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.
Performative Design Agency (Lithuania)
Performative design agency is a hybrid collective, operating with socially-oriented applied methodologies from various design and performative arts practices. Developing this approach since 2014 through collaborative events and actions, Performative design agency stresses the importance of participation, including various groups and experts in the process of the creation / co-creation, constructing and distributing meanings, stories and values. Within this temporary or permanent network, all groups have a shared responsibility for the outcome of the process. The group's backgrounds and practical expertise covers directing, movement (dance), anthropology, scenography and participatory, social, communication, contextual and performative design. At the WHF, Performative design agency will explore activism as a form of transformation and long-term care. Presenters include Dovilė Gaižauskienė, Olesė Kekienė, Ieva Ginkevičiūtė, Saulė Norkutė and Aurimas Gaižauskas.
Janis Kinasts (Latvia)
Jānis Ķīnasts is a prominent Latvian urban planner, designer, educator and public innovator who currently serves as the Head of the Innovation Lab at the State Chancery of Latvia. Born in Jelgava and raised across towns in western Latvia, Jānis' diverse educational path bridges natural science and the creative arts, giving him a unique multidisciplinary perspective on public space. He has become a leading figure in introducing contemporary spatial development philosophies to Latvia, notably pioneering the concept of "placemaking" (vietrade) in the country. Jānis practices through international projects in Greece, Egypt, Tasmania, Hong Kong and Azerbaijan, including collaborations with Hothouses, The Urmadic University, The Studio at the Edge of the World, The Studio of Materialist Research. He frequently writes for Latvian cultural and architectural media, including Latvijas Architektūra, Modernists, and the intellectual portal Satori. Additionally, he is known for hosting cinematic vinyl listening sessions, or "Sofa Sessions,” exploring introspective musical landscapes.
Agata Kozak
Agata Kozak is President of the Board of Fundacja Kraina, an art-and-activism space in Warsaw that uses fashion, art and activism as tools for social change and community-building. At the intersection of art, fashion, business and activism, carried out in a multicultural local environment, Kraina builds bridges between people from Poland, Ukraine, Belarus and other countries through shared work, creativity and dialogue, shaping a model of social and civic integration that responds to today’s migration challenges and the crisis of community. Agata will present ReFashioned - Kraina’s flagship programme, run with the International Organisation for Migration (IOM Poland), now in its third edition. ReFashioned responds to a crisis of identity and belonging: it is an activist project that speaks the language of art about the challenges of our time, while remaining deeply human - working at the level of a single person and a local community. Designers from Poland, Ukraine and Belarus, mostly with experience of migration, create collections entirely from second-hand materials, supported by mentoring and psychosocial care. Agata will show how fashion becomes a tool for building relationships, transforming perception - changing what society notices and whose experiences become visible - and for long-term care, where real change grows through everyday actions, craft, local initiative and the steady development of a community.
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.