VOTE (Fearlessly)! Installation

Students gather around the VOTE (Fearlessly)! pop-up in Tawes Plaza.

VOTE (Fearlessly)! was a nonpartisan mobile pop-up installation that helped members of the University of Maryland community register to vote, learn about election day basics, understand out-of-state voting and ultimately functioned as a shared civic space leading up to the November 2024 General Election. Shaped like a voting booth and staffed by volunteers from TerpsVote, the installation was an active space for voter education with Terps supporting Terps in making a voting plan.

Developed in the spring 2024 course “Design and Democracy,” students from various academic programs collaborated to design interactive ways to engage and inform student voters. The course was taught by Ronit Eisenbach, professor in the UMD School of Architecture, Planning and Preservation and Hannah Smotrich, Spring 2024 Arts for All designer-in-residence and associate professor in the Penny W. Stamps School of Art & Design at the University of Michigan. The course was inspired by the Creative Campus Voting Project at Michigan, a program co-led by Smotrich, and the University of Maryland's Creative Placemaking minor, which is led by Eisenbach and supported by Arts for All.

Built by faculty, staff, students and alumni from the School of Architecture, Planning and Preservation, VOTE (Fearlessly)! debuted at The Clarice’s NextNOW Fest 2024 at Tawes Plaza and moved to various locations across campus during the Fall 2024 semester, including Thurgood Marshall Hall, SECU Stadium, the Heritage Community Courtyard and the STAMP Student Union.