EOT 431 Civic Engagement Through Art

In this episode of "Eye on the Triangle," Evie Dallman and Amanda Levinson discuss the arts' place in exciting civic engagement and ways communities can continue restoration within the individual as well as larger bodies of people. We talk radical rest, laborers' rights and artistic action.

In our second story, Evie chats with the North Carolina Museum of Art's Head Librarian, Andrew Wang, about North Carolina book culture, zine culture, DIY movements, the NCMA's library as a source for research and media, grassroots efforts in publication and media representation and the End Paper Book Fair's place in these ideas.

Finally, we close out with Evie's interview with Kid Lab creators Shannon Newby and Susan Kelly on their initiatives to give kids access to arts education and principles of making with recycled goods.

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Creators and Guests

Host

Shradha Bhatia

Public Affairs Director (2025-2026)

Producer

Evie Dallmann

Content Creator

What is Eye on the Triangle?

Eye on the Triangle is WKNC 88.1 FM HD-1/HD-2’s weekly public affairs programming with news, interviews, opinion, weather, sports, arts, music, events and issues that matter to NC State, Raleigh and the Triangle.

00:02
Shradha Bhatia
You are listening to Eye of the Triangle, WKNC's weekly public affairs program from the campus of North Carolina State University in Raleigh. Any views and opinions expressed during Eye on the Triangle do not represent NC State or Student Media.

00:19
Amanda Levinson
Music and art could excite people and bring people together and get people interested in voting.

00:25
Evie Dallmann
This is Evie with WKNC. This interview is a part of a larger series that engages the arts and the Triangle. This includes interviews with the antiquities curator at the NCMA as well as an interview with the head librarian of the NCMA. So this looks at the grassroots appeal and approach to art to further develop this image of arts in the Triangle. I hope you enjoy.

00:53
Amanda Levinson
So my name is Amanda Levinson and I am the co-founder of Voting Arts Lab which is a arts driven civic engagement project that seeks to excite young people motivate young people to vote through arts driven projects and initiatives. So that's what I was doing in 2024 during the election. I'm also a social entrepreneur. I co founded a tech startup that was a mission driven tech startup in the humanitarian tech space, exited that two years ago and have been working more both in the arts driven civic engagement area but also in well being and focusing on how to support various communities. Well being through meditation, through restorative yoga and through other practices that really encourage rest and returning to self. So I have like all these different dimensions of me so I'm not very easily contained.

02:11
Amanda Levinson
As the co founder of Voting Arts Lab, that's something that was this really exciting side project initially that I started and then just kind of grew. The idea for Voting Arts Lab has its roots in my time when I was living in the Philadelphia area actually about eight years ago. So one of my friends, Lancey Sylvia was the director of this arts based voting project called Next Stop Democracy in which they had this question about if putting art in polling places could draw more people to polling places and encourage them to vote. You know that like the Vote Here signs that you see that are outside of polling places, sometimes they're hard to see, sometimes they're not even there.

03:09
Amanda Levinson
And so she had this idea to commission a bunch of artists in Philadelphia to create Vote Here signs and then to place them outside of polling places around the city and the result was really incredible. There were all these really fantastic Vote Here signs and then after that project ended some of those original pieces of artwork were turned into posters and then were displayed around the city. And I always thought that was such an incredible way to draw people into voting in A way that sparked delight in some way that makes polling places feel more welcoming and makes this civic duty that a lot of us feel, you know, we have as an obligation or something like a little more. Just a little fun and unexpected. And so this was something that was. Had been at the back of my mind for years.

04:17
Amanda Levinson
And every election cycle, I'm always involved in get out the vote initiatives. I helped start a local organization here in Durham called Bull City Votes, which was this really grassroots get out the vote organization, which has really taken on a life of its own and does incredible work getting people to register to vote and then also getting them to the polls. So during the 2024 election, before the 2024 election, there was a group of women that were getting together, that were brought together actually by the musician, the North Carolina musician, Tiff Merritt, who's really concerned about the election in 2024 and voter turnout and wanted to look at different ways in which music and art could excite people and bring people together and get people interested in voting.

