Art and creative practice can provide a medium and platform to express otherwise inexpressive intentions, values, and emotions. Creative practices can give space

and a platform for subordinated experiences and emotions to be shared in solidarity.

Furthermore, art and creative practice can help provide strong symbols of such otherwise subtle and hard to express values, emotions and concerns that persist over time. Groups can explore values, emotions and ways of understanding the world in a respectful and sensitive manner. As a result, creative practice can become the object of a group commitment (Chandler et al., 2014; Nguyen, 2019).

Many social movements use art and creative practice as a key element of their engagement strategies (Jasper, 2011; Rodriguez-Labajos, 2022; Stammen & Meissner, 2022). Using arts can encourage people to get engaged due to the emotions they evoke (Jasper, 2011) e.g., being morally shocked (Wettergren, 2007) or awakening curiosity and wonder (Glăveanu, 2017).

Understood through the lens of rituals, shared creative practice experiences can create shared emotional energy, new symbols of social relationship, group solidarity, and new standards of morality. Organizing in groups can provide a safe space where otherwise suppressed emotions have room to be expressed. Through this, creative practices create shared emotional energy and the fuel for a shared critical consciousness that forms the desire for change and a basis for action. Artistic and creative practices have a unique capacity to function as high quality rituals that lead to such outcomes. These outcomes form, in turn, the basis for further organization among participants involved; as well as the basis for further high-quality rituals (Summers-Effler, 2002).

Collaborative and community-based creative practices with participatory components have been shown to support dialogue and social learning (Chandler et al., 2014; Golańska & Kronenberg, 2020). From a relational perspective, creative practices can change ways in which people relate to each other and their environment (Bradbury & Divecha, 2020). Thus, creative practices have the potential to build collaboration in communities (Chandler et al., 2014; Golańska & Kronenberg, 2020).

In sum, Arts is believed to create an environment of openness to reflection and difficult topics, making receivers more receptive than in their everyday lives (Curtis et al., 2012). Creative practice can generate reflection, dialogue, the exploration of alternatives and the clarification of values (Summers-Effler, 2002; Nguyen, 2019). These can form the basis for transformative organization.

Bradbury, H., & Divecha, S. (2020). Action methods for faster transformation: Relationality in action. Action Research, 18(3), 273–281. https://doi.org/10.1177/1476750320936493

Chandler, L., Baldwin, C., & Marks, M. (2014). Catalysts for Change: Creative Practice as an Environmental Engagement Tool. Leonardo, 47(5), 506–507. https://doi.org/10.1162/LEON_a_00825

Curtis, D. J., Reid, N., & Ballard, G. (2012). Communicating ecology through art: What scientists think. Ecology and Society, 17(2).

Glăveanu, V. P. (2017). Art and Social Change: The Role of Creativity and Wonder. In S. H. Awad & B. Wagoner (Eds.), Street Art of Resistance (pp. 19–37). Springer International Publishing. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-319-63330-5_2

Golańska, D., & Kronenberg, A. K. (2020). Creative practice for sustainability: A new materialist perspective on artivist production of eco-sensitive knowledges. International Journal of Education through Art, 16(3), 303–318.

Jasper, J. M. (2011). Emotions and social movements: Twenty years of theory and research. Annual Review of Sociology, 37(1), 285–303.

Nguyen, C. T. (2019). Monuments as Commitments: How Art Speaks to Groups and How Groups Think in Art. Pacific Philosophical Quarterly, 100(4), 971–994. https://doi.org/10.1111/papq.12279

Rodriguez-Labajos, B. (2022). Artistic activism promotes three major forms of sustainability transformation. Current Opinion in Environmental Sustainability, 57, 101199. https://doi.org/10.1016/j.cosust.2022.101199

Stammen, L., & Meissner, M. (2022). Social movements’ transformative climate change communication: Extinction rebellion’s artivism. Social Movement Studies, 1–20. https://doi.org/10.1080/14742837.2022.2122949

Summers-Effler, E. (2002). The Micro Potential for Social Change: Emotion, Consciousness, and Social Movement Formation. Sociological Theory, 20(1), 41–60. https://doi.org/10.1111/1467-9558.00150

Wettergren, Å. (2007). Mobilization and the moral shock: Adbusters Media Foundation. In Emotions and social movements (pp. 109–128). Routledge.