Artists, Cosmopolitanism, and the Civic Imagination unpacks the political agency of artists by looking at artists as moral, reflexive, and political agents. Do artists play a role in civil society? Can artists “make a difference” in the world? In what ways do artists act politically? To address these questions, this book moves away from a focus on social organisation and the production of art, to ask how artists attach meaning to their interventions in social and political conditions.

Maria Rovisco draws from in-depth interviews with UK-based visual artists and theatre practitioners with a migrant background, and semiotic analysis of a theatre play, visual artworks, and film texts, to argue that artists are quintessential cosmopolitans who care deeply about changing society for the better. By explaining how artists get involved in cross-cultural encounters, this book reveals the processes of listening, reflection, imagination, social learning, and moral intentionality through which artists imagine and realise their visions of a better world. In so doing, it offers a new direction in thinking about the intersection of art and politics, by showing how artists play a crucial role in building a civic culture outside traditional sites of political participation.

This book will be essential reading for students and scholars across the social sciences and the humanities with interests in migration, citizenship and the public sphere, cultural sociology, media and culture, cosmopolitanism, and art.