05:17
Amanda Levinson
And so she ended up partnering very closely with Common Cause, which created Carolina Days, and then Common Cause, they're actually our fiscal sponsor for Voting Arts Lab. A couple of us decided, you know, we're really interested in looking at this other dimension of, like, visual arts and voting, and is there a way to encourage young people to vote through visual art? So we had this idea of commissioning young artists from across North Carolina and from across different demographics to create posters around voting. And so we raised some money. We did that. We created a zine as well. So it was a poster series, but also a zine, and responding to the inquiry of why vote now and why vote in North Carolina? And so we had a couple dozen artists respond to that and create posters and contribute to our zine.

06:26
Amanda Levinson
And one of the ways that were connecting this to an actual tangible call to action around voting is we had a QR code at the bottom of each poster. So there would be a poster that would say vote or have some sort of message around voting. And then at the bottom there was a QR code. And in order to receive a poster, people would need to scan the QR code and check their voter registration. So very simple, you know, one minute, ask. And once they did that, they could have this poster for free, this beautiful poster for free. So that was. That was how we initially started the project. And then it really just took off from there. Yeah, I mean, I think Durham. So I can really only speak to Durham because that's where I live. And that's where I'm seeing stuff.

07:24
Amanda Levinson
But Durham has a very rich history of arts based civic activism. And you see it in murals. You see it in artwork that people create and which is. Which is exhibited around town. 21C, which is a hotel and art space in downtown Durham, often has politically themed exhibitions on everything related to. Everything related to like labor and how we view labor and laborers in this country. They actually did a whole democracy themed and voting themed exhibition close to the election in 2024 as well. I think the Nasher definitely often has exhibits too. But those are, you know, The Nasher in 21C are places where more established artists can exhibit their work and it's contained within these walls. I think that one of the things that I'm really interested in is public arts and public arts activism.

08:43
Amanda Levinson
And so we're seeing more of that in Durham. There's certainly, I mean, you know, everything from like everything from again, murals to I think more types of guerrilla artwork that you see around town to Durham has a huge comics and zine community where folks are just being really scrappy and creating more kind of ephemeral pieces as well. And so I think that there's a huge role to play in connecting those kinds of types of artwork to voting specifically, which is. And voting and civic engagement, which is more. Which is more our interest. We definitely would love to see more participatory artwork and participatory zine making around voting. And it's one of the things that we're thinking about a little bit for this year, for sure. Yeah, it's a good question.

09:53
Amanda Levinson
And it's something that I think that a lot of activists, communities are engaging with and wrestling with right now because we're at a time of such incredible civic unrest and a time when folks are putting. So many communities feel threatened. So many communities are expending a lot of effort into organizing and staying vigilant and protecting each other. And there's all these mutual aid networks, which is critical. And the flip side is also that we need ways to tackle burnout and to prevent burnout and also to, as you said, I really like the idea the. This word of reclaim, like reclaiming rest as our birthright as human beings and as something that's really essential and foundational for. For anything that we go out and do in the world. So when I teach restorative yoga, I.

11:05
Amanda Levinson
One of the things that I continuously offer my students is, you know, there you. You may feel like taking time to rest and restore is selfish this is the message that we're inculcated with from, you know, the dominant culture, right, is think about all the things that we learn about rest. Like, I'll rest when I'm dead, or being resting is lazy. You know, all these different things that we learn about rest. But in fact, rest can be one of the most radical things you can do because you. We all need to have settled nervous systems, especially right now, in order to be able to show up as our best selves and in order not to be, to respond to what's happening in the collective from a reactive space.

12:06
Amanda Levinson
So if we can take a pause, if we can learn how to pause, if our nervous systems can learn how to pause between stimulus and response, then that's where the transformation happens and that's where we're really able to be really effective. And so it's challenging right now because I think there is this tremendous sense of urgency that people feel, and I know from working in the startup world, from working with founders that, and organizers as well, that if you're on a track and you're just running, running all the time, sometimes it feels like if I stop, then I'm going to lose all my momentum and that's going to be it. But what I have found in my own practice, as well as working with students, is that it's the opposite.

