This story is part of our Impact Stories series, spotlighting our fellows who, drawing on socially engaged arts, help communities across Europe confront past experiences, address present challenges, and imagine new futures. Here, Jasmina tells us how her organisation is backing under-the-radar visionaries to elevate complex social issues.
From a young age, I’ve believed deeply in the power of art to create space for recognition, empathy, and connection. So from my first moment with Rotterdams Wijktheater, I felt at home in a diverse and generous space defined by care, hospitality, and inclusion.
Rotterdams Wijktheater works with unseen heroes and authentic talents who wouldn’t normally identify as artists, uncovering stories of vulnerable communities and individuals and connecting people from different walks of life through community art projects. For many emerging artists, we also function as a learning environment where they can develop their artistic voice, supported through mentorship, collaboration, and hands-on experience. Our work is rooted in close partnerships with grassroots initiatives and local organisations embedded in neighbourhoods, and we increasingly work with policymakers willing to take decisions that support community-led change.
Thousands of people engage in our projects every year, with participants – who we approach not as target groups, but as co-creators – consistently telling us they feel truly heard through the projects we do together.
At the community level, we see lasting shifts: participants step into new roles as lived experience experts who can contribute to dialogues with institutions and policymakers, while self-taught talents regularly move into the professional cultural field.
A clear example of our impact is the theatre diptych Verloren Onschuld and Verloren Jeugd. Developed in close collaboration with families affected by the Dutch childcare benefits scandal, the work – which revealed the human consequences of institutional racism – opened an ongoing dialogue with the government. Excerpts from the performances are now embedded in the onboarding programme for the body responsible for compensating affected families.
In 2001, we also founded the International Community Arts Festival. Every three years, the festival showcases community arts to policymakers, cultural leaders, local communities, and emerging makers, reinforcing the role of socially engaged arts in shaping more humane cultural and social systems. Over the last 25 years, it’s grown into the largest international and interdisciplinary community arts festival in the world, bringing together hundreds of artists and organisations from dozens of countries.
Socially engaged arts invite institutions to create spaces where difference is not feared but actively negotiated. I hope the practice will move from the margins to the centre of Europe’s cultural landscape, shaping policy, education, and social care for years to come.
Explore more stories of socially engaged arts driving change across Europe. View the Stories of Impact map here.
