Intentionally selected for application to the Festival Commons for the Sydney Festival. Selected works curated and organized by Raz Salvarita as festival director and lead visionary for Baryo Balangaw Creative Initiatives – a registered local non-profit on the island of Panay in the Philippines.
ITAC Impact: Climate – Community Collaborative Campaign Fest
A climate grant artistic commission through the ITAC Climate fellowship by the International Teaching Artist Collaborative. A community-driven collaboration led by ITAC artist fellow, Raz Salvarita, together with different stakeholders in the community mainly the students and youth leaders, women farm workers, earthwork artisans, community artists, local government unit representatives, among others.
Amidst the climate chaos in the political realm and the exacerbation of human-induced impacts on the natural environment, there arose a reason to disrupt and celebrate the creative activism led by the people for the people. The public exhibition lasted for three months with several fringe events that sprouted at the peripheries of the rice field areas.
6200 Pop Up: Arts and Crafts Fair
6200 Pop Up: Arts and Crafts Fair is the brainchild of festival director and curator Raz Salvarita, and has remained a flagship annual celebration for 5 days of the creative industries in the university town of Dumaguete, Philippines.
Rooted in the advocacy of creating space for talented island artists and artisans, this creative convergence has generated excitement about what lies ahead, given the positive impact it has brought to both participating artists and the supportive local community.
The series of festivals ran for four years before the COVID pandemic struck it down. It brought the artists and crafters together – and highlighted young talents and introduced the digital new media works as well. There were fringe events that happened towards the lead up of the fair fest.
Baryo Balangaw Pista sa Uma (Village Fest)
Strong-willed like a warrior but with a heart of grace and compassion, the Baryo Balangaw Pista sa Uma was a festival that celebrated the artistic uprising by women farm workers who occupied an abandoned marketplace to start a creative recovery program through crafting, painting, dancing, and most important through heartful laughter that reverberated its frequency around the village which caused an alarm as to why “women are wasting time creating and not working on the field or at home”.
It revealed to us the manifestation of a deep patriarchal system—one that we must topple down through needle and thread, through brush and paint, through raging movements, through stillness and breath. In response to the challenges faced during this festivity, a series of talks and workshops unfolded, including an invitation to a woman police officer who spoke about how to report rape cases and shared the laws that uphold women’s and girls’ rights. We rose together to dance with the One Billion Rising campaign of the Global V-Day Action, and eventually brought this event before the local council—much to their surprise, as they had not realized that such an artistic uprising was already taking shape at the margins of the rice fields. Our action was featured in the local television news and brought about a wave of support and admiration from many others outside the little rainbow village we call home.
Years of carrying multiple roles in the household—mother, grandmother, caretaker, vendor, cook, and many others—prepared the participants for an immersion into the awakening of their creative genie. Once again, their hands began shaping lines and curves as they were introduced to painting. With hearts that knew, even amid a hint of nervousness, they captured their dreams and transformed them into visual images.
In all the time these women have lived in this farm community, there had never been an opportunity for them to commune in a safe space of freedom—where they could openly learn from one another and listen to each other’s stories. From the workshops, a familial essence blossomed, leading into the festivity that celebrated life and culture with the community.
Super Nanay kag Inday: A Mother & Daughter Superheroes
The intergenerational connection between mother and daughter is a highlight of upholding a festival that recognizes the cultural lineage of the community. “Super Nanay kag Inday” taps into the grace and beauty of women in the family, co-creating a space of loving-kindness that emanates when the divine feminine energy soars. By reimagining their gender roles as community leaders—empowered to guide and to craft pathways toward a community rooted in care and empathy—the participants amplified this vision through the campaign.
During the village fiesta, a religious celebration of the patron saint, church leaders and community devotees joined the procession. Along the way, they encountered the huge billboards of the community’s super women and super girls. It was fascinating to observe their curiosity as they witnessed the transformation of familiar friends into superheroes.
Their story of crafting and making the dress was heartwarming. Together, they planned the style and color scheme—and how it represented their hopes and dreams.
They were recognized during a culminating event with supportive participation of UNA for Women, an organization based Austria.
Kapwá Kapawá: Circle of Kindred Luminosity
Kapwá Kapawá is a term for kindred luminosity. One’s lightness of being is an energy that can be deeply felt and strongly experienced when its resonance becomes palpable. This participatory performance was presented as a workshop during the ArtLab residency in Amsterdam, as part of the Prince Claus Fund’s program, Cultural and Artistic Response to the Environmental Crisis.
There was an invitation to enter beneath a blanket and share stories related to climate catastrophe, which then led into a space of release through movement and sound. The participating fellows began to whirl around, as if embodying the encircling force of a typhoon growing in intensity. This inspires the festival concept of “Climate Rage x Climate Rave: Breath. Sound. Movement.”
Plant & Memory: Open Studio at PACT Zollverein
Immersion through Climate Memory drew from bodily archives in an intergenerational and cross-cultural exchange between artists Raz Salvarita (Philippines) and Elle Divine Wood (Australia). Working in tandem, the artists developed performative rituals that uncovered climate wounds and anxieties while exploring different approaches to healing—both within the self and through external connections. The six-week residency was supported by PACT Zollverein in Essen, Germany.
Climate Transcendence: The Bohol Theater Festival
In my performance work, intentional metempsychosis allows the body to become a site of transformation—where memory, nature, and spirit converge. Through movement, I consciously inhabit multiple forms, from ancestral echoes to elemental forces, evoking a ritual journey that transcends self and reconnects with the greater ecology of being.
Climate Transcendence is a performance practice rooted in ritual, memory, and embodied response to ecological grief. At The Bohol Theater Festival, I explored this through a live act of transformation—channeling the force of the typhoon as both a metaphor and movement. This work emerges from the tension between climate anxiety and personal agency. Through somatic performance, poetic gesture, and weathered breath, I seek to transmute fear into grounded clarity—what I call a practice of regenerative courage. In Bohol, surrounded by coastal memory and storm history, the body became a vessel: for remembering, for releasing, and for reclaiming the quiet power to respond—rooted not in urgency, but in deep listening.
ra'z salvarita 