Global Cities and Socially Engaged Arts Initiative.
About the project.
Global Cities, Socially Engaged Arts and Advocacy
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.
Goals of the Initiative.
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.
Registration.
Click the button below to register
Public Engagement.
2025 Spring Webinar Series: Socially Engaged Arts and Advocacy in Urban Context
Webinar 1: April 3rd (2pm-3:15pm PST)
Speakers.
Brian McBay, Executive Director, 221A, Vancouver
Title: Counter-infrastructure as practice: arts and culture’s survival in self-terminating urban spaces
I will speak about 221A: founded by a group of students in 2005, moving to Chinatown and learning about the history of the neighbourhood, then the slow but steady steps we took from a presenting organization to a focus on infrastructure as a means to survive the master planned city—a future that did not include us. I will also share the plans for the Cultural Land Trust, a collective model being advanced by 221A to fight against the displacement of arts and culture caused by real estate speculation.
Bio:
Brian McBay is Executive Director of 221A, a cultural research, arts infrastructure and housing organization based on the unceded Indigenous lands of the xʷməθkʷəy̓əm, Sḵwx̱wú7mesh, and Səl̓ílwətaʔ Nations, in the area collonially known as Vancouver, British Columbia, Canada. Over the last 20 years, Brian has led 221A from its beginnings as a student co-founder to a growing network of over 140,000 square feet of non-market artist housing and cultural spaces. Brian is an outspoken and active collaborator involved in sectoral transformation through infrastructure, policy, technology, and anti-racism in the arts. Brian is a fourth generation Chinese-Canadian settler who aims to contribute to the long-standing tradition of Chinatown histories in Canada: as spaces of refuge, inclusion, and intercultural friendship. He has and continues to serve on public sector and non-profit boards including the National Gallery of Canada, BC Arts Council, and the Vancouver International Film Festival.
Website: https://221a.ca
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Eunseon Park, Director, Listen to the city, Seoul
Title: Listen to the City and its work against gentrification in Seoul
Description:
Listen to the City is an organization founded on the belief that art can serve a more significant role beyond being merely an object of sublime consumption or material commodification. Our work focuses on visualizing the often-invisible entities within the city while striving to foster mutual support among individuals and living beings both within and beyond urban spaces. In this presentation, we will discuss how Listen to the City has actively resisted gentrification within the neoliberal system and share our practices that navigate between institutional and non-institutional spaces, as well as between artistic and non-artistic realms.
Bio:
Eunseon Park holds an MFA in Art, MA and Ph.D. in urban planning. In 2009, she founded Listen to the City, an art collective focused on challenging conventional boundaries and fosters critical dialogues about the neo-liberal urban and social fabric of contemporary cities. She currently serves as a visiting assistant professor at CISAR, UNIST.
Website: https://listentothecity.org/
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Fran Erazo, Director, Culturans, Mexico city
Title: Can a city’s forgotten past inspire its sustainable future?
This talk will present the Culturans’ approach and a radically different vision of today’s Mexico City through the lens of the Chinampas: a unique nature-based system that once created a thriving green city on a lake, now lost in the face of gray urban sprawl. Led by a growing grassroots movement of regenerators who bring together ancestral knowledge, science, art, and community life, Chinampas represent an ongoing struggle for the future of the city.
Bio:
Fran Erazo is the co-founder and director of Culturans, a Mexico City-based NGO that uses art, culture, and social innovation to create sustainable cities on a human scale. With a background in art, architecture, philosophy, and urbanism, Fran has worked for over a decade as an active proponent of art as a social tool to engage citizens in the transformation of their communities, building collaborations between civil society and the public sector in cities around the world.
Website: https://www.culturans.org/
2025 Spring Webinar Series: Socially Engaged Arts and Advocacy in Urban Context
Webinar 2: April 17th (9am-10:15am PST)
Speakers.
Matilde Cervantes Navarrete, M.Sc., member of Global Pax Collective and PhD student at Centre for Global Studies, University of Victoria, BC
Title: Social Transformations through Arts-based and Indigenous Worldviews: Lived Experiences from Canada & Mexico
For this webinar, we will be focusing on lived experiences from the Pacific (West Coast) Communities from Mexico and Canada. These two countries are committed to building more prosperous, sustainable, safe, and equitable societies for all, as well as contributing to the integrity and wellness of the North American region. Informed by the Canada-Mexico action plan and building upon international and interdisciplinary perspectives, we will be taking into account the goals of the agenda 2030, United Nations Sustainable Development Goals. In particular, we will discuss emerging opportunities and priorities around social transformation through art-based and Indigenous worldviews around the themes of climate justice and health equity in the West Coast region.
