About the project
In 2010, after New York passed America’s first laws providing basic rights for domestic workers, an advocacy group approached Studio REV- to help inform the state’s 200,000 nannies, housekeepers, and caregivers. We produced a humorous audionovela app which reached up to 1200 users in the first month, was named by CNN named as “one of 5 apps to change the world”, and received awards at Obama’s White House.
As domestic workers in other states started organizing, we created the NannyVan, a bright orange mobile studio with pop-out craft and media carts. Traveling with my baby, our friend Anjum, and women from the 20,000-strong National Domestic Workers Alliance, we set up in parks, playgrounds, markets, transit stops, etc, sharing stories to create paper toolkits, an album of worker-sung dance jams, 4 know-your-rights dances, and more.
When the NannyVan died, we continued onwards in a new mobile studio, a superhero-themed 1967 station wagon (the CareForce One). We chronicled one journey in a funny and personal film for PBS Digital/ITVS called CareForce One Travelogues that explores how care intersects with immigration, slavery, and race.
Since 2011 we’ve traveled 18,000+ miles, reached 22,000 individuals, and millions more through the media. We feel success when we hear things like, “I’ve been a nanny for 15 years and never thought of myself as a domestic worker entitled to basic rights — until I came across your artwork.”
This nomination dignifies the 5 million domestic workers struggling to feed their families and 20 million families staggering under the cost of care. If awarded, your support would prove critical in our goal to transform 15,000 individuals through artwork, involving them in this powerful, joyful, and unstoppable movement for change.
CareForce: Creating a Future with Care Workers as Protagonists
Links
Video: CareForce One Travelogues (PBS/ITVS film; 24 minutes)
Video: CareForce Disco
Video: Voices from the CareForce
About the artist
Founded by artist Marisa Morán Jahn, Studio REV- is a non-profit collective that co-designs public art + creative media with and for low-wage workers, immigrants, women, and youth. In addition to the CareForce, key projects include El Bibliobandido (an ongoing legend in Honduras about a story-eating bandit whose fame rivals Santa Claus), Video Slink Uganda (experimental films slipped or “slinked” into Uganda’s bootleg cinemas), and Contratados (a Yelp! for migrant workers).