ACTIVISM
World Hope Forum Baltics
Curated by Performative Design Agency, WHF Ambassador for the Baltics
Sunday, November 15th, 2026
14:00 - 17:00 Paris CET
15:00 - 18:00 Baltics EET
8:00 AM - 11:00 AM New York EST
For artists and designers working for social change, the challenge is not only to respond to existing problems but to question the conditions that produce them. Their work seeks to make overlooked perspectives visible, disrupt established norms, expand collective imagination and open new possibilities for action. Acting as creative and social mediators, they employ participatory, performative and design-led approaches to create spaces where alternative narratives, relationships and ways of being together can emerge and be embodied.
Rather than providing ready-made solutions, they work with uncertainty, vulnerability and experimentation, enabling diverse communities to reimagine futures and possibilities that may otherwise remain unseen. These processes help transform how people relate to one another, build solidarity across differences and reveal shared concerns that can be translated into collective action.
By connecting imagination with practice, activism through art and design enables communities to experiment with alternative futures in the present, creating social conditions from which change can grow. Curated by Performative Design Agency, the Baltics World Hope Forum discusses new tools, encounters and forms of participation through which people become active agents in shaping their own lives and environments. Art and design can do more than express protest of the existing world — we can create conditions for another world to exist and hope can therefore be understood as an action. With speakers from across the Baltic North, this session also helps us understand the interconnectedness between Lithuania, Latvia, Estonia, Poland and Scandinavia.
Lidewij Edelkoort
Co-Founder World Hope Forum
Li Edelkoort is a trend forecaster, publisher, humanitarian, design educator and exhibition curator. From 2015-2020 she was the Dean of Hybrid Design Studies at Parsons in New York where she founded a Textile Masters and the New York Textile Month festival. Her thought-provoking writings and podcasts have become increasingly popular at a time when she is regarded as an activist and champion for change. In 2020, she co-founded the World Hope Forum with Philip Fimmano as a platform to inspire the creative community to rebuild a better society. Launched in 2020, PROUD SOUTH is a mesmerising visual book that celebrates the creative forces from the southern parts of the planet. Through the colourful and expressive lens of contemporary fashion, photography, styling and art, Edelkoort and Lili Tedde bring together emerging and established talents from wide and far, illustrating that the axis of global creativity has indeed dramatically shifted. In 2025, Edelkoort is launching a second edition of PROUD SOUTH focusing on craft and design. Of the movement, she says, “A southern generation of creatives is standing up, expressing local craft, embracing regional materials, recognising ancestral practices and cherishing indigenous values.”
@lidewijedelkoort
Philip Fimmano
Co-Founder World Hope Forum
Philip Fimmano is a trend analyst and consultant, contributing to Trend Union’s forecasting books, magazines and strategic studies for international companies in fashion, textiles, interiors and lifestyle. In 2011, Fimmano co-founded Talking Textiles with Li Edelkoort; an ongoing initiative to promote awareness and innovation in textiles through touring exhibitions, a trend publication, a design prize and free educational programmes – including New York Textile Month, a citywide festival celebrating textile creativity each September. He is the co-author of the design book A Labour of Love (Lecturis, 2020) and the co-founder of the World Hope Forum, a new platform for creative community building. Fimmano is the mentor of Polimoda's fashion forecasting masters and textile masters in Florence, and he is on the Board of Directors for the International Folk Art Market in Santa Fe.