Calling All Artists: It’s Time for a Creative Uprising (The Good Kind)

I am feeling inspired as you can tell by all the posting I have been doing. I don’t expect you to read everything. I think only about 1/3 of people actually have time to open my posts on the daily. I get it. I don’t have time either. But let me warn you, for the next month or two I am going to have to post a lot to express this new civic project I have on my mind. I am hoping you are going to love it and want to participate.

Calling All Artists: It’s Time for a Creative Uprising (The Good Kind)

OK fellow artists—

In the middle of all the national chaos, noise, and breakdowns, I say we enter the space with a different kind of energy. Not more yelling. Not more panic.
But a counterpoint. A vision. A presence.
And yes, a performance.

This is your invitation to participate in a conceptual performance project—not on a stage or in a gallery, but in the halls of government, in city council meetings, in your neighborhood, your region, your inboxes and post offices.
It’s called the Creative Freedom Act.

What Is It?

I got started by using Chatwick & Co. my editorial and research team to draft a bill for congress. I am calling it the Creative Freedom Act. I’ll post that soon. It is great.

But I have decided that the Creative Freedom Act should be the general name for this group performance piece that I am proposing to you. So it is not just the a single bill or demand—it’s a framework for action. A title of the performance you might say.
A banner under which we, as working artists, can make clear, visible proposals to Federal, State, and Local representatives. Proposals that say:

• The creative community is vital to a healthy society.

• Artists need infrastructure, access, and freedom to do our work.

• And we are not asking for scraps or handouts. We are offering a vision toward a better future that we will be working toward for the common good.

The Creative Freedom Act is a call to seed your local community with new models for public arts funding, creative commons infrastructure, and the reintegration of art into the civic and cultural bloodstream of this country.

We are not waiting for permission. We are showing up—with letters, proposals, meetings, and plans in hand. With studio grit and imagination intact.
It is time to create a stir.

Why Now?

Because those in power—knowingly or not—are undermining the creative class on every level and “flooding the zone with shit” (read that)
By pricing us out.
By defunding the arts.
By pushing policy that benefits corporations over communities.
By treating art as a luxury instead of the lifeblood of public imagination.

We intend to counteract this with our own public presence and floor the zone with creative and constructive imagination.
We intend to organize—not through protest alone, but through proposal.
Through visionary action. Through participatory performance art on the civic stage.

What’s the Plan?

I’m developing toolkits, drafts, proposals, and models—including:

• Sample letters and talking points

• Draft legislation like the Local Arts Commons Initiative

• Visual materials and printable PDFs

• Strategic advice for local engagement

• And a public platform to share your efforts

If each of us proposes a version of the Creative Freedom Act in our own community—even as a gesture, a performance, a provocation—we begin to build a movement that reclaims civic space for the creative spirit.

This isn’t just “arts advocacy.”
It’s a re-storying of the future.
It’s a patriotic act of care and reconstruction.
It’s something worth doing—because we know what happens when art and voice is stifled.
And we also know what happens when it is nourished.

Let’s Begin

I’ll be sharing drafts, ideas, and proposals in the coming weeks.
Start thinking about the empty buildings in your town. The old post office. The abandoned school. The storefront sitting vacant.
That’s where the Commons begins.
That’s where the Freedom starts.

I’M ALL FIRED UP! AND I HOPE YOU WILL BE TOO.

I wouldn’t do it if it wasn’t made into an art project so that’s the way I intend to approach it - as an art project - a big ass group performance work. So we should think of it as preparing for a big group exhibition or theatrical performance or a movie project. It can include all of those things. In the meantime it a daily personal performance in your own local.

Let’s do it together. Artist to artist. City to city. Letter by letter. Proposal by proposal.

Because if we don’t do it—nobody else will. We are on our own. It is our job to advocate for ourselves as a community. So let’s think of it as a group art project. So get fired up and spread this post around. Get everybody involved.

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FOOTER:
If this vision resonates with you—don’t just read it. Share it. Act on it.

The Creative Freedom Act is not just an idea, it’s a movement in the making.
A living, breathing civic artwork. A long-range performance. A cultural infrastructure plan dressed as common sense.

🌱 Start where you are.
📜 Write your proposal.
🏛 Show up to the meeting.
📣 Speak up for the commons.

Let’s make this the moment the creative community stepped into public life—not with slogans, but with solutions.

Common Sense for the Common Good.
Creative freedom is civic freedom.

🖋️ – Cecil Touchon