Webinar
Online
How can socially engaged arts drive social change and empower communities to address the most pressing challenges in Global Cities?
This multi-site research and dissemination initiative aims at creating a community of practice that explores how socially engaged arts address urban issues and amplify voices in the cities of the Global South and Asia. In these cities, artists navigate complex environments, and art is often more closely linked to community activism and historical and ongoing struggles with gender inequality, identity politics, political repression, poverty, colonial legacies, and environmental justice. Socially engaged arts illuminate the experiences of marginalized urban communities, offering a platform for storytelling and community-building. It highlights the transformative role of art in tackling urban and social challenges and fostering change. In these contexts, art serves as both cultural expression and a powerful tool for advocacy, activism, and community empowerment. It also emphasizes the interaction between global and local alliances, bringing the concept of “glocal” to the forefront.
Our goal is to bring together independent arts organizations, artists, and researchers who employ socially engaged arts practices for advocacy in global cities outside the West. Through a series of explorative, creative and collaborative activities, we aim to document global voices, discuss, and share experiences, perspectives, and knowledge, and build alliances with researchers and practitioners from diverse urban contexts across Latin America, Africa, Asia, and the Middle East.
We start this initiative with a series of webinars this Spring on April 3, 17 and May 8.
May 8th
- Prof. Begüm Özden Fırat, Mimar Sinan University, Department of Sociology, Istanbul Turkey.
- Title: Cultural Activism and Socially Engaged Art in times of Culture Wars
- Işıl Eğrikavuk, Postdoctoral researcher Kate Hamburger Research Centre Global dis:connect at Ludwig Maxmilian University, Munich
- Title: The other garden: an artistic research space on ecology, inclusivity and care in academia
- Minji Chun, DPhil Candidate in History of Art, St Hugh's College, University of Oxford
- Title: Urban Protest as Artistic Intervention: The Case Study of the Eulji OB Bear Protest
- Charles Etubiebi, Actor and Artistic Director, Theatre Emissary International, New York
- Title: Socially Engaged Art: Rewriting the African Narrative in Global Storytelling
For more information about the initiative please visit: https://cset.ca/global-cities-and-socially-engaged-arts-initiative/
Deniz Ünsal, PhD. School of Communication and Culture, Royal Roads University and
Taiwo Afolabi, PhD. Centre for Socially Engaged Theatre, University of Regi