Activist Artist Scholarship
Scholarship Sponsored by Lantos Foundation
Introduction
The Activist Artist program highlights the vital role artists play in advancing human rights worldwide. While human-rights defenders come from many walks of life, creative professionals — filmmakers, writers, performers, visual artists and others — are a uniquely powerful, but sometimes underappreciated, force in raising awareness and prompting change.
Purpose
Artists communicate urgency and emotion through many forms — film, prose, theater, dance, music, painting, poetry, and drawing — and can motivate communities to understand, accept, and act on human-rights concerns. As part of its Global Citizenship work, the Lantos Foundation supports and honors artist-activists whose creative work tells human-rights stories in original, meaningful ways.
The Scholarship
The Activist Artist Scholarship began in 2020 with seed funding from the Bank of New Hampshire and is run as an annual competition for students. Entrants are invited either to analyze the impact of an activist artist or to submit their own original activist artwork that addresses a human-rights issue.
Participation to date
Since the program’s launch in 2020, students from more than 53 New Hampshire schools have participated, and fourteen scholarships totaling $65,000 have been awarded.
How to Enter — Two Categories
Category 1 — Critical Essay
- Submit a 600–1,000-word essay that examines how a particular activist artist used their chosen medium to inform, influence, and inspire action on a human-rights issue during their life or beyond. An example essay is provided to guide applicants.
Category 2 — Original Activist Work
- Submit an original artwork (any medium: visual art, music, dance, or original writing) that addresses a human-rights topic. In place of an essay, include a 250–500-word “museum plaque” description explaining the piece. Sample activist art and a model plaque are available to help shape submissions.
Inspiration and Suggested Topics
Applicants are encouraged to draw on the Universal Declaration of Human Rights as a starting point. We also urge consideration of situations beyond the United States — especially in places where democratic institutions are weak and press freedoms are limited, creating environments where abuses often go unchecked. Possible topics include, but are not limited to:
- Erosion of the rule of law (e.g., Hong Kong, Russia)
- Prisoners of conscience and wrongful detention
- Women’s rights (e.g., in Iran, Pakistan, Afghanistan)
- Restrictions on freedom of religion, conscience, and belief
- Persecution of ethnic minorities and other vulnerable groups
- Genocide or threats thereof
- Limits on internet freedom
Notes
Applicants should follow the submission examples provided for each category to understand format and expectations. The program celebrates creative efforts that meaningfully engage with human-rights issues and amplify the voices and experiences at their center.