Research Café: Muslim creativity, resistance and community wellbeing

About

How can creativity be mobilised to build solidarities, create community care networks, and offer healing? We ask how creativity can be mobilised to build solidarities, create community care networks, and offer healing from the violent systems within which many Muslim artists and creatives exist. While creative health is evidenced as offering people access to wellness through creativity, racism and Islamophobia often repress and constrain the creativities of Muslims and racialised people, impacting community health and wellbeing. Despite this, many Muslims mobilise creativity as a vital tool of joy, activism, self-determinism, and a way to build solidarities and practice refusal and resistance. Creativity offers practice-based mediums for sharing heritage, faith and new urban identities in intra-Muslim, secular and multi-faith spaces. It can build a sense of place for Muslim artists and creatives that re-affirms belonging and counters alienation. We are also interested in hearing from academic researchers from geography and cognate disciplines and/or researcher-practitioners who work at the nexus of creative practice and community health and well-being. Audiences should be aware that discussions may cover difficult topics such as experiences of Islamophobia and hostile systems such as Prevent. There is no expectation on participants to share beyond what they feel comfortable with. The workshop will include four short presentations by guest speakers bridging research and practice, and there is time allocated for lunch, networking and group discussion. A vegan and vegatarian lunch will be served at this event