What does it mean to design for free speech? Can architects create urban commons? Is respect something that can be built into the city? This exhibition explores the outcomes of the first three international ideas challenges from Theatrum Mundi, a research project linking the performing and visual arts to the politics of the built environment.

Emerging from Theatrum Mundi workshops out of the Occupy Movement in 2012, Designing Politics examines the limits and potential of design in addressing political questions of the city. Each year a different question was asked in a different city (New York in 2014; London in 2015; Rio in 2016), and an open call invited interdisciplinary teams of people across the performing and visual arts, and the built environment disciplines to send in propositional responses. Rather than exhibit the winners of the three ideas challenges again, this exhibition learns from across the three years to begin a conversation about the relationship between design, performance, politics and the city.

Theatrum Mundi is based in London at LSE Cities in the LSE, in New York at the Institute of Public Knowledge at NYU, and in Paris at the Collège d’études mondiales at the Fondation maison des sciences de l’homme. Theatrum Mundi thanks James Anderson for his continued financial support for this project.

Image caption: Weyni Rodrigues, Peer Group Winner of Theatrum Mundi’s Designing Respeito, Rio de Janeiro 2016

Twitter Hashtag for this exhibition: #LSEArts

This exhibition runs from 8 May - 9 June.

Just economics and politics? Think again.  While LSE does not teach arts or music, there is a vibrant cultural side to the School - from weekly free music concerts in the Shaw Library, and an LSE orchestra and choir with their own professional conductors, various film, art and photographic student societies, the annual LSE photo prize competition, the LSE Literary Festival and artist-in-residence projects. For more information please view the LSE Arts website.