A Right to Determine Value: Ibrahim Mahama in conversation with Thomas Aquilina

▶️ Accessible Event Recording
2026

Artists Sahra Hersi and Julian Prairie explore how methods of co-creation and engagement can enable commissioners to better understand the needs and lived experiences of women, girls, and LGBTQI+ communities.

Artist Ibrahim Mahama and Thomas Aquilina, Co-Director of Spatial Justice at The Bartlett School of Architecture, UCL. consider the framing ​of art as a basic human right and explore how Mahama's experimental approach towards regeneration, restitution and repatriation involves communities from the outset to inform future generations’ engagement with art practice.

A Right to Determine Value explores the artist's role in building cultural infrastructure in the absence of formal public space, enabling communities and young people to shape fertile environments for creativity, education and civic engagement.

Featuring artist Ibrahim Mahama as keynote speaker, followed by a conversation with Thomas Aquilina, Co-Director of Spatial Justice at The Bartlett School of Architecture, UCL. Aquilina frames the event around his experience of embedding a human rights-based approach into public space both locally and globally; drawing on his 2025 essay, “Who’s right, what right, and where’s that right?”. Aquilina and Mahama consider the framing ​of art as a basic human right and explore how Mahama's experimental approach towards regeneration, restitution and repatriation involves communities from the outset to inform future generations’ engagement with art practice.