Projects tagged "Cities"

Art, Activism, and the City: Illuminating Social Change
Practitioner:
Donkeys
Date:
Mar 13 2025
The creative fusion of art and activism in urban spaces has propelled the British collective Led by Donkeys into the spotlight, garnering millions of views for their interventions on social media. Their critical visual occupations - whether billboard messages during the day or large-scale projections at night - raise a compelling question: which medium holds the greater persuasive power?
Tactical Urbanism
Practitioner:
Street Plans Collaborative
Date:
Jan 1 2012
"Improving the livability of our towns and cities commonly starts at the street, block, or building scale. While larger scale efforts do have their place, incremental, smallscale improvement efforts are increasingly seen as a way to stage more substantial investments. This approach allows a host of local actors to test new concepts before making substantial
As the Taliban Curbs Women’s Rights, Advocates Demand Action
Practitioner:
Afghan women walk along a road in Kandahar, Afghanistan, on July 29, 2022.
Date:
Feb 15 2023
In December – as many around the globe were preparing for the holidays – Sama, a former attorney, remained hunkered down in her house in Kabul, Afghanistan, trying to comprehend how her world had changed.
Belgium Disappears
Practitioner:
Jason Applebaum
Date:
Dec 15 2006
For a brief moment on Wednesday night it appeared that Belgium had disappeared. The main French language television station hoodwinked the country into thinking that it had split in two when it reported that Flanders had issued a unilateral declaration of independence.
Art in Odd Places
Practitioner:
AiOP
Date:
Jul 19 1996
Art in Odd Places (AiOP) presents visual and performance art in unexpected public spaces. AiOP also produces an annual festival along 14th Street in Manhattan, NYC from Avenue C to the Hudson River each October.
Hundreds of ‘honey bears’ posted all over SoMa in street art protest
Practitioner:
fnnch
Date:
Jan 29 2018
Local artist fnnch wants San Francisco to decriminalize certain types of art. You’re not seeing things: A whopping 450 “honey bears”—variations on the immediately recognizable and widely imitated bear-shaped honey bottles sold in seemingly every store in America--appeared all over SoMa late Sunday night, from the Embarcadero to Fifth Street.
Graffiti on Garbage
Practitioner:
Daku
Date:
Apr 10 2014
Delhi- based graffiti artist who goes by the name Daku went around South Delhi, one of the poshest places in the city, and painted on overflowing garbage cans.
Remembering
Practitioner:
Ai Weiwei
Date:
Sep 10 2008
In 2009, the dissident artist created a work to honour the thousands of children who died in the Sichuan earthquake. He recalls how the project, Remembering, angered China’s rulers – and changed his career for ever This is an edited extract from The Start podcast
Ballerina uses art to express solidarity with Iran protests
Practitioner:
TARA GHASSEMIEH
Date:
May 4 2023
AMNA NAWAZ: Since anti-government protests erupted in Iran last year, people around the world have taken to social media to show their support. That includes an Iranian American ballerina who's tapping into her own heritage and her art, in solidarity with those pushing for more rights. The "NewsHour"'s Julia Griffin reports for our arts and culture series, Canvas.
Ghosts of Union Square - The Contested City
Practitioner:
Not An Alternative
Date:
Oct 1 2011
"This project took aim at a public relations campaign produced by The Union Square Partnership, a local Business Improvement District (BID) attempting to privatize the north end of NYC’s Union Square park and install a high-end celebrity chef restaurant. They hosted historical walking tours of the park for decision-makers, as a means of getting buy-in for their development initiative.
Painting homes to strengthen a community
Practitioner:
Pintando Santa Catarina Palopó
Date:
Nov 15 2017
Nestled on the banks of Lake Atitlán in Guatemala, Santa Catarina Palopó is a small town brimming with vibrant colors and stunning natural views. Despite its natural beauty and cultural heritage, the community struggled with economic development and poverty for years until they had the opportunity to harness the power of art and transform the town.
People's Tours: A social history of the South End walking tour
Practitioner:
People's Tours
Date:
Jun 16 2012
In early 2012, a group of artists, activists and assorted other odd balls got together to form People's Tours. The idea was to give walking tours in the Boston area. Standard enough. But instead of the usual history, we would talk about social justice, contested spaces, important protests, and shady corporations. So far, the group has consisted of Dave Taber, Heather McCann, Kristin Parker, Neil Horsky, and Tim Devin.
Wirikuta Fest
Practitioner:
Mexican Rock Bands
Date:
May 26 2012
It was a long time coming - but it was worth the wait. Nearly two years ago, more than a dozen of Mexico’s biggest performing artists came together in a mega-event aimed at saving Wirikuta, one of the country’s most sacred sites, from devastation at the hands of Canadian gold and silver mining operations.
