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Art and social change: The role of creativity and wonder

Vlad Petre Glăveanu

Aalborg University, Denmark

Abstract
This chapter explores the relationship between creativity and social change with
a particular focus on public, participatory and interactive forms of art. While the
link between art and society has been discussed extensively in both the
humanities and the social sciences, there are few psychological explanations for
how and why engaging in art, as part of creative activism, fosters social
transformation. In this chapter I argue that creativity and the experience of
wonder hold the key to unpacking this complex relationship. Following the
perspectival model of this phenomenon, I start from the premise that creative
action essentially involves generating new perspectives on a given reality. By
placing these perspectives in dialogue, a space of reflexivity emerges whereby
reality appears as essentially multiple and open to change. The awareness of the
possible and engagement with it defines the experience of wonder. And it is
collective wondering that makes social change thinkable, and thus ultimately
achievable. This is not a linear or deterministic relationship and it is also not
meant to imply that all uses of art will successfully achieve their political aims.
However, it is only by acknowledging the power of creativity and wonder and
their role in social movements that we can better understand and support them.

Change is, undeniably, the real constant in the existence of both individuals and
society. While social change has repeatedly been claimed as omnipresent (see
Reicher & Haslam, 2013), we are still in need of theories that can account for the
incredibly wide spectrum of societal transformation, from incremental to
revolutionary, from local to global. It is not my aim in this chapter to provide
such a theory. However, I will attempt to bring a new angle into a growing field
of studies closely related to social change – creative activism. My interest in this
area doesn’t have to do only with the fact that I am a creativity scholar and a
social psychologist by training, but also with the importance of gaining a deeper
understanding of activism as one of the key engines of change within community
and within society. What distinguishes creative activism is the fact that it
engages artistic skills without being reduced to art (Harrebye, 2016). At a more
basic level, it designates activism that surprises us, that stands out as different,

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original, and potent when it comes to redefining the way we see and relate to the
social world. Creative activism is thus not a sub-form of social activism but a
quality of activist or socially-engaged action. Street art, Internet memes, flash
mobs, protests and boycotts, to give just a few examples, can be characterised as
more or less creative, more or less novel in their aims and the means employed
to achieve them. And these means are, very often, explicitly artistic.

Artistic creative activism (or artivism), in this context, refers to the deliberate
use of art within activist action. This is not the ‘high art’ of galleries or museums
but a much more participative form of art grounded in everyday life, particularly
in our communal living. Even when classic artistic images or techniques are
used, they are appropriated and transformed in ways that can question societal
norms, values, practices and, oftentimes, our conceptions of art itself. Street art is
an excellent example in this regard, and one I will come back to in this chapter.
For the moment let us note, together with Edelman (1995), that politics builds
on art just as much as art is guided by political values and discourses. There is no
form of artistic expression that doesn’t relay on such values and discourses, even
when the artist’s intention is not political in nature. Reversely, social and
political life is infused by the images and values embedded in art as a way of
seeing or constructing the world. And it is precisely this fundamental function of
art that makes it quasi indispensable within creative activism. As Campana
(2011) concludes, based on a review of other works:

“The arts’ role in activism can include the communication of a movement’s

or group’s worldview, opposition, and vision; facilitation of dialogue
towards political and social consciousness for both participants and the
broader public; creation and expression of collective identity and
solidarity; and working toward ‘cognitive liberation’, a critical
transformation from hopeless submission to oppressive conditions to a
readiness to change those conditions” (Campana, 2011, p. 281).

