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The Art of Activism


Credit: Rebecca Carr and Emilie Flower

  • Tuesday 5 June to Sunday 10 June, 9.00am to 5.00pm
  • Free admission
    No booking required
  • Exhibition Room, Ron Cooke Hub, University of York
  • Wheelchair accessible

Event details‌‌





Join us for an exhibition illustrating the powerful role storytelling and the arts can play in helping us envisage a more just world. Presented by University of York PhD student Ruth Kelly and artist Emilie Flower, the exhibition is the result of experimental workshops with activists and artists in Bangladesh and Uganda.

The aim of the workshops, run by Ruth and Emilie, was explore how the arts can help to disrupt how we see the world and identify what we want, as well as what we are against. Part of the Creative Activism: Art and Development Alternatives project and funded by the Global Challenges Research Fund, the workshops helped activists access imaginative and emotional dimensions of experience they rarely pay attention to, giving them space to feel and dream.

About the curators

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 eight years’ experience working in international development.

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

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

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