13:09
Amanda Levinson
The more you rest, the more effective you are in whatever it is that you're doing. Yeah, it's a good question. I think that one of the really exciting things about living in this time is that crisis creates really creative opportunities. And it creates opportunities for, I would say it creates opportunities for creative responses. And the center for Artistic Activism, which was one of the organizations that supported Voting arts lab in 2024, they have this incredible community of artists and of organizations that are trying to bring more creative approaches to civic engagement and to voting. So I've become part of this community of. Of artists and artists and activists that are doing all kinds of really creative interventions around voting. And, you know, they're. They're all things that I would like, absolutely love to test locally.

14:33
Amanda Levinson
Like, just as an example, one of my favorite ones was a cheerleading squad that shows up at polling booths and like, cheers for people when they come out. You know, cheerleaders for voting. That's really fun. There's another organization that was doing really cool things with, like, vending machines and, you know, those, like, little claw games where you put money in and you like, get, you know, get animal and as your prize so there's all. There's. So there's all these. There's all these organizations and individuals that are doing really cool things around voting. Stand up, you know, stand up comedy around voting. I think that we're. The way that I see ourselves is we're part of this collective right now that understands that voting is under threat and it's more necessary than ever. And at the same time, people feel extremely cynical about it.

15:53
Amanda Levinson
And so our more traditional approaches of how we register people to vote, how we get to people to the polls, which traditionally has just been like, going door to door, you know, like those kinds of things, calling, texting, like all that. That we need. That we need to meet people where they are, but also meet people where they are in. In really creative ways. So. And in ways that inspire and delight and like, surprise people. One of the things that I've been thinking a lot about, just to your point, about needing both of these, like, both the rest and the inspiration and the joy is I've been really thinking about, like, are there ways to combine those two things in some sort of creative. Creative intervention around. Around voting or even. Not necessarily even voting.

16:53
Amanda Levinson
I mean, one of the things that I'm really interested in is depolarization. And at a time where it feels like we're really teetering on. On the edge of something, we're teetering around the edge of what feels like there could be increasing violence in our communities directed towards each other because of this polarization, because of this othering. So, you know, I'm really interested in, like, how do we see each other as human and how do we bring compassion and empathy to how we view who we consider to be the opposition, the enemy. Right. So I think that art could potentially play a really powerful role in that. And in some ways, I feel like that underlies everything else. It's like, we can have elections, we can keep going back and forth as to, like, who's in office, right?

18:09
Amanda Levinson
Like my party, your party, whatever, back and forth. But underlying, there's a deeper current of profound mistrust and hostility that's really growing in so many communities. And I'm really interested in how we counteract that.

18:34
Evie Dallmann
This is Evie with wknc, editing and producing by me, music by Samuel Shepard. Thanks for listening. Catch you next time.

18:57
Andrew Wang
Interested in sort of developing a small and, like, very curated collection that represents contemporary folk arts as well, so that the folks that I'm trying to do outreach with see themselves represented in the library and the museum in some capacity.

19:13
Evie Dallmann
This is Evie with WKNC. I got to talk with the NCMA's head librarian, Andrew Wang, organizer of the Endpaper Book Fair in the fall. We talked about Raleigh's pivotal place in self publishing and book culture, largely as it relates to community and the people. I hope this helps you in your journey through the Triangle and its cultural hubs.

19:33
Andrew Wang
I'm Andrew Wang. I'm the head librarian here at the North Carolina Museum of Art. Previously, I've worked in libraries around the country, including the University of Oregon and Ringling College of Art and Design. So I actually got a dual master's degree in library science and art history. So that's my background. I always joke that I was drawn to art librarianship specifically because I don't read that much. I love books with pictures, and this field really gives me the opportunity to appreciate and work with literature that is art focused and visual focused. Traditionally, library spaces were really sort of used as, like, storehouses for books. And so a lot a big part of a librarian's work was cataloging and maintaining physical collections.

20:26
Andrew Wang
That still is a large part of librarianship today, but we see a general trend shifting towards focusing on public services and a lot of interdisciplinary work. So the connection to Endpaper, for instance, is this sort of desire to promote the library doing outreach and connecting dots to disparate communities within our region. And of course, a big part of librarianship is also focusing on visual literacy, which is more important than ever these days. A lot of people think about literacy as in, like, the ability to read and determine what is and is not a credible source. Those are just like pieces of literacy. But you can also apply those and even more complex related ideas to visuals as well.

