Fossil Free Culture NL had the honor of presenting a two-day workshop titled “Art Meets Activism in Action” as part of the Performing Public Space (PPS) Master’s program at Fontys Academy of the Arts in Tilburg.
PPS is an intensive, interdisciplinary program for artists who focus on public space as their creative stage, grounded in the idea that public space only exists when socially performed. The program blends online and in-person learning, with immersive on-site “bootcamps” in Tilburg.
Date & Time: 8 / 9 January 2025, 09:00 – 17:00
Location: Fontys Academy of the Arts in Tilburg
Themes & Workshop Focus
During our workshop, PPS students engaged with two potent themes:
- Reclaiming public space in Tilburg — for example, the demand for more benches and communal infrastructure in the city center, as an act of accessibility and common comfort.
- The deviation of public discourse — how narratives are shaped, manipulated, and resisted in public environments.
Through these themes, we encouraged students to think and act from a place where art and activism overlap: interventions, performance, participatory practices, and spatial critique.
What Made It Special
- The workshop spanned two days, allowing sustained engagement rather than a single moment of intervention.
- Students came from varied disciplines (performance, visual arts, architecture, etc.), reflecting the PPS spirit of blending art forms in shared space.
- The format allowed them to prototype site-based ideas, respond to Tilburg’s urban fabric, test aesthetic-political strategies, and envision interventions beyond metaphor into lived space.
We were deeply inspired by how students mined local context (Tilburg’s public infrastructure, urban flows) and global discourse (narrative power, media, spatial justice) to imagine interventions that feel urgent and generative.
Significance & Reflections
- This workshop reinforced our conviction: art in public space is not decorative or symbolic only: it acts on how space is lived, claimed, restricted, or shared.
- Collaborating with an academic-artistic context like PPS lets us cross-pollinate: we bring activist urgency, students bring fresh analytical distance.
- Working over two days gives time to iterate, test, reflect — which is crucial when praxis meets context.
As always, interventions in public space must negotiate risk, reception, messaging, legibility, and site-appropriateness.