Alliance for Socially Engaged Arts
Every great initiative starts with a purpose. Can you share what your initiative does, the communities you serve, and why this work matters in today's world?
The Alliance for Socially Engaged Arts is a collaborative fund that brings together 11 leading European philanthropic foundations to champion the power of socially engaged arts in driving positive social change across Europe. It is committed to fostering greater visibility, securing funding, and influencing policy to ensure socially engaged arts are recognised not just as creative projects, but as essential contributors to civic participation and community resilience. By connecting and elevating organisations and practitioners, and providing them with essential skills and resources, the Alliance works towards a Europe where community engagement and creative collaboration sit at the heart of the arts sector, fostering social progress for all.
Photo: by Andrea Guermani
We're thrilled to learn more about your work. What does being featured on the 2025 Culture for Impact List mean to you and your initiative? How do you see this recognition supporting your mission or amplifying your impact?
Being featured on the 2025 Culture for Impact List is a profound recognition for the Alliance. As a young but rapidly growing international alliance, we are committed to supporting leaders of socially engaged arts organisations working across diverse cultural, social, and political contexts where socially engaged arts often remain undervalued, under-resourced, or misunderstood. This nomination affirms the importance of creative practices rooted in care, community, and long-term engagement – practices that do not always fit traditional cultural frameworks but hold tremendous transformative potential.
The visibility this nomination presents is an opportunity to strengthen cross-border collaborations, expand support for practitioners, and elevate the profile of a rich and diverse field of practice that places communities at the heart of changemaking. It also reinforces our advocacy work: demonstrating to institutions and policymakers that socially engaged arts are not peripheral, but central to addressing today’s most pressing social and environmental challenges.
This recognition will help us deepen our mission to nurture more connected, equitable artistic and cultural ecosystems where socially engaged arts thrive, are recognised, and contribute meaningfully to shaping more just and equitable futures.
Photo: by Carlos Porfirio
Let's talk about hope. In your view, what role do arts and culture play in helping people reconnect with a sense of collective possibility? How can creativity and cultural expression encourage communities to imagine and work toward a better future together?
Arts and culture create spaces where people can rediscover their capacity to imagine, feel, and act together. In a time marked by fragmentation, fear, and social exhaustion, creative practices restore a sense of possibility: they help individuals see themselves as part of a larger story, foster a sense of community and nurture a sense of shared agency. Through collective creation - whether through visual arts, performance, storytelling, design, or participatory projects - people reconnect with the emotions and experiences that bind them, and with the futures they aspire to build.
Arts and culture offer something essential to hope: they invite us to step outside the constraints of the present, to experiment, to test new forms of being together. They make complexity bearable and change imaginable. In socially engaged arts specifically, creativity becomes a tool not just for expression, but for dialogue, repair, and empowerment. When communities create together, they learn to trust, to question, and to collaborate. They begin to rehearse the world they wish to call into being.
Arts and culture don’t claim to have all the answers, but they can certainly open the doors to change. By cultivating empathy, courage, imagination, and a sense of shared responsibility, they lay the groundwork for solutions to emerge.
What inspired you to use socially engaged arts as a tool for positive change? How did this medium become your way of making a difference in the world?
Our inspiration comes from witnessing the power of art created with and by communities, and how it can transform relationships, shift perceptions, and reconfigure power dynamics. Many of our founding partners have long worked in contexts marked by inequality, migration and conflict. Time and again, we’ve seen socially engaged arts offer something rare: a way to nurture dignity, agency, and collective voice. It’s not about prescribing solutions, but rather it’s about opening space for people to imagine and shape their own futures together.
This field brings artists together with educators, organisers, activists, and citizens - people who share a belief that culture is not only about representation but about co-creation. It creates spaces where unlikely voices meet, listen, and collaborate around shared questions and hopes. These practices reframe culture as a tool for active citizenship - strengthening participation, community ownership and democratic resilience.
Socially engaged arts allow us to work slowly, relationally, and ethically. As a practice, it values listening, shared decision-making, and reciprocity. It honours lived experience as a form of knowledge, and creativity as a pathway to belonging. Whether through citizen-led climate action, participatory theatre, and culture-led urban regeneration, they exemplify what it means to harness the power of the arts to drive meaningful change.
