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.

People.

Dr. Deniz Ünsal

Taiwo Afolabi Ph.D

Registration.

Click the button below to register

Public Engagement.

Annoucements.

Call For Papers- Socially Engaged Arts as Advocacy in a Non-Western Context at the next ENCATC Research Conference in Barcelona, Spain (15-17 September 2025).

ENCATC is the European network on cultural management and policy. We are hoping that this theme in the Conference will attract researchers, artists and arts managers who are working on socially engaged arts and advocacy in global cities in Asia and Global South.

We invite you to consider submitting abstracts for research papers to the Research Conference and/or share this information with others who might be interested. Please see the thematic track we are organizing below:

Cultural Policy and Governance

Socially engaged arts as advocacy in a non-Western context

(Keywords: Socially engaged arts; Social justice; Cultural policy; Non-Western global cities; Neoliberal cities).

For more information please see: https://encatc.org/en/events/encatc-congress-2025/research-conference/

Research paper or teaching method abstracts are due on Friday, 11 April 2025

Please note that the Conference charges registration fees and has discounts for early bird registrations.

Publications & Resources.