Promoting participation

By Madeline Swanson | Photos by Kaley Joy

As the 2018 midterm elections approached, Hannah Smotrich and Stephanie Rowden, associate professors of art and design at the Penny W. Stamps School of Art & Design, were busy co-teaching a studio course where students designed a voter engagement campaign for their peers. They discovered that one of the biggest obstacles to democratic participation for students is lack of confidence navigating the voting process. 

As faculty, they observed students showing a clear interest in political issues. National data showed that students registered to vote in significant numbers, but they weren’t necessarily making it to the polls on Election Day. As artists and designers, Rowden and Smotrich started to wonder about the barriers art and design might help address.

“At the time that we started this work, student rates of voter participation were surprisingly low, given what we understood about their engagement in the world and their concern about the issues,” Smotrich said. “In our minds, if you take the time to register, you intend to vote. So we started looking at the ways art and design could play a role in helping students get over that finish line to actually vote.”

That’s when the Creative Campus Voting Project (CCVP) was born. 

CCVP is a nonpartisan initiative, co-led by Smotrich and Rowden, to provide students with creative resources to address the challenges they face as new, and often first-time voters. Through a combination of design and civic education, CCVP develops installations, materials, and experiences for students that clarify registration and voting procedures and help students learn how to connect the issues they care about with what appears on their ballot. 

“Art and design can play a really essential role in welcoming students into this cornerstone of civic participation by making the process feel welcoming, clear, reassuring, and even delightful,” Rowden said.

Smotrich agrees: “I think this is something that the arts are really uniquely situated to do—to not only improve a process, but improve your experience of that process.”

Their first project, six years ago, was co-teaching a class at Stamps called Voting Is Sexy. Students developed a series of creative interventions for their peers—videos, handouts, social media, fun photo ops—designed to make voting in the November 2018 midterms more visible, less confusing, and more appealing to college students. 

In 2020, a change in Michigan election law opened new opportunities for CCVP. The new rules established no-excuse absentee voting, same-day registration and voting, and the possibility for satellite clerk’s offices. The Ann Arbor city clerk, eager to facilitate a smooth process for both her staff and voters, offered a satellite office on campus in advance of Election Day. 

That’s when the University of Michigan Museum of Art (UMMA) sought out the opportunity to partner with Stamps to host CCVP’s design of the Ann Arbor City Clerk’s Office @ UMMA—a satellite location where students could both register and vote.  

“This project was a very unique collaboration across the arts, a university, and local government,” Rowden said. “We haven't found anything else quite like it. We're very fortunate to have great campus partners like UMMA and the rest of the UMICH Votes coalition, as well as a terrific city clerk who's been very supportive of our partnership.”

By 2022, CCVP’s projects expanded to include the Ballot Wayfinder installation, a cohort of peer mentors, and campus voting hubs at UMMA and the Duderstadt Center Gallery, which facilitated 3,900 registrations and 4,600 ballots, contributing to the state of Michigan having the country’s highest youth voter turnout rate of 2022.

For the 2024 presidential election, Rowden and Smotrich designed the two campus voting hubs at UMMA and the Duderstadt Center Gallery that also accommodated the state’s new early voting period. CCVP also developed a digital tool to help students make a voting plan in the form of a fun personality quiz. 

“First-time student voters might not remember the specifics of the registration form or exactly what was on the ballot,” Smotrich observed, “but they'll remember how the experience felt.”

Rowden added: “Did it feel welcoming? Did it feel centered in their lives and connected to their social fabric?”

“We are creating spaces and inspiration and an environment for success, and I think that really matters,” said UMMA Director Christina Olsen. “I would put my bet on that really making a difference.”

*As of publication date