En/acting radical change: theories, practices, places and politics of creativity as intervention

Creative arts-based methods and methodologies are recently seeing a (re)surgence in human geography. Much less explored by geographers, however, are arts-based methods and methodologies as agents of sociopolitical change overlapping with the intensifying work of place-based engagements by critical, racialized, queer, feminist, anti-colonial, Indigenous, differently-abled and/or activists, artists and scholars. This paper provides a broad historical overview of arts practice in geography. It then interrogates some of the shortcomings of current scholarship about creativity (in practice and theory) in the discipline. Drawing from scholarship and front-line testimonies about artistic actions in support of asylum seekers, LGBTQ+ 2S or trans, feminist, and sex worker’s rights and Indigenous activism, we investigate the potential and limitations of creativity for re-workings, for resistances and for critical collaborations. We also ask what geographers might learn from artists and arts-engaged scholars about creativity as an intervention and agent of transformation.