Bio:
Matilde Cervantes (she/they) is an interdisciplinary researcher and artist who has been curating and producing cultural and artistic events internationally through the Global Pax Collective* initiatives for almost two decades. Matilde has been teaching in post-secondary institutions in Mexico and Canada. Currently, she is a PhD candidate and a fellow graduate at the Centre for Global Studies and affiliated with the Institute on Aging and Lifelong Health at the University of Victoria. Their doctoral project is exploring peacebuilding and social transformations through arts-based and Indigenous worldviews with intergenerational and intersectional perspectives.
*Global Pax Collective is an international group of creatives (artists, scientists, activists, educators, creative humans) around the globe with the mission of promoting peace and healthy human development through arts. Global Pax Collective seeks to integrate and celebrate diversity while acknowledging the importance of peace and planetary health
Podcast link: https://feeds.transistor.fm/planetary-health-through-arts-and-indigenous-worldviews-global-perspectives
www.linkedin.com/in/matty-cervantes-uvic
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Park Kyong Ju, Voice sculptor and representative of Salad Theatre in Seoul
Title: Multicultural theatre and the diversification of cultural production entities
Salad was established in 2009 as the first multicultural social theater company in South Korea. In this lecture, Park Kyong Ju shares Salad’s experience exploring diversity and multiculturalism as a theater and arts organization and communicating migration stories with society. In addition, she would like to share awareness of the issue of how to expand the human rights, safety, and cultural rights of immigrant cultural artists of foreign nationality amidst the rapid change of diversification of cultural production entities in South Korean society, which has consistently maintained a single-ethnic culture.
Bio:
Park Kyong Ju is a voice sculptor, multi-disciplinary artist and representative of Salad Theatre. She has carried out various ‘voice sculpture’ projects to convey the voices of socially marginalized groups. The social theatre project Salad is one of them. She has collaborated with migrant workers, migrant women, and refugees on the topic of migration and cultural diversity. Living and working in Seoul, South Korea and Bad Ems, Germany.
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Serkan Taycan, Artist and PhD candidate in Azrieli School of Architecture and Urbanism at Carleton University.
Title: Between Two Seas: A Walking Trail as Activist Art
Between Two Seas is an interdisciplinary art project exploring the urban and ecological impacts of the Kanal Istanbul infrastructure project. Through a walking trail, the project offers a counterproposal to the controversial development, advocating for the preservation of the city’s cultural and natural heritage. By combining photography, video, mapping, and participatory walking, the project engages with issues of urban transformation, ecological preservation, and the right to the city.
Bio:
Serkan Taycan is a visual artist, curator, and academic with a background in photojournalism and engineering. Holding a BA in Civil Engineering and an MFA in Visual Arts, he is currently pursuing a PhD at Carleton University’s School of Architecture and Urbanism. His research explores urban transformations and activist practices defending the right to the city, focusing on Istanbul. Through his interdisciplinary approach, Taycan uses photography, video, mapping, and walking to address ecological and socio-political urban issues. He has taught internationally, exploring intersections of visual arts, urban culture, and social activism.
2025 Spring Webinar Series: Socially Engaged Arts and Advocacy in Urban Context
Webinar 3: May 8th (9am-10:30am PST)
Speakers.
Begüm Özden Fırat, Mimar Sinan University, Department of Sociology, İstanbul
Title: Cultural Activism and Socially Engaged Art in times of Culture Wars
Description: In Turkey’s political and social landscape the domain of culture has become as one of the “trenches” where a “war” is being waged. The notion of lifestyle has been employed to divide and manipulate two ostensibly separate societal mahalles (neighborhoods): the westernized elites and the “national and indigenous” masses. The so-called war of mahalles (neighborhoods) proved to be a successful and effective governance mechanism, effectively masking social class disparities by mobilizing diverse social and cultural groups within cultural camps. This talk intends to examine potential challenges faced by cultural activism and socially engaged art practices in the present authoritarian populist political environment, marked by the amplification and repression of ethnic, racial, gender, and sexual cultural differences. I will explore whether community activism can still empower marginalized urban mahalles or if socially engaged art practices can operate beyond mahalles where people share similar experiences tied to class and identity. Consequently, I wish to question whether such cultural practices may inadvertently reinforce the political axis of authoritarian populism by mobilizing within culturally homogeneous “mahalles” instead of bridging diverse urban social classes.