What has the impact of your work looked like? We'd love to hear stories, feedback, or specific moments when you saw your initiative making a real difference in someone's life or in a community.
The Alliance has proudly witnessed what’s possible when collaboration leads the way. In its first year, 11 foundations came together across borders to pool resources, share expertise, and amplify advocacy, turning isolated efforts into a united force for change. This collective approach unlocked opportunities no single foundation could achieve alone: scaling proven practices, creating space for experimentation, and building resilience and solidarity. We’ve seen how meaningful partnerships don’t just respond to challenges, but can spark new alliances, new ideas, and new possibilities for driving change.
Photo: by Carlos Porfirio
Earlier this year, our inaugural Fellowship call drew an extraordinary response: 836 eligible applications from 39 countries. This surge revealed the vibrancy of socially engaged arts across Europe and the urgent need for greater support. Behind these applications were powerful practices resisting divisive narratives, bridging polarised contexts, and reimagining governance rooted in community voice. They showed how the arts are uniquely positioned to confront urgent challenges from deepening inequalities to the erosion of democratic institutions. The message was clear: a formidable force of changemakers is ready to lead the way, and we are committed to supporting their work.
Through our 18-month Fellowship programme, fifteen leaders are receiving tailored support: leadership development, capacity-building workshops, and immersive residentials, alongside a €60,000 grant to consolidate, innovate, and build strategies for lasting impact. Even at this early stage, we see the transformative power of connection: bringing these leaders together has created rare spaces for reflection and shared learning, which has sparked bold ideas and cross-border alliances.
Already, Fellows are driving policy reform through legislative theatre, creating spaces for reconciliation in regions scarred by conflict, and making climate action more inclusive and just through artistic practice. Some champion shared authorship with artists in exile, while others reclaim the right to the city. We are proud to support the organisations behind this groundbreaking work.
Our contribution lies not only in individual projects but in strengthening a vibrant, diverse ecosystem where socially engaged arts thrive and meaningfully shape futures where all life can flourish and live in dignity.
What do you hope others can learn or take away from your initiative? Are there key approaches, values, or insights that you believe could inspire others to create change through culture?
Photo: by Carlos Porfirio
We hope others will recognise that meaningful artistic and cultural work begins with relationships. It grows from listening deeply, collaborating openly, sharing authorship, and committing for the long term. These values create initiatives that are inclusive and grounded in the realities of the communities involved.
We also hope to show that socially engaged art can be both ambitious and accessible: it does not require large infrastructures, but it does require trust, care, and a willingness to question established hierarchies. By centering lived experience and embracing co-creative methodologies, we invite others to see the arts not as a luxury, but as a vital public infrastructure – a human right that holds the power to shape lives and societies.
Ultimately, we envision art and culture as spaces for democratic imagination – places where individuals and communities can experiment, disagree, dream, and work together to build futures they desire. These principles can inspire anyone seeking to create change through culture.
At UN Live, we aim to harness culture as a force for empathy and collective action. Looking at your work, how do you think popular culture platforms can inspire people — not only to care about the planet, but to take meaningful, connected, and concrete action?
Popular culture platforms hold extraordinary power: they can move hearts, shape collective imagination, and influence the dominant narratives of mainstream culture. They have a unique capacity to reach people emotionally and collectively. When they highlight stories of resilience, creative collaboration, and planetary care, they help shift narratives from fear and helplessness toward agency and interconnectedness. They make the global personal and the abstract tangible, translating complex issues into experiences that resonate deeply and inspire action.
In our work, we see how storytelling through visual arts, music and theatre creates pathways for identification and belonging. When people witness individuals like themselves taking action, caring for their communities, or protecting the environment, they feel invited to participate rather than overwhelmed.
Popular culture can redefine what we aspire to. It can make care, solidarity, and sustainability not just desirable, but celebrated at the heart of mainstream culture. When these values are woven into the stories people love, they shift hearts and minds, orienting them toward connection and a shared collective responsibility.
Photo: by Andrea Guermani