Making futures inevitable: reflections on the drums, dreams, and dialogues in Salvador
A reflection by
Ishtar Lakhani
Workshop Leader | Center for Artistic Activism
Special Thanks to
Brett Davidson
Over 800 artists and activists gathered in Salvador, Brazil in early November for the Global Artivism convening – to learn from one another, build a movement, and to explore the role of artists and creative activists in shaping narratives and helping imagine a better future, ahead of the international climate discussions at COP 30.
IRIS contributed funding to support the Global Artivism convening and IRIS’ Brett Davidson attended, co-organising and leading two sessions. The first session, The Art(ivism) of Funding Artivism, along with curator and choreographer Rashida Bumbray and Roma performer and activist Mihaela Dragan (Kali), explored the role of funders in supporting artivism, how to build support within donor organizations, and what artists and creative activists need from funders. In the second session, Listening Beyond Ourselves: Art, AI, and the Future of Co-existence (co-organized with Brittany Solano from Earth Species and Brazilian artist and technologist Danilo Olivaz), Brett presented IRIS's Luminate-funded work, calling for artists and storytellers to take the lead on imagining and pushing for a better AI.
For more on the gathering we asked Ishtar Lakhani, Workshop Leader at the Center for Artistic Activism and Co-Founder of Rogue Union, for her reflections:
We are in a war of imagination.
In a world where our dreams are weaponised and authoritarianism is getting really good at making our worlds seem black and white, the 2025 Global Artivism Convening in Salvador, Brazil splashed back in full colour. The aim of this convening was to grow and amplify cultural power, collective action and the global Artivism infrastructure. At this second convening (the first took place in South Africa in 2024), they went big, rallying 800+ members of the global artivist community, 60+ sessions, and an agenda deliberately taking place just before COP30, a catalytic window when eyes would swing towards Brazil. At the opening, organising committee member, the fiercely luminous Favianna Rodriguez reminded us,
The power in what we (Artivists) do is that we’re not bound by what’s politically feasible. We can already live into the future. And if the future isn’t here, we can imagine it. We can help you taste it and feel it. And once you feel it, then the future becomes inevitable.
This quote was a powerful reminder to all of us of the vital role that Artivism plays in any movement for change. The Artivist can not only imagine alternative ways of being but make those alternatives visceral, real and irresistible using their key material of culture. This quote not only spoke to my heart but it spoke to my head echoing a personally loved theory by the Center for Artistic Activism around Affect/Effect/Æffect (pronounced EYE-ffect, not like the iphone but more like how a pirate would say it).
Let me do a brief unpacking.
Art is Affective. It operates primarily on affect, producing emotional shifts that are often hard to measure or describe but crucial for generating new ways to see the world. Art moves us emotionally.
Activism is Effective. It aims for effect targeting more direct, tangible impacts or outcomes. The effects of Activism are practical and strategic, like achieving a specific policy change or raising public awareness to influence a decision.
But Artistic activism/Artivism is Æffective. It’s that sweet spot between the affectiveness of art and the effectiveness of activism where we are able to make people feel something and do something. By combining the two superpowers artivists can develop more potent and resilient strategies that leverage both emotional resonance and concrete outcomes.
A question for me, arriving at the convening was what would the exploration of these super powers look like and, more importantly, feel like in a convening of this size and diversity? Needless to say I was excited to get my teeth into the program, which did not disappoint. It was clear that this convening had cultural workers at the helm, with not a beige-times-new-roman lanyard in sight or cheesy icebreaking attempts to connect us. It was a sensorial feast. Drumbeats of welcome, communal meals, artistic performances, workshop sessions nested in living cultural venues, all giving rise to authentic, unprovoked human connection. We turned the ashes of forest fires into pigments for Cinzas da Floresta and painted oversized book-cover shields for climate justice actions with the ‘creative sweatshops’ set up by Book Bloc Brigade. The anthropologist in me was mindblown having never heard about “homo narrans” ('storytelling human') as one of the binomial names for the human species and I even got to fangirl Leila el Haddid talking about culinary memory as resistance in Gaza.
The organisers called it “drinking from the Seven Medicines”: cooking, movement, percussion, adornment, singing, painting and currency, and I experienced all seven. The program brimmed with intention. Salvador was not just a garnish, it was the broth the whole convening simmered in. And the organisers were expert sous chefs, constantly tasting and adjusting the program to make the experience as accessible and joyous as they could. I definitely ate my fill and I left sated by connection, inspiration, solidarity and moqueca stew. The Affect had been brought!
But as the saying goes, there’s always room for (a little more) dessert, and for my activist self, that dessert is and always will be strategy. The sessions I attended were incredibly rich and diverse in the sharing of stories, learnings and experiences. But many times across the sessions I heard statements like “we will take this to COP30” or “we need to reclaim the narrative” or that “we need to raise awareness” or “we need to bring the voices of the people” and the campaign strategist in me kept scribbling questions:
Who exactly are we targeting? And why?
Who actually has the power to give us what we want? What do they want? What is the specific thing we want?
What is the decision/practice/behaviour we’re trying to shift? By when?
And that’s when a distinction snapped into focus for me: political art moves hearts and minds but it becomes artivism when it intentionally and strategically targets hearts, minds and importantly, decisions. For me (definitely falling more on the “vism” side of the “artivism” spectrum), this is the line between political art and artivism. Political art can be searing, beautiful and heartbreaking, it moves people emotionally. But for me it’s not Artivism until it also strategically maps power, targets an audience, names an objective and pairs tactics with a plan to track what shifts. Think of it as: affect is the ignition; effect is the steering, but Æffect is how we actually get there. On the flight home, I started cooking up ways to support my new artivist comrades, practical scaffolds to crank the Æffect dial, tools, templates, strategy studios, the possibilities are endless.
This convening made it clear, there’s a global artivism community that knows its purpose and power and is hungry to cross-pollinate and re-connect in a world that is getting more polarised. So yes, I left Salvador with ash on my fingers, a new playlist, and a mildly wrecked voice. I also left with a conviction: we made the future imaginable that week. Now our task is to make it strategically inevitable .