21:18
Andrew Wang
So when you look at an image in, let's say, a news report or in a newspaper or just a random website, how do you determine whether or not it's credible? Is it appropriate to use for certain situations? And then now, of course, with the advent of AI technology, really transforming how we consume information, it's more important than ever to know and make sure that we know that something is accurate if we're using that information to support our beliefs. Book arts in North Carolina right now, that's the thing that's, I think, unique to Raleigh in this region is a real resistance to elitism. Really. It seems like people are really interested in sharing information and teaching and learning from each other. Here, where we have a lot more families, our population is booming.

22:16
Andrew Wang
But you can see that it's leaning towards our older folks and older demographics that Section of our population is growing pretty rapidly. And then also families. So you see more like younger people or parents with their kids come to our fair versus what I've seen at least in the New York Art Book Fair. So it feels like more of like a general interest, general population kind of situation in Raleigh. That's at least what I see. And then also in those other fairs that are happening around the state, there's a really heavy emphasis on DIY and this idea of like grassroots goals and missions, especially Zine Machine, which happens annually in Durham and is probably my favorite printed matter type fair in this area. That's very, it feels very grassroots and like very community oriented. It's.

23:17
Andrew Wang
And in line with that like New York Art Book Fair is so big and so well funded that they have people coming in from all over the world. There's representation like internationally. That's something that I would love to see a little bit more of here in Raleigh, but I think it would be a harder sell. I think there's just so much already here and so much desire to strengthen the community that exists here that continues to be sort of our mission for Endpaper. There's so many low cost and free opportunities to do art making in this area. I know that for I'll speak to Endpaper at least that's something that we intentionally wanted to be a free, open to all sort of program. So everybody's welcome to come. Our tablers don't have to pay a fee to table with us.

24:06
Andrew Wang
They don't pay an application fee or anything. So we are really trying to lower the barriers as much as possible. Now we do have some programs associated with Endpaper that are ticketed and might require like a fee. But we also try to minimize those costs as much as we possibly can that you know, so that it fits within our budget. So I think that going to End Paper and communicating with the people who table at this fair is a great way to get connected. Especially since this is a gathering of so many disparate parts of the book arts and print communities. So you have younger folks who are making zines like really low cost, stapled together sort of like easy self published material.

24:52
Andrew Wang
And then you have retirees who are making like really beautifully crafted book arts that are essentially sculptures and then like everything in between as well. So it's just such a great opportunity to sort of like pick ideas and develop partnerships with people and create something new. Lots of opportunities to collaborate. And then beyond End Paper, I think just in this area, I'VE also seen so many other workshops floating around everywhere. I know NC State. State does a bunch of like continuing education classes. I know there's like live drawing sessions at the Fruit sometimes there's just, there's so much you look in any direction. I've also gone to like more low key community based gatherings where people just like bring art supplies and create stuff together. And then I also witnessed this traveling throughout the state for some of NPAPER satellite events this year.

25:51
Andrew Wang
The communities are there and people want to make stuff. I've gone to, for instance, in Charlotte, their international arts festival this year. Jen Garrison, who runs the Queen City Zine Fest had a bunch of tables set out and a bunch of supplies available for everyone and a bunch of strangers just came and made zines together. That was like a ton of fun. And something very similar happened in greenville too on ECU's campus. So if you look, the opportunities are everywhere. I think there's so much significance to a printed format. I think you consider the early days of pamphleteering in America, this idea of being able to mass produce and print a lot of ideas on a physical format that you can distribute very cheaply and very easily and quickly, and that can be used for good or evil.

26:49
Andrew Wang
But it's a way to be able to distribute your ideas and also have them in a tangible form. So that in itself I think is really important to consider. There's a long history of associating print with democratic ideals. And then we see that sort of resurgence in the 20th century with the boom of zine culture. And so there's a lot of arguments about like, what was the first zine. But really the heart of that idea is being able to not only print your own material, but be in charge of the entire process of the publication itself. So conventional publication processes require somebody to write something and then send it to an editor and like a copy editor. And that might go back and forth.

