Civic Engagement Isn’t Just Voting: Designing Liberatory Workshops for Long-Term Change
- Nia Eubanks-Dixon
- Nov 13, 2025
- 6 min read
When people hear the phrase “civic engagement,” they often think of voting. Campaign ads remind us to register, canvassers knock on doors, and schools emphasize the importance of showing up on election day. While voting is a vital act of participation, civic life is much broader. Communities thrive not just when people cast ballots, but when they come together to tell their stories, organize for change, and imagine new futures.
Creative Praxis believes civic engagement must extend beyond single moments at the polls. Through liberatory workshops, we create healing-centered spaces where youth, educators, and community members explore their power, reclaim their narratives, and build long-term strategies for liberation. These workshops are not about memorizing facts or passively consuming information. They are about equipping people to reflect, connect, and act in ways that reshape both institutions and relationships.
Why Civic Engagement Must Move Beyond Voting
Voting is necessary but insufficient. Many systemic issues—racism, poverty, environmental inequities—require more than policy shifts; they demand cultural transformation. Traditional models of civic education often stop at how government works, ignoring the deeper question of how people build power together.
By focusing only on voting, communities risk overlooking the everyday practices that strengthen democracy: storytelling, conflict resolution, organizing, and healing. Creative Praxis’s civic engagement workshops in Philadelphia and beyond push participants to see engagement as an ongoing process. Civic life is not a one-time event. It is daily work rooted in ethos, creativity, and collective care.
The Philosophy Behind Liberatory Workshops
Creative Praxis designs liberatory workshops around the idea that every participant holds wisdom. Rather than positioning facilitators as the sole source of knowledge, our methodology creates space for collaboration and mutual learning. This mirrors the philosophy of Paulo Freire, who described education as a practice of freedom.
Liberation emerges when people reflect on their lived experiences and connect them to broader systems. In a workshop setting, this might look like an educator writing their “I AM” statement, a young person creating a piece of art that reclaims their identity, or a community leader mapping out local networks of power. Each activity ties personal reflection to collective action.
These workshops are intentionally healing-centered. Oppression leaves deep scars, and without space for acknowledgment and care, engagement can feel hollow. By integrating mindfulness, art, and embodied practices, we ensure participants not only learn new skills but also leave feeling grounded, affirmed, and connected.
Storytelling as a Tool for Power
At the heart of Creative Praxis’s approach is storytelling. Stories allow participants to recognize their agency, connect with others, and challenge dominant narratives. In training for youth-based organizations, for example, young people often realize that their personal experiences with housing, policing, or education are not isolated struggles but part of systemic patterns.
When they share these stories with peers and mentors, they find solidarity. When they frame them within civic life, they identify pathways to action. Storytelling also humanizes issues, making abstract concepts tangible. In anti-racism training for educators, teachers learn to listen deeply to students’ lived experiences, shaping classrooms where everyone feels valued.
Stories, when woven into organizing, become powerful tools for advocacy. They inspire, mobilize, and sustain movements. By centering storytelling, Creative Praxis transforms civic engagement from technical instruction into a liberatory practice.
Organizing as Collective Liberation
While storytelling builds identity, organizing turns identity into power. We integrate community organizing training into our liberatory workshops to show participants how to move from reflection to action.
Organizing is not about one charismatic leader but about communities building strategies together. Participants learn how to identify shared concerns, develop campaigns, and sustain coalitions. They also learn how to navigate conflict without replicating harm. Through restorative liberation workshops for schools, educators, and students practice repairing relationships, a skill that extends into community activism.
This emphasis on organizing reminds participants that civic engagement is not an individual journey. Liberation requires networks of people committed to transforming systems collectively.
Healing-Centered Practices in Civic Engagement
Civic engagement can be draining. Facing systemic oppression, advocating for change, and revisiting painful histories take emotional and physical energy. Without intentional care, participants and facilitators risk burnout.
