This session is the second instalment in the Cultural Leadership in Practice online series presented by the MA Arts and Cultural Leadership programme.
The discussion will be centred on ‘Justice’ and features three artists from North America and the Philippines actively taking action on the climate crisis.
Cultural Leadership in Practice is a series of online seminars and talks for 2025–26 that will feature arts practitioners, arts managers, cultural and community leaders and academics sharing what they do as leadership practices in their areas of work.
Focusing on the keywords of ‘Nourish’, ‘Impact’ and ‘Justice’, hear their stories of transformation and how they strive towards a better world, one day and one project at a time.
About the speakers
Chantal Bilodeau is a Montreal-born, New York-based playwright. She is the founding artistic director of the Arts & Climate Initiative, an organisation that uses storytelling to foster dialogue about our global climate crisis, and a co-founder of the Climate Change Theatre Action festival. She is writing a series of plays about the social and environmental changes facing the eight Arctic states. In 2019, she was named one of ‘8 Trailblazers Who Are Changing the Climate Conversation’ by Audubon Magazine.
Caitlin Nasema Cassidy (she/her) is an environmental storyteller based in NYC. An award-winning actor, director and producer, she has toured nationally and internationally from Shakespeare’s Globe to Morocco’s Youmein Festival to The New York Times Climate Forward stage at COP. Caitlin serves as artist in residence at The Earth Commons Institute for the Environment and Sustainability and co-artistic director of LubDub Theatre Co.
Raz Salvarita is a Filipino multidisciplinary artist and social action strategist with over two decades of experience in climate justice artivism, leading performance-based climate actions at two UN Climate COPs. A trained environmental journalist, he advocates for post-disaster creative recovery, sustainability education and communal arts engagement through their non-profit, Baryo Balangaw Creative Initiatives. He is a Salzburg Global alumnus, a Prince Claus Fund awardee and a Cultural Vistas – Climate Action Artist Residency fellow in Germany, among other distinctions.
