Radical Institute is a Cork-based, transnational initiative that explores how the arts and cultural practice can promote and sustain radical social and ecological change to transform our social/political movements and create new worlds.
We provide a nurturing environment for participants to unleash their imagination, experiment, learn, collaborate, organise - as well as develop new approaches, practices and tools for ecological, social and community transformations.
We offer collective mentoring and training programmes for cultural practitioners, artists, architects, activists and collectives, including those at risk and/or marginalised -- drawing from radical thought and praxis within art, architecture and community building, sustainable organising, as well as from cultural/critical/social ecological theory.
Our methods are holistic, ecosystemic, feminist and collaborative.
Radical Institute includes a community space for events, exhibitions and assemblies which aims to foster strong relationships between the Living Commons, existing arts/cultural/community organisations in Cork and Ireland, and an emerging transnational community of practice.
We fill the current gaps between academic critical thinking, grassroots activism and art / architectural / other creative cultural practices by operating outside conventional institutional logics according to a culture of care, and by cultivating multiple ways of knowing, learning and creating.
/ FOUNDING MEMBERS /
EVE OLNEY + KRINI KAFIRIS
Dr. Eve Olney is a socially engaged artist, activist, curator, educator and practice-based researcher. She completed her practice-based PhD at the Centre for Transcultural Studies and Media Practice (DIT), in 2012. Her praxis incorporates a feminist ethnographic approach to social change through creative methodologies in constructing alternative social imaginaries, in accordance with philosopher and political theorist Cornelius Castoriadis’s conception of the social imaginary. She conceived and leads the collaborative social scheme Art Architecture Activism. She co-produced (with artist Kate O’Shea) the social arts programme SPARE ROOM (funded by Irish Arts Council) https://www.spareroomproject.ie/ from this scheme and the Irish/Athenian social arts project Inhabiting the Bageion: Architecture as Critique, 2017, (self-funded and CULTURE Ireland funded) https://www.facebook.com/inhabitingthebageion/. She is a founding member of creative social living, working, learning scheme, called The Living Commons and has five social programmes in development (2021), funded by the Irish Arts Council, entitled Living Commons: Reconfiguring the Social.
Dr. Krini Kafiris is an educator in gender and media related issues, sustainable organising, and cultural studies, a researcher and activist. She focuses on the use of reflective and creative practices, including storytelling and sound, in envisioning and working for post-capitalist futures. She is also currently writing a book on radio, sound and space during the Greek crisis for Durty Books (Ireland) which explores how occupied Greek state radio (2013-2015) worked to shape the social imaginary, in particular, narratives of the crisis and understandings of public broadcasting. She has developed and executed trainings and workshops for grassroots groups, artists, media professionals, civil servants and UNDP-ACT staff; participated in autonomous feminist groups; activist radio and the solidarity economy in Greece; and taught media/communications at British, Cypriot and Greek universities.