In this conversation, artists and activists from the Instituto Fazendinhando of São Paolo talk about a project of urban renewal and the transformative potential of art. In the high density neighbourhood of Jardim Colombo, home to 20,000 inhabitants, the only open space was a rubbish dump. The Instituto Fazendinhando used an art festival to unite the residents in a project to remove the rubbish from the land and create a park in its place. The festival has become an annual event, and along with a programme of activities based on art and culture, continues to give voice to the residents, to promote community engagement, and to recover public and community spaces.

The pandemic crisis has painfully brought to the fore the ‘care gap’ or ‘care crisis’ long debated by feminist thinkers. From calls to value and reward care and ‘essential’ work, to the effort to find new ways to heal ourselves, each other and the planet, the ethics of care have (re)emerged at the heart of visions for societal transformation.

Maro Pantazidou from the University of York led a conversation on these developments with three women creating at the intersection of art and activism, touching on issues of workers’ rights, feminist art and peer to peer health care. Joining the discussion were Angarika Guha, from the media and arts collective Maraa in India, Tallulah Lines, from Las Illuministas collective in Mexico, and Cassie Thornton, from The Hologram project.

In this webinar artists and activists from Peru and Ecuador discussed how Indigenous peoples have responded to the Covid-19 pandemic and the ongoing impacts of extractivism in the Amazon. The panel will considered how art can be a strategy for resisting extractivism and a way of raising awareness of the devastation caused by mega-projects.

This webinar was chaired by Dr Piergiuseppe Parisi from the Centre for Applied Human Rights at the University of York. Joining him were Sofía Acosta and Anaís Córdova who collaborated on the project Las Otras Pandemias (The Other Pandemics) in which the voices of five Amazonian activists portrayed the struggle they face in their territories and reflected on community organisation and the ecosystem they inhabit. They are joined by Uitoto artist and activist Rember Yahuarcani whose project Here! used paintings and an exhibition to document how Covid-19 impacted the life of Peru’s Amazonian communities, the governmental response, and Indigenous strategies for survival.

In our second Arctivism Conversation senior lecturer in global development politics at the University of York Indrajit Roy led a discussion on the politics of hope and how hope has emerged as a response to the Covid-19 pandemic. He was joined by development consultant, youth worker and writer Nida Ansari; former broadcast journalist and now independent film-maker from Karwan e Mohabbat, Natasha Badhwar; and independent conceptualiser, graphic designer and art director, Pooja Dhingra. Panelists considered how hope can challenge structural inequalities and counter the current politics of anger, fear and hatred, as well as the role art can play in the politics of hope.

The Role of Art in Keeping Civic Space Open

July 2021

Moderated by Emilie Flower

In the first of this series of webinars from the Arctivism project, participatory film-maker Emilie Flower led a conversation on the role of art in keeping democratic spaces open, especially in times of emergency. Joining her were Rochelle Porras from the Ecumenical Institute for Labor Education and Research (EILER) in the Philippines and leader of the Arctivism project ReImagining Resistance; Wezile Harmans, an art practitioner whose interdisciplinary practice encompasses performance, film and installation as a a tool for social change and the artist from the Arctivism project The Politics of Displacement; and multi-disciplinary artist Pamela Enyonu, a collaborating artist in the recent project Development Alternatives which explored how the arts can expand civic space, political imagination and development alternatives.