Creative community activism in global contexts

In this introduction to this special issue about creative community activism in global contexts, we draw together key conceptual and methodological principles of this collection. We begin from the standpoint that equality is a cultural artefact, a socio-cultural and political product specifically located in time and space and as such subject to creation and re-creation. Creative activism offers us a medium to both engage with and take action on issues of culture and gender in/equality. Through the creative activisms explored here, communities, researchers, and artists combine social action with creativity and arts to challenge inequalities, promote positive futures, and enable socio-cultural wellbeing in innovative ways that can be simultaneously engaging and participatory, and decolonising and democratising. They underscore how through creative activism hierarchies of power and knowledge production and lived experiences of in/equalities can be explored, understood, and contested.