In other words, the use of art in activism and, more broadly, in social change,
opens up the space of the possible, the space of imagination and creativity for
both activists and their audiences. It is a space where reality becomes multiple
and malleable, at least as experienced in art. However, such artistic depictions of
the social world are not inconsequential. On the contrary, they both show and
mobilise, reflect and transform, invite viewers to notice but also to participate.
This is because much of today’s artistic creative activism relies on public,

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socially-engaged, participative, peformative and/or interactive art. It is,

essentially, art that can “disrupt everyday life and involve and inspire passersby”
(Boros, 2012, p. xi). As Boros (2012) continues, because it addresses everyone,
artistic creative activism is “inherently democratic” (p. 5), “intended for the
public and social spaces in our lives” (p. 6). Street art that carries social or
political messages is, once more, emblematic in this regard. But why exactly is
street art, and artistic creative activism more generally, important for social
movements and potentially effective in delivering social change? The present
chapter answers this question by pointing to creativity and wonder.

My main argument here is that creativity, and principally the experience of

wonder situated at its core, can help us bridge art and society and explain the
relation between activism and social change. In order to understand why this
might be the case we need first of all to consider why creativity has been largely
absent until now from theories of social change. And yet, as I argue, many
manifestations of activism for social change, including street art, can be
considered creative. What prevents us from discussing them as such is a long
legacy of seeing creativity as an individual, intra-psychological process that has
little to do with society and much more with ‘creative domains’ such as the arts
and sciences. Countering this approach, I review here a sociocultural model of
creativity based on notions of perspective, reflexivity, and wonder. In particular,
wonder, as an experience and active exploration of the possible, plays a vital role
in creative action. What do these notions have to do with social change? Towards
the end of the chapter I discuss and exemplify my claim that creative activism
participates in social change by enabling us to experience collective wonder. The
chapter ends with a few considerations regarding the limits of creativity and art
and also a possible explanation for why, even when seemingly failing, artistic
creative activism still contributes to long-term social change.

1. Creativity and social change

Social change comes in many shapes and forms but most of the times it involves
social action or mobilisation. In such contexts, social change “takes place as a
result of human agency and intention to affect a given social environment based
on the view that existing social conditions or relations are untenable” (Subašić,
Reynolds, Reicher & Klandermans, 2012, p. 62). For Harrebye (2016), social
movements “consist of groups of people who share a collective identity centered
on social solidarity (internally and in a certain way often with the surrounding

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society), a common identifiable cause, and ideas that are maintained and
advocated over time” (p. 47). The human agency mentioned above, as well as the
capacity to advocate for new ideas can be discussed in terms of creativity. And
yet, creativity is surprisingly absent from theories of social change. In a review of
the literature within social and political psychology, Subašić, Reynolds, Reicher
and Klandermans (2012, p. 62) mention traditional concepts in this area of
study: social identity, intergroup relations, relatedness, minority influence,
perceptions of the social world, group-based emotions, etc. The danger
embedded in operating with many of these concepts, even if this is not the
intention of the authors proposing them, is that of using reifying, often
dichotomic categories: us versus them, minority versus majority, cooperation
versus conflict, and so on. While many of these categories are not intrinsically
static (see, for example, studies of re-categorization processes; Gaertner, Mann,
Murrell & Dovidio, 1989), their research use tends to focus us on how things ‘are’
(perceived, felt or instituted) and less on how they ‘could be’. What is largely
missing is thus a view of how identities, perceptions and emotions are mobilised
within social action to create a space for critical reflection about what is possible;
in other words, a space for creativity and imagination in the social arena.

There are many reasons why creativity as a concept is absent from theories of
social change. To begin with, creativity research, at least in psychology, has
focused largely on individual attributes at the expense of social variables,
including the study of how people create together (Glăveanu, 2010). Second, it
oftentimes reduced creativity to cognition and different types of thinking (e.g.,
divergent, combinatorial, lateral), disconnecting idea generation from action
(what most refer to nowadays as innovation rather than creativity; Anderson,
Potočnik & Zhou, 2014). Third, society rarely features as a domain of creative
action, unlike art and science, design, etc. While notable artistic or scientific
creations do concern society as a whole, there is little interest for the creativity
involved in living together and solving communal problems (what I refer to as
societal creativity; Glăveanu, 2015a). Finally, as Harrebye (2016, p. 114) also
states, the idea of creativity has been tainted by its association with capitalism
and consumerism, losing its critical edge. To create, according to the most
common psychological definition, means to generate novelty and value (Amabile,
1996) and, unfortunately, this value is often considered in economic terms. The
importance of creativity for the health of individuals and society, for
transforming what is given in new and surprising ways, and, ultimately, for being
at the heart of social change, escapes both creativity and social theorists.