Bio:
Begüm Özden FIRAT is Professor at the Department of Sociology at Mimar Sinan Fine Arts University, Istanbul. She holds a BA from Ankara University, Faculty of Political Sciences and an MA from Middle East Technical University, Department of Sociology, and received her PhD degree from the University of Amsterdam (Amsterdam School for Cultural Analysis). She works in the fields of visual culture, urban sociology, and social movements studies. She is the co-editor of Commitment and Complicity in Cultural Theory and Practice (Palgrave/Macmillan, 2009), Cultural Activism: Practices, Dilemmas, Possibilities (Rodopi, 2011) and Aesthetics and Resistance in the age of Global Uprisings (İletişim, 2015) and Mülkiyet ve Müşterekler Türkiye’de Mülkiyetin İnşası, İcrası ve İhlali (Property and the Commons: The Construction, Performance and Transgression of Property in Turkey, Metis, 2023). Her book entitled Encounters with the Ottoman Miniature Contemporary Readings of an Imperial Art is published by I.B. Tauris in 2015. She is one of the directors of documentary “Welcome Lenin” (2016) and the director of the short experimental video “The Lightwell” (2020). She is a Visiting Scholar at Columbia University, Sakıp Sabancı Center for Turkish Studies during the 2024-2025 academic year.
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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
In her talk, Dr. Işıl Eğrikavuk will speak about her project she has been running with her students at the Berlin University of Arts, UdK since 2021. Called “the other garden,” it is both their classroom and a community space on art, ecology, inclusivity and care work.
(https://www.isilegrikavuk.work/theothergarden)
Bio:
Işıl Eğrikavuk is a Turkish-born international artist and academic based in Berlin, Germany. She received her MFA from The School of the Art Institute of Chicago (SAIC) and a Ph.D. in Communication from Istanbul Bilgi University, Istanbul, Turkey. Eğrikavuk worked as a faculty member at Berlin University of Arts (UdK), Media and Communication Department between 2017-2024. She is the founder of the other garden, an artistic research space and a garden on the intersections of art, ecology, diversity and care. Currently she is a Postdoctoral Researcher at Käte Hamburger Research Center global dis:connect at Ludwig Maximilian University in Munich.
Recent Book: Global Protests Through Art – collaboration, co-creation, interconnectedness. (https://bookspeopleplaces.com/) www.isilegrikavuk.work
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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
The blending of art and activism has deep roots in Korean protest culture. The Eulji OB Bear protest (2022–2024), led by the art collective Listen to the City (est. 2009), exemplifies this tradition, utilizing creative strategies to resist urban displacement driven by neoliberal redevelopment. This presentation examines this movement as an emerging model of activist-driven resistance in Seoul—one that integrates art-based activism with community engagement to reclaim public spaces and preserve cultural heritage.
Bio:
Minji Chun is a DPhil Candidate in History of Art at the University of Oxford, specializing in Korean contemporary art. Interested in ways of interpreting narratives of unmentioned histories and spaces, she is currently conducting research on socially engaged art in contemporary Korea. She also works as an art critic, curator, and translator based in Seoul and Oxford. Her research and writing include publications for Burlington Contemporary, FIELD – A Journal of Socially-Engaged Art Criticism, and ArtAsiaPacific.
Website: www.minjiswriting.xyz
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Charles Etubiebi, Actor and Artistic Director, Theatre Emissary International, New York
Title: Socially Engaged Art: Rewriting the African Narrative in Global Storytelling
At Theatre Emissary International, we use art to challenge stereotypes and drive social change. In the play 54 Silhouettes written by Africa Ukoh, I play a character who explores the tough choice between career advancement and cultural integrity, highlighting the power of socially engaged art. Stories like these, rooted in local struggles, have a global impact, shaping narratives and empowering communities. As a Nigerian actor in the U.S., I believe art is more than expression, it’s activism. If we don’t tell our stories, others will. It’s time to redefine representation and wield art as a tool for change.
Bio:
Charles Etubiebi is a New York based actor, the Artistic Director of Theatre Emissary International, and a registered member of the International Theatre Institute (ITI). In 2013, he was awarded the Best Male Actor prize at the Al Bugga International Theatre Festival in Khartoum, Sudan. He won the award for Best Supporting Actor at the 2018 RealTime International Film Festival for his performance in Kunle Nodash’s The Delivery Boy. Charles performed the one-man adaptation of the play 54 Silhouettes, written and directed by Africa Ukoh. In 2023, he was nominated for Best Actor in a Comedy at the Africa Magic Viewer’s Choice Awards, the most prestigious award show in Africa. In 2024, Charles became a Barrhill Fellow after completing the Barrhill Players Fellowship Program, a 10-day intensive core acting training focused on Meisner and Viewpoints acting techniques in Greensboro, Vermont. Passionate about storytelling, Charles believes in creating art with fellow creatives who share a deep connection to the world around them.
https://theatreemissary.wixsite.com/theatreemissary/about-us
Review from the united solo theatre festival 2019: https://www.allaboutsolo.com/post/casting-shadows-in-54-silhouettes