Art, Activism and the Political Imagination
Ruth Kelly and Emilie Flower

Credit: Emilie Flower

• Saturday 9 June 2018, 6.00PM to 7.00pm
• Free admission
  Booking required
  Book tickets
• Exhibition Room and 3sixty, Ron Cooke Hub, University of York (map|getting to campus)
• Wheelchair accessible

Event details

Sometimes human rights activists are so caught up with the everyday, with tactics for resisting injustice, that they forget to talk about what they are campaigning for - what they want the world to look like. But without imagining different possible worlds, society is left with the dreams of the powerful.

Taking inspiration from a film documenting experimental arts-based research with activists and artists in Bangladesh and Uganda, you are invited to think about how the arts can help us imagine a different world. Ruth Kelly of the University of York’s Centre for Applied Human Rights and artist Emilie Flower present a film screening, exhibition and discussion, and explain how theatre, story, image, dance and music can help us envisage a more just and sustainable world.

About the speakers

Ruth Kelly is a PhD researcher at the University of York’s Centre for Applied Human Rights exploring how storytelling can help us imagine and describe alternatives. She has more than ten years’ experience working in international development and human rights.

Emilie Flower is a film artist, with a focus on video portraiture and participatory film and theatre. She is an associate of the University of York’s Centre for Applied Human Rights and a working member of Pica artist led studios.

Creative Activism: Art and Development Alternatives Project

The film was produced as part of an AHRC and University of York funded research project - Creative Activism: Art and Development Alternatives - conducted by the University of York’s Centre for Applied Human Rights and ActionAid between March 2017 and March 2018.

In July 2017, Emilie Flower and Ruth Kelly worked with artists and activists in Bangladesh and Uganda to explore how arts-based research practices can stimulate new political ideas and creative alternatives.

Tickets