Using public art and cultural storytelling to challenge violence against women

In 2016, Bangladesh was experiencing growing public concern around violence against women, sexual harassment, victim blaming, and gender discrimination. While these issues were widely discussed within activist circles, feminist messages often struggled to reach broader audiences outside formal advocacy spaces.

At the same time, one of Bangladesh’s most visible forms of public art was hiding in plain sight: rickshaw painting.

Rickshaws move through every corner of the city, carrying stories, symbols, aspirations, and cultural narratives. Yet very few were being used to spark conversations about gender justice.

The question became:

How might we bring feminist conversations into everyday public spaces in a way that feels culturally familiar, accessible, and impossible to ignore?

Human Insight

People rarely engage with social change messages because they are told to.

They engage when those messages appear in places they already trust and recognize.

Rickshaw art is one of Bangladesh’s most distinctive forms of public visual culture, often described as a “moving canvas” that carries stories through the streets. It has long served as a reflection of popular culture, aspiration, humour, and social commentary.

Rather than introducing an entirely new communication medium, we saw an opportunity to work with an existing cultural language that already belonged to ordinary people.

Approach

Rongbaji brought together artists, activists, and community members to create feminist rickshaw art that challenged violence against women and questioned everyday gender norms.

Working with traditional rickshaw painters, participants developed artwork and slogans that reinterpreted familiar visual motifs through a feminist lens. Messages addressed issues such as violence against women, social expectations, women’s agency, and recognition of women’s contributions within society.

Instead of limiting the intervention to galleries, conferences, or social media campaigns, the artwork was placed directly onto rickshaws, allowing the messages to travel through neighborhoods, markets, intersections, and public roads.

The city itself became the exhibition space.

Outcome

The project transformed everyday vehicles into mobile conversations about gender justice.

The initiative generated public discussion online and offline, attracted media attention, and demonstrated how cultural heritage can be repurposed as a tool for social change.

More importantly, Rongbaji showed that feminist storytelling does not always need formal advocacy platforms. Sometimes the most powerful interventions emerge when social messages are embedded within existing cultural practices.

By meeting people where they already were, the project expanded the reach of conversations that often remain confined to activist spaces.

Reflection

Rongbaji reinforced an idea that continues to shape my work:

Systems are held together not only by policies and institutions, but also by stories.

If public culture helps normalize inequality, it can also help challenge it.

The project taught me that design for social change is often less about creating new platforms and more about finding new meanings within familiar ones. By working with a beloved form of Bangladeshi folk art, we were able to connect feminist ideas with everyday life in a way that felt participatory, local, and culturally grounded.

Methods & Approaches

Public Engagement · Participatory Art · Narrative Design · Feminist Storytelling · Cultural Intervention · Community Organizing · Visual Communication