Creative Change and Social Justice

This unit explores how creativity, storytelling, and collective imagination can challenge oppression and cultivate community justice. Drawing on key theories such as Intersectionality, Critical Race Theory (including counter-storytelling), and artivism, students will examine how creative practices- such as storytelling, visual arts, performance, and cultural practice- can “speak back” to power, build solidarity, and re-present realities often excluded from dominant narratives.

Through analysis of case studies and engagement with creative and relational practices, students will explore how arts-based community work enables healing, resistance, and transformation. The unit encourages students to critically and ethically engage in and create artful works for social change, using creative forms to express lived experience, amplify marginalised voices, and imagine just and caring futures.

Learning Outcomes

On successful completion of this unit, students will be able to:

1. Analyse key theoretical frameworks (e.g. Intersectionality, Critical Race Theory, Liberation Psychology) that inform creative approaches to community change and justice;
2. Evaluate the role of storytelling, arts, and creativity in challenging oppression and amplifying community voice;
3. Apply creative and participatory methods to co-design a project that expresses or supports community change; and,
4. Reflect critically on their positionality, ethics, and values as practitioners using creative, relational, and justice-oriented approaches.