Creative Praxis designs liberatory workshops with healing at the center. This means integrating practices like breathwork, movement, and creative expression. It means recognizing trauma while providing tools for resilience. For educators, this translates into burnout prevention strategies and space to process the secondary trauma often absorbed in classrooms. For youth, it means feeling safe enough to share truths that are often silenced.
By embedding healing practices, Creative Praxis ensures civic engagement is sustainable. Communities cannot fight for liberation if they are depleted. Workshops become not only spaces of strategy but also spaces of restoration.
Educators as Catalysts of Change
Teachers are uniquely positioned to influence civic life. Every lesson, policy, and interaction shapes how students understand participation. However, without critical reflection, educators may reproduce inequities. Creative Praxis addresses this through anti-racist leadership development and anti-racism training for educators.
In these sessions, educators examine their ethos, unpack implicit biases, and learn to facilitate classrooms as spaces of liberation. They are encouraged to replace punitive discipline with restorative practices and to create curricula that reflect diverse histories and voices. Educators leave not just with strategies but with a renewed sense of purpose as catalysts for systemic change.
When educators engage in civic transformation, the ripple effect extends far beyond one classroom. Students learn to see themselves as leaders. Schools evolve into communities of liberation. Civic life deepens in authenticity and reach.
Youth at the Center of Civic Engagement
Young people are often told they are the “future,” but they are also the present. Creative Praxis believes youth must be at the center of civic life now. Through training for youth-based organizations, we help young people to lead, organize, and imagine new possibilities.
These trainings honor youth as experts in their own experiences. Facilitators guide them in identifying issues they care about, developing organizing strategies, and practicing public storytelling. Whether they are addressing school discipline, climate change, or neighborhood safety, young people learn that their voices matter.
This emphasis on youth leadership shifts civic engagement from token participation to authentic power. By equipping youth with tools for liberation, we ensure long-term transformation.
Restorative Liberation in Schools
Schools are often where young people first experience systemic inequities. Punitive discipline, Eurocentric curricula, and a lack of cultural representation send messages about whose lives are valued. Restorative liberation workshops for schools counter these narratives by teaching educators and students how to address harm without exclusion.
These workshops invite participants to practice empathy, accountability, and repair. They also connect school culture to larger movements for liberation. When students experience liberation in their daily lives, they are more likely to extend those practices into civic spaces. Schools become models of what liberated communities can look like.
Designing for Long-Term Change
The ultimate goal of Creative Praxis’ liberatory workshops is sustainability. Short-term initiatives may inspire participants for a moment, but without structures of support, the impact fades. That is why our workshops emphasize ethos, healing, and collective power.
We teach participants to reflect continually, to center care, and to remain accountable to their communities. We design workshops that can be adapted and carried forward by local leaders. In doing so, we move beyond moments of inspiration and toward movements of transformation.
A National and Global Vision
Although Creative Praxis has deep roots in Philadelphia, our work extends far beyond the city. Communities across the country and internationally face similar challenges and seek liberatory approaches to civic engagement. By tailoring liberatory workshops to local contexts, we ensure that each training honors unique histories while connecting to global movements for change.
This adaptability shows that liberation is not bound by geography. Whether in Philadelphia, another U.S. city, or abroad, the principles of ethos, storytelling, organizing, and healing resonate universally. Civic engagement becomes not just a duty but a shared practice of freedom.
Conclusion: From Voting to Liberation
Voting is one way to participate in civic life, but it cannot stand alone. To create communities where everyone thrives, we must expand our understanding of engagement. Creative Praxis’s liberatory workshops reimagine civic life as an ongoing practice of reflection, storytelling, organizing, and healing.
When educators embrace anti-racist leadership, when youth lead with courage, and when communities organize with creativity, civic engagement becomes liberation. It stops being a checklist and becomes a culture.
Are you ready to move beyond ballots and into liberation? Join our civic engagement workshops in Philadelphia and beyond to experience storytelling, healing, and organizing tools that transform communities. Explore our liberatory workshops today at Creative Praxis.
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