Festival Voices at Global Artivism 2025: Connecting Art and Social Change

The Festival Academy joined the Convening not only as participants, but as advisory partners, programme committee members, and facilitators. Our engagement focused on positioning festivals as active civic and political spaces, and on ensuring that festival makers from the Global Majority were meaningfully present, visible, and influential within the Conference.

In the months leading up to the Convening, The Festival Academy worked closely with the Global Artivism Programme Committee to help shape the overall structure and methodology of the event. Drawing on nearly two decades of experience working with festivals as sites of social imagination and political negotiation, we contributed to discussions around:inclusive and care-based programme design

• inclusive and care-based programme design
• facilitation formats that move beyond hierarchy and tokenism
• creating space for lived experience, political testimony, and collective responsibility

This collaboration ensured that festival perspectives — particularly those rooted in Global Majority realities — were embedded from the very beginning of the Conference design.

A central part of our participation was bringing together a cohort of 13 festival makers from Bangladesh, Syria, Colombia, Argentina, Zimbabwe, Palestine, Jordan, the Philippines, Honduras, El Salvador, and Yemen. Rather than attending as observers, the cohort actively shaped discussions, facilitated sessions, and connected festival practice to broader movements for social and political change. Throughout the Convening, the presence of festival leaders from different political, cultural, and geographic contexts strengthened conversations around art as resistance, solidarity, and the real conditions under which cultural work takes place.

Co-Designing a Collective Intervention

One of the key moments of the Conference was a Long Table Conversation titled: “Art as Resistance Is Disappearing – Festival Leaders Re-imagine Solidarity and Alliances for Social Justice” The session was co-designed and facilitated by festival leaders Shahidul Alam (Bangladesh), Roni Isola (Argentina), and Alia Alzougbi (Lebanon/UK), together with the broader cohort. In advance of the Conference, the group met to collectively develop the provocation and framing. The session addressed a central contradiction in the cultural field: while festivals often speak the language of solidarity and justice, they frequently operate within competitive systems shaped by precarity, scarcity, and institutional pressure. The provocation was deliberately direct: “In the festival world, solidarity is a myth — we preach collectivity, but act like competitors.” Using the Long Table format — inspired by the intimacy of a shared dinner table — the session disrupted traditional hierarchies of expertise and invited all participants to contribute on equal terms. The conversation moved beyond symbolic gestures toward concrete questions of collective responsibility, mutual care, and sustained collaboration.

Key questions explored included:

• Can festivals function as genuine platforms of resistance?
• What does practical solidarity look like in a sector defined by survival?
• What do we risk — and gain — by organising collectively rather than competitively?
• How can festival strategies for mobilising communities inform wider political resistance?

Political Presence and Lived Testimony

The impact of the cohort was further strengthened through high-profile political contributions. Shahidul Alam, founder of Chobi Mela Festival and a globally recognised photographer and artivist, spoke at the opening of the Conference, sharing his recent experience of joining a Gaza flotilla in solidarity with the Palestinian people. His contribution offered a powerful example of how cultural leaders can engage in direct political action beyond symbolic statements. Ibrahim Owais (Wonder Cabinet, Palestine) also contributed to the panel “Art at the Siege: Culture, Resistance, and the Struggle for Free Palestine,” grounding the discussion in lived experience of cultural work under occupation and reinforcing the urgency of international solidarity. Across panels, sessions, and informal exchanges, the Festival Academy cohort actively engaged with the Conference’s political and ethical debates, reinforcing festivals as spaces where cultural practice and political action meet.

Looking Ahead

Following the Conference, The Festival Academy and the Global Artivism team came together to reflect on the collaboration, share learning, and explore future forms of partnership. These conversations revealed a strong alignment in values, working methods, and long-term vision. Both organisations are now exploring ways to deepen and formalise this collaboration in future editions of the Convening. For The Festival Academy, the Global Artivism Conference reaffirmed the role of festivals not simply as cultural events, but as political, civic, and relational spaces — places where solidarity can be practised, challenged, and re-imagined collective