Umbrella Man - Occupy Central Hong Kong
Practitioner:
Milk
Date:
Oct 7 2014
The pro-democracy protests in Hong Kong have a new mascot: a roughly 12-foot-high figure of wood blocks holding a bright yellow umbrella in its outstretched right hand. The students call it Umbrella Man. Umbrellas emerged as a symbol of the demonstrations after dozens of students wielded them on the night of Sept. 28 to fend off pepper spray as they jostled with the police.
GLOBAL PEACE WALKWAY VR PEACE MUSEUM PROJECT
Practitioner:
PAUL=FELIX MONTEZ
Date:
Aug 15 2015
Imagine affecting the global cultural Landscape through art and technology use. Imagine one-mile long installation in 100 city locations worldwide, each mile-long install is of 250 bronze plaques of different Peacemakers. Then imagine its own App that when any smartphone is pointed at one of the plaques an entire timeline biographical history of that peacemaker becomes available.
Nats Never Die/The Zombies are Coming!
Practitioner:
The Yes Men and Reclaim the City
Date:
Sep 30 2019
The Yes Men join Reclaim the City in their fight against unjust housing policy. On September 30, 2019, a horde of zombies attended a "#natsneverdie rally" at the Cape Town Civic Centre in order to celebrate Mayor Dan Plato and the Mayoral Committee and to support their policies, which are increasingly similar to those of the National Party under Apartheid.
Arruinados
Practitioner:
O Teatrão/Companhia Fantasma
Date:
Aug 1 2013
In July and August 2013, O Teatrão, a Coimbra based theatre company, presented the project Arruinados, comprising three theatre performances in three abandoned spaces (‘ruins’), one in each of three cities in the Centre region of Portugal located along the Mondego River:Coimbra, Montemoro Velho, and Figueira da Foz.
The Protest Banner Lending Library
Practitioner:
Aram Han Sifuentes
Date:
Jan 1 2017
The Protest Banner Lending Library is a space for people to gain skills to learn to make their own banners, a communal sewing space where we support each other’s voices, and a place where people can check out handmade banners to use in protests.
Occupy Sandy relief effort puts Occupy Wall Street activists in the spotlight again a year after Zuccotti Park
Practitioner:
Occupy Wall Street
Date:
Dec 5 2012
By Rebecca Davis and Meena Hart Duerson Those who believed the Occupy Wall Street movement was all but dead after its dramatic removal from Zuccotti Park last fall may have been surprised to see the group pop up again in the days after Hurricane Sandy. But this time, they weren’t organizing protests – they were calling on their large network to come to the aid of those hit hardest by the storm.
Witness to the ruins/Testigo de las ruinas
Practitioner:
Mapa Teatro
Date:
Dec 15 2002
The starting point of this artistic project, carried out by MAPA within its Laboratory of Artists in Colombia, is the disappearance of one of the oldest "barrios" downtown Bogotá: El Cartucho.
Wall Hunters: The Slumlord Project
Practitioner:
Wall Hunters Inc.
Date:
Oct 4 2013
Wallhunter's Slumlord Project is an innovative project in Baltimore, Maryland that will use street art to expose and publicize vacant and dilapidated housing and the responsible parties for those conditions. The project will use different street art forms to display art that will attract community interest and support community identity.
Garrido Boxing Academy
Practitioner:
Nilson Garrido
Date:
Jan 1 2006
The odd spaces exiting under bridges and viaducts around the world are often left aside, urban spatial residues mostly abandoned or occupied informally by homeless people drug users etc. The former pro boxer Nilson Garrido saw the space under the Alcantara Machado viaduct (in the Mooca neighborhood of Sao Paulo) as an opportunity to create a Boxing Academy.
Ai Weiwei launches controversial public art project focused on immigration
Practitioner:
Ai Weiwei
Date:
Oct 11 2017
The artist has assembled a set of 300 installations around New York City, based around the concept of fences and borders, to showcase the ‘narrow-minded’ attempts used to ‘create some kind of hatred between people’
Blind Ones
Practitioner:
Sao Paulo Art Students
Date:
Dec 9 2013
Students from the School of Communication and Art of the University of Sao Paulo perform a skit titled 'Blind Ones' as a protest against consumerism inside a shopping mall of Natal, capital of Rio Grande do Norte state, December 9, 2013. Related Story: Brazil shopping malls: New epicenter for social protest?
Design For Freedom Summit Shares Strategies For Removing Modern-Day Slavery From Building And Construction Supply Chain
Practitioner:
Grace Farms Foundation
Date:
Mar 29 2024
Shackles. Cotton. The Big House. Americans tend to think of slavery in terms of chattel slavery. Plantation Slavery. Slavery where human beings are bought, sold, and owned. The kind outlawed in the United States by the Emancipation Proclamation in 1863. Slavery as a relic of the 19th Century. “Six of us lived, worked, slept in a 10-by-10 (foot) room without a bed, bathroom, or clean water,” Nasreen Sheikh remembers.

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