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What would a sociocultural rather than individual-based view of creativity bring

to theories of social change? First and foremost, in sociology and political
science, a regained focus on agentic individuals within the collective. Models of
society, including social change, need to balance structural constraints and
human agency in their depictions of the social world and, often, this is a very
difficult task. Understanding creativity as a relational concept, taking place at the
interface between self and other, between what exists in the situation and what
is ‘not-there’ or ‘not-yet-there’, offers an exciting theoretical venue for
addressing both person and society in their evolving inter-relation. Second,
psychology studies of social change are hindered primarily by what Reicher and
Haslam (2013) rightfully call the ‘conformity bias’, manifested in rendering
people “as puppets, driven by unchanging urges, incapable of addressing, let
alone changing, their circumstances” (p. 114). By postulating a universal and
static human nature and orienting it towards stability and familiarity,
psychologists have little to add to understanding change, and even less fostering
it. What introducing creativity in theories of human and social development
offers is basically a correction of this bias and a new emphasis on agency, within
constraints (Gruber, Clark, Klempe & Valsiner, 2015). This is a very important
point to make since, in lay conceptions, creating is often seen as the ultimate
individual freedom. My understanding of creativity is precisely one of bounded
freedom, one that is constrained but, at the same time, enabled by other people.
And this is exactly why creativity has a great part to play in social change – it
builds on social relations and interactions while transforming them.

If creativity itself has been remarkably absent from discussions about society,
the same is not true of art, particularly in recent years (see David & McCaughan,
2006; Mesch, 2013). Art, often taken as a proxy for creativity, is equally harmed
by a view of artists as “isolated and alienated from society” (Campana, 2011, p.
279) while, in fact, they actively participate in how society is portrayed, thought
of and acted upon. By focusing on socially-engaged, public and participative art
as part of creative activism, my hope in this chapter is to shed new light on the
relation between creativity and society. I argue that creativity embedded within
the arts has the potential to both trigger and shape social movements and lead,
under specific circumstances, to effective social change. Before developing this
argument further though, a question arises: is all activist art, for example street
art, supposed to be creative? While important, this kind of question can be
misleading, as it invites us to operate with a black and white assessment of

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creativity. Instead of inquiring into when and where creativity is present (or
missing), we should focus our attention on how socially-engaged art can be
creative and how this creativity participates in social change. The first question is
addressed in the next section, the second one in the sections following it.

2. How is street art creative?

Asked in this manner the question probably surprises those who don’t even
consider street art – e.g., tags, stencils and graffiti – in terms of creativity. For
some, the debate is whether graffiti is aesthetically pleasing or not, if it infringes
private property or not, if it should be legal or not, etc. Many would also probably
point to the difference between signing one’s name on the wall and a stencil by
Banksy and consider the latter artistic (thus creative) rather than the former.
However, what this implies is an a-contextual judgement of creativity based on
the classic criteria of novelty, originality and value. Even a tag can be considered
creative depending on how it is made, when and where (for instance, tags placed
in largely inaccessible places often make us wonder about how and when did
their makers achieved their aims, often a sign of great ingenuity). As any product
of human activity, street art can very well be assessed in terms of how novel or
unique it is, whether it contributes to community or not, and so on. And indeed,
we can discuss a continuum of creativity here – from simple tags to elaborate
graffiti – just like in many other domains. But this kind of creativity assessment
would focus us, once more, on the ‘what’ rather than the ‘how’ of creativity. In
answering the ‘how’ question, we need to move beyond street art as a product
and understand it as a process reuniting makers and their audience.

