasional self-doubt) this video may help.”