Exploring art’s radius

“The participation in an act of creativity enables people to think and feel outside of their realities.” These words from Basma El Husseiny, an arts manager and cultural activist in Egypt, set the tone for the Radius of Art conference hosted by the Heinrich Böll Foundation in Berlin in February.

Participants at the Radius of Art conference in Berlin

Attended by over 250 artists, policy makers, researchers, educators and funders from around the world, the conference sought to open an international dialogue on the effects of art and culture on social transformation. Panel discussions, workshops, and artist presentations addressed four themes—Art for Social Transformation, Public Art, Art toward Cultures of Sustainability, and Cultural Policy Strategies and Funding Structures.

I was fortunate to be able to attend with my colleagues from the German Commission for UNESCO and to present on a panel on artists at risk with my former colleague from freeDimensional, Todd Lester.

Several key questions emerged over the course of the two-day conference: What power relationships precondition the funding and support of socially-engaged art, particularly when dealing with North to South development and cooperation policy? How can we talk about arts in the public and political sphere in a language that is understandable by all its agents and stakeholders? In a time of urgent ecological and social problems, what role does creativity play? How can policies and funding structures be supportive without risking limiting art’s existence to a prescribed set of functions? At times, the questions in the air and the diversity of both perspectives and positions of the attendees, resulted in (for me) disorienting cacophony.