Imagination and creative practice belong in how we live together and shape our shared future We hear it across the creative world. Theatre will lead us forward. Music brings us together. Dance reconnects us. Visual art gives us community and hope. Architecture and design shape how we live. Behind these expressions is a shared conviction:…
Arts activism, sometimes called artivism, uses creativity to advance social change. Res Creativa asks a different question: How can creativity change our ability to live together? This is an inquiry into what becomes possible when we place creativity before crisis, rather than summoning it only after events have been set in motion. When It Comes…
CAUX, CH — The 2026 Caux Arts and Peace Encounters brought artists, peacebuilders, policymakers and academics together in what organizers describe as a “living laboratory.” Rather than holding another conference about peace, participants experiment with how creativity, empathy and imagination can actually change peacebuilding practice. The program explicitly puts diplomats in situations where they learn…
NAIROBI, KE — ForumCiv brought together 20 artists from Kenya, Uganda, and Tanzania for its first joint East African Artivism Fellowship. Participants worked on civic storytelling, systems thinking, legal awareness, digital activism and safety, then created projects addressing police brutality, disability inclusion, gender violence, food sovereignty, land rights and statelessness. More than 600 people applied.…
Evaluation and Creative Practice: Research on evaluation practice in Australian creative organisations is a study prepared for Creative Australia by Aden Date. Released Sep. 2, 2026, this research provides interviews and case studies showing that effective evaluation often grows from practices artists are already using: reflection, storytelling, creative listening, audience feedback, and iterative adaptation. Its…
Mapmakers once filled unknown regions with lions and monsters. The phrase hic sunt leones did not appear everywhere, but the instinct did. Where knowledge ended, imagination supplied danger. We still do this. We draw lions around people we do not know, histories we avoid, and futures we cannot control. Political leaders exploit that instinct. They…
The imagination has a curious double life. It allows us to invent symphonies and constitutions. It also allows us to invent enemies. That may sound like a contradiction, but it is simply a truth about being human. The same faculty that helps us envision a better future can also persuade us that people we barely know…
For months, I’ve been asking artists to imagine helping strengthen democracy. I’ve come to think I was asking the wrong question. The question wasn’t how artists could become more civically engaged. It was this: What have artists been practicing all along that healthy democracies cannot function without? That realization changed the way I think about Res…
The curiosity of creativity keeps leaving things at my doorstep and saying, “Here, trip over that.” But First, How I Got Here My training was in theatre. Acting, specifically. From childhood into my 30s I was a good theatre workhorse who never broke through due to my own fear. But I did have my moments.…
Like any practice — whether music, dance, surgery, or prayer — democracy requires repetition, discipline, failure, adjustment, and the willingness to try again. Which raises a question: What role do the arts play in that rehearsal? Not the arts as decoration or entertainment, though beauty and joy matter. Not even the arts only as protest, though…