The creative process in the case of a stencil or graffiti doesn’t begin with the idea
and doesn’t end with its realisation. On the contrary, the distributed notion of
creativity I am advocating for (see Glăveanu, 2014) is sensitive to the expanded
context of human creative action, in this case, of engaging in street art. Creative
activism, for Harrebye (2016, p. 14), “can be regarded as being creative in two
senses of the word: firstly, by creating a space for the revitalization of the
political imagination and secondly, by doing so in inventive ways”. The latter is
what we mostly consider when thinking about creativity and street art, for
instance. Is there novelty in the topics chosen? In the methods used? In the
location or message? The former though, is a much more important and yet often
neglected sign of creativity – the ability to open up spaces for thought, to connect
us to what is possible in our lives and in our society.

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In other words, street art is at least potentially creative because, even when seen
as ‘ugly’, ‘useless’, ‘violent’, or even ‘criminal’, it does carry with it the capacity to
make us wonder. We wonder about the author or authors of graffiti, their motives
and life trajectories. We wonder about the meaning of what is depicted and the
significance of the space it occupies. We wonder about how other people might
see it and perhaps about own reactions (positive or negative) to it. Last but not
least, we wonder about what can and cannot be done in public spaces and, in the
best-case scenario, try to see society through the lenses of street artists and their
work. In other words, the potential creativity of these products and their
capacity to make us wonder should not be read only in terms of the products
themselves, their more or less aesthetic qualities – such judgements need to
consider a broader context of who, when, where and how they were made and
received by others. Of particular interest are experiences of wonder that can lead
viewers, not only authors, to new understandings or insights about the social
world, their place and possibilities to act within it. They nurture, even if in small,
sometimes unperceivable ways, the political imagination mentioned by Harrebye
(see also Glăveanu & de Saint-Laurent, 2015). This is one possible answer to the
‘how’ question above. Street art is creative for opening up a space for reflexivity,
imagination, and future creativity for individuals and for the collective.

Boros (2012) similarly refers to the basic functions of public art in relation to
societal living in this manner:

“There are at least three main ways that public art can create, support, and
enliven both communal spaces and feelings of community. The first is
through the beautification and amplification of our public spaces in order
to create pride and communal feelings of ownership. The second is through
direct and overt political critique and protest, which is in itself a political
action. (…) The third way (…) is when art demonstrates imaginative new
ways of seeing our world and our everyday lives simply through its
restructuring of the everyday” (Boros, 2012, p. 15).

It might sound farfetched to invest all street art with creativity and political
power and, indeed, this is not my claim. Indeed, in places and at times when it
becomes repetitive, it has no obvious message or serves mainly one function
(e.g., to vandalise), it is highly likely it will not mobilise meaning-making or
attract support. What I want to emphasise in this chapter, however, is that street

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art can help us see our world in a new way and this potential is very relevant for
our present discussion of creativity and social change. As Edelman (1995)
eloquently wrote, works of art in general “can create perspectives regarding
objects and scenes in everyday life and in history that are not otherwise
apparent and not otherwise prominent” (p. 6). Street art often excels in this
regard because its main function is to make visible objects and scenes we might
not want to see or know about. More than this, it generates a different
perspective on these objects and scenes, one that is often at odds with the
societal view on them. This is, as I explain next, the defining feature of creativity.

