The Many Faces of Arts Activism: Part 3

Theaster Gates, Black Vessel for a Saint (2017), Minneapolis Sculpture Garden, Walker Art Center. Built from reclaimed black bricks, the structure merges urban renewal, Black cultural memory, and communal reflection, incorporating a salvaged statue of St. Laurence from Gates’ Chicago neighborhood. Photo: Foundation for Spirituality and the Arts.

Hope as Strategy

If anger sparks and joy sustains, hope charts the path forward.

You can harness that hope to fuel change. Hope in arts activism is not passive. It is strategic. It allows us to imagine alternatives, to build what doesn’t yet exist, and to remind one another that change is possible.

Across disciplines, hope drives creation:

In The Roof Is on Fire (1993–94), part of Suzanne Lacy’s decade-long The Oakland Projects, 220 high school students engaged in unscripted conversations about identity, education and the future. Staged inside cars on a rooftop garage, the work transformed public space into an arena for hope, resistance and civic engagement. Photo courtesy Suzanne Lacy.

Community Engagement

Suzanne Lacy’s participatory performances invite communities to co-create public dialogues around race, policing and youth empowerment. Her work is grounded in empathy and civic imagination.

The project’s performances and long-term interventions helped reshape public policy and create positive media narratives for young people in Oakland.

Detail of cover design by Kishan Rajani, from Bless the Daughter Raised by a Voice in Her Head by Warsan Shire.

Warsan Shire’s poetry, often centered on displacement and womanhood, transforms grief into grace. Her work affirms the dignity of those often erased, offering language as sanctuary. Detail of cover design by Kishan Rajani, from Bless the Daughter Raised by a Voice in Her Head by Warsan Shire (Random House, 2022).

Poetry

Warsan Shire’s Bless the Daughter Raised by a Voice in Her Head transforms inherited trauma and exile into lyrical testimony. Her work offers readers the radical hope that survival can be sacred.

Shire’s poetry also provides a humanizing perspective on the plight of refugees, moving beyond political arguments to show the deep trauma and impossible choices faced by displaced people.

Arcus Center for Social Justice Leadership at Kalamazoo College, designed by Studio Gang, embodies social justice through its architecture, fostering connection, dialogue, and community engagement. Photo: Steve Hall © Hedrich Blessing / Studio Gang.

Architecture

Led by Jeanne Gang, Studio Gang integrates ecological restoration and social connectivity into urban design. Projects like the Arcus Center for Social Justice Leadership embody social activism.

The Center’s very design fosters dialogue, inclusion, and community-building around social justice. The Y-shaped plan physically and symbolically connects the campus, a residential neighborhood, and a grove of old trees.

Modeselektor fosters inclusive dance spaces and supports emerging artists, using music as a tool for resistance and joy. Photo: Modeselektor via Facebook.

Music

Modeselektor (Gernot Bronsert and Sebastian Szary) is a Berlin-based electronic duo blending techno, IDM (Intelligent Dance Music), and hip-hop with political edge and community ethos. Their genre-defying sound resists commercial EDM formulas, often incorporating field recordings, spoken word and glitch aesthetics.

Through abstraction and sonic disruption, they challenge norms, provoke reflection, and inspire hope in the face of surveillance, nationalism and digital alienation.

Modeselektor has been shaping the electronic music scene since the early 2000s and launch a twelve-city European tour next month.

Arts Activism Does Not Have to Be Angry

Over nearly 72 years, I have worn armbands, marched in protests, lobbied government offices, and furiously written letters to elected officials.

But none of these has carried the same emotional impact for others, or brought me as much personal satisfaction, as leaning on theatre to capture and reshape audience thinking. Or producing a parade of larger-than-life puppets to tell the stories of a long-neglected neighborhood as these giants of history marched across a fancy, new bridge connected to the more affluent and homogenous half of my city.

Hope is a vital strategy when disrupting and building a new future through the arts.

👉 Where do you see hope showing up in your creative world?