CareForce

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.

This nomination to the Visible Award dignifies the 5 million domestic workers struggling to feed their families and 20 million families staggering under the cost of care.

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.”