3. Creativity, perspectives, and wonder

To create doesn’t mean to come up with as many ideas as possible, for as much
as creativity tests insist on this aspect. To create means to act in and on the
world in ways that are considered novel and meaningful by the creator and/or
by other people. Essentially, creative action places in dialogue different
perspective on the world, on oneself, others, one’s activity or situation, etc., it
reflects on the differences between them and uses these differences to generate new
ideas, objects, practices, and so on. Creativity, according to this definition, is not
about ideas but actions that are flexible enough to articulate multiple
perspectives on reality (for more details see Glăveanu, 2015b, 2016).
Perspectives are preferred here because they have a social origin – they relate to
different positions in the world – and orient our action. To take an example,
social change involves multiple positions (e.g., activists, government officials,
members of the civil society, of the military, and so on), each one developing one
or more perspectives on society. To create in this context, just like in science, art,
or everyday life, one has to be able to engage with more than their own
perspective. This is, arguably, what makes successful activists – they are able, in
their work, to address the concerns of different audiences while challenging or
resisting taken-for-granted, dominant perspectives.

Importantly, this model assumes that we are not fixed in a certain position (and
its associated way of seeing and doing things) but we can, physically or
imaginatively, switch or alternate between positions, effectively re-positioning
ourselves towards a given reality. For example, we can dislike graffiti because it
vandalises private property. This perspective originates from a position towards
street art that is typical for property owners or the police. However, what would
it mean to consider graffiti from the perspective of its makers? Such re-

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positioning can bring new insights, challenge existing beliefs and even lead to
creative action. But, for this to happen, three conditions need to be set in place:

1. The difference in perspectives needs to be acknowledged: We need to

become aware that multiple perspectives on the same reality are possible;
2. The difference in perspectives needs to be valued: Perspectives different
than one’s own should be appreciated and understood in their own right;
3. The difference in perspectives needs to be acted upon: Perspectives need
to be placed in dialogue and this dialogue externalized and shared.

In other words, noticing difference is only the first step – reflecting about
differences in perspective and being able to see one’s own perspective as other
people would is the engine of creative action. Creativity relies on the possibility of
taking distance from the situation at hand, re-positioning oneself in relation to it
and developing new perspectives that guide our action. It thus requires a history
of interacting with other people and making efforts to understand their positions
and grasp their perspectives, which might be very different from ours. In this
new model, creativity is alimented by the views of others; conversely, denying
other positions and perspectives on reality other than one’s own or the
dominant view in society severely reduces our possibility for acting creatively.
To take a simple example, a chair is typically used for sitting on and this is the
dominant societal perspective that we acquire through a personal history of
socialisation and learning from others (from parents, peers, teachers, etc.). But of
course there are many other perspectives on chairs and, consequently, ways of
acting in relation to them. One can imagine, for instance, gluing a chair to the
celling and calling it modern art. This perspective emerges out of an artist’s
position, one we might not typically take but we are nevertheless familiar with
from meeting or knowing about artists. What does it mean, for our thinking and
action, to be able to relate to a chair both in the conventional manner and in
‘alternative’ ways, opened up by different perspectives? I would argue the latter
considerably increases our chances of acting creatively through expanding our
understanding of what is possible in the given situation.

Following the example above, if you were surprised by the idea of gluing a chair
to the celling, and even if you dismissed it as silly, you probably started thinking
though that chairs can be used in many ways, even ways that make little sense in
everyday life. In other words, you perhaps began to wonder what other original
things we could do with a chair – adopting the terminology used here, what

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other perspectives on the chair are possible and which positions do they
represent? Wondering, in this context, is associated with experiencing different
perspectives and becoming curious about what else is possible in the situation at
hand. Being aware that the space of the possible is wider than initially imagined
and being ready to explore this space further characterises the experience of
wondering and places wonder at the core of creative expression.

What does all of this have to do with social change? First of all, the perspectival
model of creativity and its emphasis on positions, perspectives, and reflexivity, is
directly applicable to the study of societal issues, marked precisely by the
multiplicity of social groups, roles, and points of view. Second, redefining
creativity as collaborative action is relevant for social change that builds not
(only) on ideas but primarily on what people do, together with others. Finally,
placing reflexivity and wonder at the centre of creativity sheds new light on
creative activism, where activists deliberately try to foster both in their effort to
resist hegemonic perspectives and challenge the status quo. How this is possible
and the role played by art in this process is considered in the next section.

