Faces of Democracy: Creating Civic Self-Portraits at Stanford’s Democracy Day
Photo by Carly Chillmon
On November 5, students gathered for Democracy Day, an academic holiday filled with events meant to increase civic participation, dialogue, and community-building. One activity, hosted by the McCoy Family Center for Ethics in Society, invited participants to build civic self-portraits to express their values, political beliefs, and personal identities through creative collages. Participants had access to various magazines, stickers, and other artistic materials to help them craft their collages, allowing for a range of artistic expression.
Student Reflections
Isabella Chavez ‘28 (left) reflected on the process of merging different aspects of her life into one cohesive piece: “My thought process was all over the place, so I thought about my overall beliefs and split the collage down the middle. On one side you have things more related to politics and the other is stuff about my identity. In the middle, I put an 'all you need is love' sticker to bring everything together."
Sophia Mitsuoka ‘28 (right) found the activity to be therapeutic, describing how it helped her process the times we're living in: "I flipped through lots of books and drew inspiration from the things that resonate with me and reflect many of the issues that have defined these polarized times."
Hui Ying Yu ‘28 (below) approached her collage as a form of visual storytelling, combining elements that spoke to her interpretation of today’s political climate. "I looked for pictures and phrases that called out to me and arranged them in a way that makes sense cohesively."
All of the civic identity collages came together on a large poster board to showcase the diverse beliefs, identities, and interpretations of democracy in a shared, collaborative space.
Democracy isn’t just a day; it’s an evolving, ongoing conversation, and these civic self-portraits offered a unique medium for that dialogue – a dialogue that must continue.
Find out more ways to engage in civil dialogue through the Stanford Ethics Bowl team and the Intercollegiate Civil Disagreement Program Fellowship.
April Pacheco is an undergraduate senior at Stanford studying history and comparative studies in race and ethnicity. She is passionate about immigrant rights and urban education and enjoys visiting her home in Los Angeles.