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“Protest and Progress: Understanding Movements for Social and Political Change” is a PGT\u00a0Sociology course that seeks to expose students to various theories and approaches to the study\u00a0of social movements and to explore possibilities for social and political transformation. With\u00a0this in mind, for the final session of the course, we organised a session focused on the\u00a0intersection of arts, politics and social transformation. For this, we convened a talk that\u00a0sought to illustrate how art can be mobilised for the sake of politics, but also how protests\u00a0can become “events of art”. Our goal was to spark students’ curiosity by engaging with\u00a0disciplines such as the philosophy of art and aesthetics, as well as by examining cases from\u00a0diverse contexts and artistic traditions. The idea was not only to show how these ideas can\u00a0cross spatial and temporal boundaries, travelling, for instance, from the Global South to the\u00a0Global North or vice versa, but also to deepen the understanding of social movements and\u00a0their entanglement with various cultural forms.<\/p>\n
Having this in mind, we took as our starting point the artistic expressions employed in the\u00a02019 Chilean Social Uprising, exploring how some of these have “travelled” around the\u00a0world, being re-appropriated, re-interpreted, but also challenged. In the first part of the\u00a0session, we introduced students to various scholarly debates that have sought to understand\u00a0the intersection of arts and politics, researching how these two fields, each operating under\u00a0its own principles of legitimacy, can sometimes intersect \u2013which raises questions on the\u00a0autonomy and political efficacy of art or whether art has a “responsibility” to drive\u00a0transformation. This discussion also prompted us to reflect on how artistic currents reflect\u00a0the dynamics of social movements, and how social movements can be affected by the “art\u00a0world”. Ultimately, exploring the politicisation of art, but also the aestheticisation of protest.\u00a0On this regard, a student commented: “I really enjoyed the first video. I had never seen that\u00a0protest before and the use of music to communicate a powerful message was really interesting\u00a0to see. I also liked the\u00a0 question [about] if all art can be considered progressive or if rightwing movements also use art to protest. Can art then be\u00a0 considered art if it becomes\u00a0propaganda?” (Student, Feedback 8\/12\/2025).<\/p>\n
In the second part of the session, we organised a workshop with the goal of collaboratively\u00a0creating a sort of “travel log” with\u00a0 the students. The purpose of this activity was to encourage\u00a0them to imagine travelling through various geographical contexts and historical periods,\u00a0reflecting on social movements that, inspired by a wide range of causes (including the\u00a0defence of democracy, indigenous and anti-colonial movements, Palestine solidarity\u00a0movement, animal rights, feminist issues and the\u00a0 defence of migrant rights in the context of\u00a0rising the far-right ) have resorted to art to mobilise themselves. As it was the final session\u00a0of the course, the idea was also that the students could apply the concepts they had learned\u00a0throughout the semester (these included but were not limited to frame\/framing, political and\u00a0cultural opportunity structures, tactics, strategies and repertoires) to the study of these various\u00a0forms of protests. To facilitate this, we created a Padlet to record these reflections.<\/p>\n
The workshop received positive feedback from the students, who expressed their interest in\u00a0active involvement in similar\u00a0 initiatives. They suggested bringing examples from their own\u00a0geographical contexts or activist experiences, while others\u00a0 mentioned that they would like to\u00a0write their final assessment inspired by the workshop content: “[the session] definitely\u00a0diversifies academic content and provides a space for a discussion that incorporates nonWestern knowledge. Maybe\u00a0 next time it can include asking students to bring in examples of\u00a0art\/artforms they know of or from contexts where they come\u00a0 from, and present to the class\u00a0briefly” (Student, Feedback 8\/12\/2025). They also highlighted the benefits of exposure to\u00a0diverse experiences and how that nurtures their curiosity and critical thinking. In fact, another\u00a0student mentioned: “This activity\u00a0 challenged my critical thinking of social movements and\u00a0the true efficacy of their methods and actions, even down to the small\u00a0 details. I thoroughly\u00a0enjoyed the opportunity to discuss with other classmates and share opinions on the\u00a0presentation on the\u00a0 correlations between art and political movements, as this is a personal\u00a0interest. Overall, I believe this has diversified the\u00a0 academic content” (Student, Feedback\u00a08\/12\/2025). Hence, we believe that this was an excellent opportunity to diversify the\u00a0 content,\u00a0showcase interdisciplinary dialogue, encourage the study of cases from various contexts, and\u00a0incentivise co-creation with students.<\/p>\n
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