4. Social change, art, and collective wonder

Until this point I have argued that creativity theories could help us understand
social change, particularly through creative activism such as the use of public,
socially-engaged art. I supported this claim with a theoretical perspective on
creativity that grounds it in action rather than thinking and brings to the fore the
importance of positions, perspectives, and reflexivity in the creative act. More
specifically, creativity builds on wonder as an experience of and engagement
with the possible. What I propose in this section is that the use of art in social
change serves primarily the purpose of fostering wonder and, through it,
cultivating the possibility of creative action. The experience of wonder
articulates, in such cases, two facets: wondering at, which is often infused by
strong emotional reactions (and, in this cases, is stronger to the experience of
awe), and wondering about, which signifies the process of exploring multiple
perspectives and reaching different understandings of the situation. Both facets
are instrumental in mobilising authors and viewers towards creative action.

Important to note, since creative activism deals with issues of collective concern
and generally targets groups of people rather than individuals, the experience of
wondering it stimulates has a collective quality. By talking about collective

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wonder here I am not suggesting that groups or communities wonder (i.e.,

drawing on a group mind hypothesis), but that the experience of wondering
itself becomes shared. The fact that, in activism and social movements, people
don’t only act (more or less creatively) together but also wonder together is
often overlooked and yet crucial for the dynamic of social change. If in
wondering we become aware of new perspectives and start exploring them
further, collective forms of wondering amplify the potential for social
transformation first of all by making it thinkable for many instead of a limited
few. This phenomenon has deep social, cognitive and emotional consequences
for both individuals and communities. Socially, it encourages participation and
solidarity, cognitively, it opens up new perspectives for action, emotionally, it
can be experienced as cathartic and inspire a variety of emotional states, from
outrage to hope. The crucial question I will come back to in the conclusion is
when and how we can mobilise such potential to actually deliver social change.

For the moment let us note that there is support in recent literature for the
dynamic proposed above. Harrebye (2016), for instance, discusses at length
what he calls the ‘mirror effect’ or the critical theory of reflection in the context
of creative activism. For him, “creative activism uses mirroring techniques to try
to get us to see alternatives, real or not, and reflect the world around us in
beautiful, distorted, and surprising ways” (p. 22). These mirroring techniques
illustrate nothing else but the consistent use of reflection to stimulate the
emergence of new perspectives and, I would add, the experience of wonder.
Harrebye takes his departure from an interesting student tactic during the
protests of 1996 and 1997 against Milošević’s regime in Serbia. During the
demonstrations, participants would hold up huge mirrors in front of the police
officers blocking their way, thus confronting them not with a view of the
students but of themselves. For Harrebye this was not merely a way to show the
policemen the nature of the system they were part of but, in fact, an ingenious
method aimed at reducing the social distance between police and protesters by
giving them a common status – victims of the regime. The literal use of mirrors in
this case helps us reflect more generally on the meaning and value of mirroring.
In theorising this aspect, Harrebye notes:

“My use of reflection focuses on pragmatic and strategic types of critique

and has a double meaning. The mirroring aspect in these tactics refers to
the possibility of seeing something, literally, from a different perspective
than the ones usually offered to us in the hegemony of mainstream culture.

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The contemplative aspect refers to the potential of such tactics to provoke

reflection in the individual, because it triggers questions about the truisms
that form the foundation of the automatic defense mechanisms that enable
us to maintain the coherent worldview that we feel is necessary to feel safe
in a society full of ideological trench warfare and confrontational headlines.
The mirrors used for/against the police by the Otpor movement were
reflexive in both sense of the word: they ‘allowed’ the officers to see the
situation from another perspective (they saw themselves) and they
consequently (may have) forced some of them to review the conflict and
their own role in it” (Harrebye, 2016, p. 130).