27:37
Andrew Wang
The publishing house will determine what they can and can't publish based on their goals, which is still really important in scholarly publishing, don't get me wrong. Especially university presses. Their mission, to disseminate information that has been vetted and peer reviewed, still very important. But in any sort of institution you're going to have folks who are underrepresented and do not have a voice because they haven't been able to pursue a PhD, let's say, and get published in a scholarly book. So the availability of folks to create their own zines and publish their own ideas exactly the way they want it Artistically or in terms of the exact language they want to use is so powerful, I think, especially for a lot of marginalized communities today, especially people who have had terms used to represent who they are that don't, don't accurately represent who they are.

28:40
Andrew Wang
Also introduces the opportunity for a lot of nuance in like social political issues. There are things that are seemingly progressive, but when we sort of like zoom out too much, we start creating like monoliths out of communities that might have very specific needs. So for instance, during like the gay liberation movement, there was a lot of like valid arguments to legalize same sex marriage, for instance. And that's something that I of course like support wholeheartedly. But there's also dissenters that do identify as queer who think that it's not important for us to have to align our values with heteronormative values. And so it's easy to say like, oh, all queer people want the same thing. But then through something like zines you get a lot of like interesting perspectives within communities as well.

29:38
Andrew Wang
So it's in that it feels very empowering to produce a zine. So the library at NCMA is open to the public. We typically prefer appointments, but if you're, if you show up and we're here, we'll gladly take you. Our public hours are generally Wednesday to Fridays, 10am to 4pm we have about 40,000 volumes in our collection, most of which is connected to the museum's art collection. So if you want to research more about works in our museum, fantastic place to get started. We also have a lot of art periodicals, some folks come in here and just lounge for an afternoon reading the latest in art and design news. We have artist files on contemporary artists. We have a small but growing special collection. And also you have two librarians available to assist you with your research.

30:31
Andrew Wang
So if you have questions about objects in your personal collection or you just generally want to explore some themes or movements in art history, we're a free service that's available to you. You can always email [e-mail] thank this.

30:52
Evie Dallmann
Has been Evie with WKNC editing and producing by me and music by Samuel Shepard. Thanks for listening. This is Kid Lab.

31:09
Susan Kelly
This is Kid Lab. We're a non profit mobile makerspace for kids or for anyone, kids at heart. We offer like free accessibility to kids at different events in the community to come and make and play Tinker. We're really big on just letting children have that freedom within the artistic space to explore, to make things to engage their imaginations. I'm more. I'm the fine artist and I'm Susan. And then Shannon is a trained educator, so she blends a lot of science and engineering into our projects. We have several stations today at the Rooted Festival. First, monoprint. We are doing some little mini monoprints where you roll out your ink and kind of carve in your design and then you print it. And we're going with autumnal things.

32:11
Susan Kelly
This table is stamp making, where you take these little pre made stickers and you put them on a. We use a lot of recycled items, so you put these on a bottle or container lid and then you can ink it up on a pad. So this is all for the stamping since we're going with the plant theme today. Yeah, there's such a influx in, you know, boxes in people's homes. And so we love to give families ideas of how to use the different cardboard that comes into their house. And we have these wonderful tools.

32:54
Shannon Newby
Sam's going to show us how it's done.

32:57
Evie Dallmann
Yeah.

32:58
Shannon Newby
So because we are mobile makerspace and we work with hundreds and hundreds of kids, we need quick, easy, accessible materials that we can replenish and restock the trailer for all these events. So we have found that our cardboard station, besides it being super simple for us to maintain, it's also the most creative. So we have these cardboard cutting tools. She just showed you the chomp saw, which we absolutely love. It's super simple. You feed the cardboard and in here it cuts it. Sam can show you in a minute because he's now a pro. And then we have the handheld electric scissors. We've got several of these. These tend to be the crowd favorite. And we've got all these hole punching tools that go through thick cardboard.

33:45
Shannon Newby
And then we talk to kids if they're really interested in how to use hinges and how to use fasteners to work on their design. So a lot of construction methods, a lot of problem solving in real time. We just added a new station, which Olivia is showing over here, our fashion designer. We've been doing kidlab for nine years. We had kind of always imagined being able to take what we do more into the community. So this mobile version became more of a reality.

34:19
Shradha Bhatia
This has been Eye on the Triangle from WKNC 88.1 FM HD-1 Raleigh. Our theme song is Krakatoa by Noah Stark, licensed under Creative Commons. To relisten to this or any other episode, visit wknc.org/podcast or subscribe wherever you get your podcasts. Thank you for listening.