Lintas Batas x Arka Kinari
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?
Lintas Batas is a cultural and ecological foundation dedicated to strengthening community resilience to climate change through socially engaged art, local food knowledge, and intergenerational learning. Based in Malang and working across coastal and mountain regions of East Java, Indonesia, we convene artists, youth, researchers, and grassroots communities to reconnect people with land, sea, and ancestral knowledge. Through a floating cultural vessel, Arka Kinari, we activate collective memory, foster dialogue across cultures, and transform environmental issues into shared experiences. Our mission is to ensure that local wisdom remains a living force for ecological action and community empowerment.
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 named to the Culture for Impact List affirms that the cultural–ecological work of Lintas Batas—often rooted in places considered "peripheral"—holds global relevance. For us, this recognition is a bridge: one that connects local voices with international conversations, and ensures that the knowledge of coastal and mountain communities is seen, heard, and valued.
This acknowledgment strengthens our mission to weave together sea and mountain, tradition and innovation, local narratives and global dialogues. It allows us to expand networks, deepen support, and demonstrate that culture is not merely expressive—it is an environmental strategy capable of shaping collective behavior.
The recognition also generates a wider ripple effect: it boosts community pride, legitimizes cultural–ecological approaches, and reinforces transnational collaborations through Arka Kinari and our partners. Most importantly, it allows the message carried by these communities—and the futures they imagine—to resonate far beyond their geographic borders.
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 the emotional coherence that policy and science alone cannot provide. They offer a shared language that connects memory, imagination, and lived experience—three elements essential for restoring collective belief in a possible future. When people see their own stories reflected through music, ritual, food, and creative expression, hope becomes tangible and actionable.
Culture reminds us that meaningful transformation begins in familiar places: within communities, through traditions, and through gestures that bind people together. Creativity dissolves boundaries of identity, age, or background, making space for shared visions of a future that is not only sustainable but fair for both humans and the natural world.
Through cultural expression, communities rekindle confidence, pride, and a sense of belonging to the futures they wish to build. It is from this emotional ground that collective action grows.
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?
Lintas Batas is founded on the belief that culture is not peripheral—it is a living knowledge system that shapes how communities interpret and care for their environment. Art provides a powerful entry point: it gathers people without force, sparks difficult conversations without confrontation, and nurtures trust across differences. Music, food, ritual, and sea journeys through Arka Kinari are our chosen mediums because they speak directly to human experience.
In many coastal and mountain communities, environmental decisions are inseparable from culture. By working through the languages and practices that people already inhabit, we can inspire change without severing the roots of tradition. Arts-based approaches allow us to move fluidly across generations, geographies, and disciplines. That adaptability—and that intimacy—is where their strength lies.
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.
Lintas Batas catalyzes the reactivation of collective memory and local identity in communities whose cultural knowledge has been overshadowed by rapid change. Through our programs, traditional food systems, ancestral stories, and ecological practices long at risk of disappearing are being revitalized. This process nurtures renewed community pride and affirms that local wisdom remains vital to contemporary environmental challenges.
Arka Kinari, our mobile cultural platform, has engaged thousands across islands—students, fishers, elders, and youth—using music and performance to spark conversations about climate change. Many participants share that they only began to grasp environmental issues after encountering them through emotionally resonant cultural experiences.
Our collaborations with chefs, artists, researchers, and young practitioners have generated new initiatives: local food studies, intergenerational learning programs, creative ecological workshops, and documentation of living traditions. These efforts build a fertile ecosystem for innovation rooted in heritage.
Perhaps the most enduring impact is the emergence of a cross-island network—from the Thousand Islands, Cirebon, Kuningan, Surabaya, Labuan Bajo, Bima, Flores, Banda, Palu, Makassar, to the Maluku region—where communities exchange knowledge, methods, and cultural practices. These relationships strengthen solidarity and reduce the sense of isolation often felt in environmental work.
Sustainability grows not from quick interventions, but from relationships that are nurtured with care. This is the foundation Lintas Batas continues to build and expand.
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?
Our work demonstrates that transformative change often begins with everyday cultural practices: a family recipe, an old song, a community ritual, a shared story, a journey across the sea. At the heart of our approach is the principle that local and contemporary knowledge must stand on equal footing, listening and learning from each other.
We prioritize long-term presence, trust-building, and co-creation—ensuring communities are partners, not beneficiaries. We also embrace interdisciplinary ways of working while remaining grounded in tradition.
If there is one message we offer to others, it is this: culture is not an accessory to environmental action. It is the root system that makes ecological change feel relevant, dignified, and sustainable.
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 to shape imagination and mobilize collective behavior. When directed intentionally, they can transform environmental awareness from an abstract concern into a shared cultural experience. Music, film, food narratives, festivals, and digital storytelling can make ecological issues feel personal, local, and urgent.
Through Arka Kinari's performances, we have seen that when climate messages are embedded in captivating cultural experiences, they move people to act—whether by planting mangroves, reducing consumption, or joining community initiatives.
Popular culture operates as a connective tissue between science, policy, and the rhythms of everyday life. It turns information into emotion, and emotion into action. From moments of shared joy and curiosity, real environmental commitment takes root.
Photo: Arka Kinari anchored in Makassar October 2020 by Grey Filastine, Lintas Batas x Arka Kinari
Photo: Bad Hibat Community Ritual, Lintas Batas x Arka Kinari
Photo: Bad Hibat Community Ritual, Lintas Batas x Arka Kinari
Photo: Hibatul Hakim, Lintas Batas x Arka Kinari