He also proposes a typology of mirrors in his book based on the distinction

between ‘inside’ and ‘outside’ as well as ‘critical’ and ‘contemplative’ mirrors.
What the different emerging categories suggest is that there are many ways in
which we can use mirroring to generate new perspectives and stimulate
reflexivity. Some of these perspectives show us differently, some show society
differently, some help us reflect on the present while others are oriented
towards the future. All in all, the ‘mirror effect’ shares a great deal of similarity
with the perspectival model of creativity advanced in this chapter. They both
discuss the importance of re-positioning oneself and seeing the world through
different perspectives. They also give reflexivity, both at individual and group
levels, a key role in stimulating creativity and, ultimately, social change.
However, where Harrebye’s account stops short is in acknowledging the
importance of wondering in mirroring processes. I would argue, based on the
perspectival model, that what makes (some) police officers in the concrete
example above engage with the protesters’ devices is precisely their capacity to
wonder about what the activists were doing and what that meant for everyone.
Moreover, in emphasising collective wondering I am going here beyond the
reflexivity of single individuals and claim, together with Boros (2012, p. xiv), that
“a feeling of connectivity is inherently participatory” and “this interest is the first
part of participation”. The use of artistic techniques, a lot of them grounded in
mirroring, is powerful precisely because they make people experience wonder
together, either as authors, targeted audiences or spectators of creative activism.

To a great extent street art draws on this ‘togetherness of experiencing’ as it is

essentially public. It also makes use of mirroring techniques in the sense that,
oftentimes, it presents back to viewers a new perspective on their shared reality.
While less explicit than Harrebye’s example of protest, street art in the form of

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graffiti, tags and stencils, is nonetheless pervasive in resisting mainstream

ideologies and interpretations and offering its own conception of the world. The
mere existence of street art, in fact, challenges our normative understandings of
art and aesthetics, private and public property, the right to express opposing
views, and so on. When used in the context of protest, such as the Egyptian
revolution, street art acquires more than generic meanings and carries the
collective memory (in the making) about the conflict (see Awad, in press; see
also Jarbou, this volume, with reference to the Arab Spring). Graffiti about the
events depict not only or not even images but perspectives into what is
happening that are actively constructed in the space between graffiti artists, the
authorities and the general public (Awad, Wagoner & Glăveanu, in press). These
perspectives are in dialogue with each other, support each other or, at times,
clash, in providing a space for reflexivity, memory, and creativity. Smith (2015),
who considered the diagnostic role of art in Cairo, wrote that:

“A tag, a message, or an image painted on a visible surface within a heavily

trafficked space is simply unavoidable, forcing the viewer to deal with its
presence. And indeed, viewers must reckon with graffiti – whether it is to
stop and look or to ignore the image, relegating it to background scenery.
Graffiti and graffiti artists force their unsuspecting audience into ethical
and aesthetic questions and decisions, leaving them to cope with the
affective repercussions” (Smith, 2015, p. 32).

Being confronted by ethical and aesthetic questions is, in my account, a result of

being able to wonder about the graffiti itself, the events, and the meaning of the
oftentimes violent transformation taking place in society. Capitalising on this
possibility of making people wonder and, following this, to (creatively)
participate in the revolution, protesters constructed, among other initiatives, a
‘Museum of Revolution’ in Tahrir Square in the winter of 2012. As described by
Smith, this ‘museum’ was located in a large tent and included protest signs,
pictures and jokes from the revolution, collected by the ‘curators’. “It presented
both an affective and educational attempt to inspire and shape emotions and
solidarities” (Smith, 2015, p. 36). It was also a collective effort to make people
wonder about themselves, their society, its present and, most of all, its future.

