Ra’z Salvarita is a cross-disciplinary creative artivist who was born on the island province of Negros in the Philippines. His creative endeavors reflect the convergence of the three pillars he primarily works with: Creative Healing Expressions, Sustainable Sacred Ecology, and Practical, Mindful Spirit Vitality. Ra’z moved to his mother’s hometown during the pandemic and started working with the women farm workers on the island. Climate change is felt by the locals yearly as typhoons hit the island frequently. In this episode, he shares about his climate project with his local community and the impact that his art project has had on the community and the municipality.

Find out more about R’az’s work: https://razsalvarita.com

Lynn Yau is the CEO of The Absolutely Fabulous Theatre Connection, which also stands for also stands for Arts For Transformative Educational Change. She shares her decades of experience working at the intersection of art and education.

Key points:

Changing the education system of Hong Kong through the arts

Against the modernist paradigm: mass manufacturing model in education

Understanding the context well to find income

Innovative impact metrics beyond numbers

Changing the narrative from “funder” to “strategic partner” who is involved in building the project

Learn more about AFTEC: https://www.aftec.hk

Chetnaa Mehrotra is an applied arts practitioner and the founder of Rangbhumi. The company’s vision is to spread joyousness, power of expression, compassion & a sense of equivalence among people through Applied Theatre Based facilitation. The organisation works in the area of Applied Theatre with children, youth and adults.

Chetnaa also uses arts-based learning to explore areas such as leadership, communication and conflict management with corporate clients.

In this episode we address:

Applying arts in corporate settings

Theatre of the oppressed and playback theatre to address intergenerational and cultural gaps

Forum theatre in addressing challenges of motherhood returning to corporate work

Playback theatre with corporate lawyers addressing diversity and inclusion

Pioneering applied arts in India

Working with vulnerability

We end off this episode with an 8 minute womb meditation. Listen to the end to experience it with us!

https://www.rangbhumi.org. https://www.facebook.com/Rangbhumi-A-happy-playground-228754897494110/

Raïsa Mirza is an interdisciplinary socially engaged practitioner with international work experience all over the world - including Bangladesh, Canada, Ethiopia, Japan, Malawi and the Philippines. She works and lives in emerging economies driving social innovation work in challenging contexts within a diversity of sectors. Raïsa has worked on many SDG goals including conservation, agriculture, water and sanitation. She is an expert facilitator in the human centered design process to lead strategic planning, change management and innovation cycles across organizations, including within remote teams and with national governments.

In this episode, we chat about

How socially engaged art can play an important role in driving SDG goals through creativity, storytelling and community engagement.

Finding opportunities beyond the arts to collaborate with and how to build projects

The power of trust, relationships and social capital.

Competencies needed for building cross sector projects.

Imagination as a currency.

Check out Raïsa’s website: https://www.wabisabijetty.com

This was a project between Seppure and artist Ng Sze Min. Seppure is a chemical filtration company whose technology allows industrial filtration processes to happen at room temperature, essentially cutting the energy traditionally required for such processes by up to 90%. Currently industrial filtration processes take up 15% of the world's energy consumption. 

Tune in to understand the challenges in such cross sector projects. 

Find out more at: https://www.insepconnect.com/sustenarts

This is day 11 of Russia's invasion of Ukraine. History repeats itself as Russia's invasion of Georgia in 2008 remain painfully raw in Georgians' memories. This is a special episode covering the Georgian perspective and what this war means for Georgia and Moldova next. This episode provides some historical context of the conflict as well as the genocide of Georgians by Russians back in 1993. It gives a close look at what's happening on the ground, including Russian media tactics to fan the fire that can help create a pretext for another invasion in Georgia. 

If you'd like to support Ukrainian children refugee, I am collecting resources on child care activities and curriculum for my Polish colleagues. It's an open source document, please add to it here: https://docs.google.com/document/d/1iyUEJ2ZW4dd9JWHWn8ThWcq_ifGMFECfSMNFol9qDoU/edit?usp=sharing

If you know of any good refugee entrepreneurship case studies that Ukrainians can consider in rebuilding their lives, please add to this document: https://docs.google.com/document/d/1OFlRCbwlpb_9-8nSgceLGb0rnUhfn4SfwgX044Py0uI/edit?usp=sharing

References: 

"Putin's way" on Youtube: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=NIgqhU4lkgo

"Putin's Revenge: Part 2": https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=8Q_uKCEj2Xk

This episode is part 2 of our #Sustenarts series featuring biotech company TeOra (Rishita Changede and Yasaman Tavakoli) as well as artist Wendy Zhang. Tune in to hear about how microbes, algae, bacteria and yeast can protect our ecosystem and save our world.

For more images of algae painting and this project’s social media engagement posts, check out @sociallyengagedpractices on instagram or go to INSEP’s website: https://www.insepconnect.com

Learn more about TeOra: https://www.teoralife.com

Sustenarts is a program by INSEP that brings together sustainable enterprises and socially engaged arts to create projects that can scale climate solutions. One of the projects is Insect Protein Pals, led by artist Fié Neo, alongside Asia Insect Farm Solutions and SLICE to explore ways to increase the adoption of cricket powder through participatory arts. Tune in to hear Aaron, Yuvanesh and Fié talk about their social media Shang Chi transformation, cooking with boomers, Christmas cook off and more.   

http://aifs.asia

https://audacity.world/slice/

insepconnect.com Instagram: @feeyeh_neo @sociallyengagedpractices 

Sustenarts website

Marco started his change making journey as a counsellor in Hong Kong. Since then he’s worked in non profit, social enterprise, policy influencing advocacy and social innovation community and capacity building.

Key points in this episode:

What are the gaps in the Asian changemaking ecosystem?

How could transnational exchanges and learning build better social support?

How do we develop alternatives and open more doors for the communities we serve?

Where are the programmes that build capacity of an entrepreneur like mental resiliency?

How much space do we allow a young person to have an experimental mindset?

Marco co-founded Beyond Vision Projects, a social enterprise promoting worldwide accessible and inclusive art and culture for the visually-impaired. He was also engaged in managing innovation challenges (Good Seed) under a HKSAR government initiative (SIE Fund), early-stage innovation/ideation at University level, participatory social design and knowledge exchange across cities (i.e. 5% Design Action). Marco currently works as Asia Lead- Partnerships, Capacity Building and Development at Social Innovation Exchange.

Feel free to connect with him on Linkedin.

Social hackathons: implementing speedy tech processes on social problems

Bridging social solutions and business

Moving beyong dependence on governments

Convincing the Estonian Ministry to include social entreprenuership in their national strategy

How to join the Social Entrepreneurship Incubation Program

The power of ecosystems in speeding and scaling change

Strengthening support for changemakers