Numerous other examples of the potential of street art to make audiences

wonder and cultivate collective forms of creativity aimed at social change are
offered in the present volume. For instance, Zanella (this volume), discusses

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graffiti as a form of intervention in urban spaces, provoking and promoting new

ways of relating between inhabitants and the city, cultivating urban polyphonies.
Street art can also follow more specific political agendas, such as raising
awareness about a country’s indigenous population and the their struggle
against a living history of colonisation. Lattore (this volume) and Smith (this
volume) vividly illustrate this dynamic in the case of Chilean indigenously
inspired graffiti and muralism (see also the Decolonize Street Art events in
Smith, this volume). By including in busy urban spaces images of native
traditional healers and spiritual leaders, these expressions of street art raise
questions of inclusion and diversity, actively trying to ‘democratise’ public
spaces. In these, and many other cases presented throughout this book, we
witness the potential of street art to surprise us, to challenge our views, to make
us laugh and, most of all, to make us think, reflect and wonder about the society
we live in, our collective contribution to and responsibility for its future.

5. Final reflections

In this chapter I argued that creativity is essential for social change and, more
specifically, that the experience of wonder, an intrinsic part of the creative
process, is often stimulated by the use of art in creative activism. If, in agreement
with Edelman (1995, p. 7), we can say that “art creates realities and worlds”, then
it also changes these realities and worlds by including more perspectives on
them and inspiring creative action. Of course, though, not all experiences of
wondering lead to creativity and not all creativity translates into (effective)
social change. The question I would like to tackle at the end is why.

Harrebye (2016), dealing with the same problem, comments on the ‘paradox’ of
creative activism:

“Creative activism simply seems to be entertaining enough for a large and

potentially powerful segment to take things seriously. This strength also
however seems to be the biggest problem for these groups, as they do not
take the time to formulate a systematic structural critique capable of
pointing in one direction, and thus end up serving as a coherent alternative
to the existing order. Values in today’s network society, which the artistic
critique might help shape, are based on principles of temporality, flexibility,
and elasticity – none of which are compatible with the stability and
stubbornness that critical masses need to mobilize momentum. The cynic,

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ironic, and utopian features of creative activism are in a frustrating cyclical

sense both a reason and an effect of this predicament” (Harrebye, 2016, pp.
118-119).

This observation is certainly accurate. It points to the fact that wonder and
reflexivity are necessary but not sufficient conditions for creative social action to
take place and, most of all, to be carried out and lead to actual change in society.
However, they are not in vain either. Wondering and creativity are empowering
experiences which leave their mark on individuals and communities. While they
might or might not generate successful outcomes, they nevertheless set the stage
for deeper social processes to unfold. As Boros (2012, p. 12) rightfully notes,
“personal artistic experience (…) expands the limits of our conception of what is
possible” (p. 8) and, even when seemingly failing to trigger social change, it
“nonetheless expanded the imagination of the collective consciousness, which
lays open the possibility for change” (p. 12). This is certainly true, in my view,
when it comes to the use of art and creative activism in Egypt and elsewhere
(see, for example, a discussion of the Getzi protest in Turkey in Yalcintas, 2015;
also the chapter on Egyptian cartoonists by Helmy & Frerichs, this volume).

In the end, those who think creativity and wonder are never enough should be
reminded that only by acknowledging their role we are better able to understand
and, ultimately, to cultivate these phenomena in both ourselves and in society. In
this sense, the present chapter joins the plea made by colleagues to support
public art projects (see Boros, 2012) and promote them as ways of building and
transforming our communities (see also Lattore, this volume). There is a strong
element of personal and collective responsibility in this call. It is not only the
responsibility to respond to the efforts of others and their fight for a better
society, but also, and more importantly, our shared responsibility when it comes
to envisioning what a ‘better’ society means. Creativity and imagination are
called upon here but they cannot offer us ‘the’ solution; rather, they confront us
with more questions and more perspectives to wonder about. If envisioning
social change is not enough to carry it through, it is equally the case that no
change is possible without creating new visions of society and systematically
challenging them. If change is a constant of our social life, wondering might just
be its ever-present companion.

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