In the autumn of 2025, cultural workers in Lithuania staged a series of protests after the populist right-wing party Dawn of Nemunas took control of the Ministry of Culture. Their demonstrations featured striking visuals of the word “culture” depicted as a car falling off the road, and highlighted the danger of reducing culture to political propaganda.  

Dawn of Nemunas (“Nemuno Aušra”) was created in 2023 by Remigijus Žemaitaitis following his expulsion from the Freedom and Justice party due to his antisemitic views. The party chose Ignotas Adomavičius for the culture portfolio, a politician with no previous experience in the field of culture.  

In response, the Lithuanian cultural sector collected more than 40,000 signatures against Adomavičius and organised protest actions. On 5 October, the symphonic poem The Sea, written by Lithuanian composer and writer Mikalojus Konstantinas Čiurlionis, was performed simultaneously across the country as both a warning and a call to action. Adomavičius resigned shortly after he was confirmed as a minister.  

Cultural resistance and freedom 

This autumn’s protests fall within a long Baltic tradition of using culture as a tool for protest, resistance, and political action. In neighbouring Latvia, which lost its independence in 1940 when the USSR occupied the country, only to then spend four years under Nazi rule, culture played a significant role in building a community and keeping the idea of a sovereign state alive. The country’s path to regaining independence in 1991 was not born from a single uprising but from decades of quiet endurance. Under Soviet rule, culture was censored, and imagination became a means of national and creative survival and resistance. Literature, film, and music were not mere entertainment – they were repositories of national identity and suppressed freedom. 

Filmmakers looked for subtle ways of avoiding political control. Rolands Kalniņš might be the most significant example of subversive defiance under Soviet censorship in Latvian cinema. Two of his films – Rock and Splinters and Four White Shirts – were banned, and a third one was destroyed. Ceplis (1972), which did get released, was framed as an exposé of interwar corruption, but it stirred nostalgic longing for a time when Latvia’s destiny seemed self-determined. Similarly, Leonīds Leimanis’ Pie bagātās kundzes (“My Wealthy Mistress”, 1969), set in 1930s Riga and ostensibly a critique of bourgeois decadence, evoked a sense of beauty and vitality that contrasted sharply with the austerity of Soviet life. On the surface, these films played into Soviet ideology by criticising the free and independent era of the Latvian Republic, but through aesthetic imagination, they invited viewers to remember what independence felt like, even when speaking it aloud was forbidden.  

By the late 1980s, that imagined freedom began to be transformed into action. One of the strongest examples of that era’s protests is the Baltic Way. On 23 August, 1989, nearly two million people formed a human chain that stretched across Latvia, Lithuania, and Estonia. It transformed the abstract ideal of unity into a tangible image of solidarity and togetherness. Held on the anniversary of the Molotov-Ribbentrop Pact, which had consigned the Baltics to Soviet control, the demonstration was both a commemoration and an act of defiance. It reminded the world that history could be rewritten through collective will and that people, not the political elites, have the power. The image of people holding hands across borders captured the power of imagination turned into action: a living metaphor for the possibility of liberation through unity. 

The art of protest 

Social change is rarely linear or predictable, yet one element remains essential: imagination. Without it, progress stalls. Imagination is not a luxury but a means of survival. It helps societies endure crises by imagining futures beyond the limits of the present. Imagination is both creative and political: it is the source of new ideas and the drive to turn them into a new reality. Without imagination, politics risks becoming bureaucratic routine, simply managing problems instead of transforming them. 

Social change is rarely linear or predictable, yet one element remains essential: imagination. Without it, progress stalls.

Culture is where acts of imagination can take shape, making it a site of struggle between those who seek to expand political possibilities and those who wish to contain them. Culture not only reflects a society’s values but shapes them, offering a shared space to rethink identity, meaning, and collective futures. 

The use of cultural expression and artistic performance as a tool for protest and political action extends well beyond the Baltics. In Portland in the United States, protesters are confronting heavily armed federal agents with absurd visual language (giant inflatable animals and whimsical costumes) to challenge the normalisation of using military force against protesters. The image of an inflatable frog facing off against agents in black tactical gear exposes the grotesque and surreal imbalance of power and the absurdity of state violence. What might seem playful or even ridiculous is in fact deeply political: a reclaiming of the imaginative terrain of public life. In this case, creativity and imagination become tools of critique, transforming fear into defiance and turning protest into performance art. 

The Occupy Wall Street movement of 2011 offered another example of imagination at work in political life. It began as a local protest against corporate influence and quickly evolved into a global movement of dissent. By occupying Zuccotti Park (a privately owned public space) protesters reimagined the very notion of political space in ways reminiscent of some of the most impactful protests of the 20th century, such as the Paris student protests in 1968. The Occupy Wall Street encampment became an experiment in leaderless organisation, horizontal decision-making, and mutual care. While critics often point to Occupy’s lack of concrete outcomes, its real legacy lies elsewhere. It expanded the repertoire of protest by reminding people that the occupation of space itself could be a radical act of imagination. Its ethos of participation, visibility, and shared responsibility paved the way for later movements, from Black Lives Matter to global climate strikes. 

From Portland to Vilnius and Riga, protests reveal how imagination allows people to subvert power not through force, but through creativity, thus making dissent not only visible, but unforgettable. 

Singing communities 

The Baltics case demonstrates that culture transforms imagination into shared experience. It gives form to collective memory and direction to collective aspiration. And through collective experience, it unites people by building connections that can become something bigger than just the sum of its parts.  

As Benedict Anderson’s Imagined Communities illustrated, nations consist of people who will never meet each other, but who share the idea of being united by something bigger than themselves – and they feel a horizontal comradeship with one another. Anderson explores the role of language in building the imagined community of a nation, as he links what he calls “print capitalism’’ (and standardisation of language) to the beginnings of nationhood. Language – and stories and myths – is the unifying element that turns strangers into an imagined community. This is especially relevant for small nations. During Soviet occupation, preserving a nation’s language could be an act of protest on its own. Singing, writing and thinking in Latvian meant preserving the Latvian language under occupation. While an imagined community runs the risk of becoming exclusive, it also provides a vital glue for a nation’s survival under foreign domination.  

Cultural initiatives like the Latvian Song and Dance Festival (Vispārējie latviešu Dziesmu un Deju svētki) are a great example of cultural expressions keeping a community alive and united under occupation. Since its first gathering in 1873, the festival has been a ritual of collective identity, an assertion that Latvia exists as a nation even when denied political recognition.  

Under Soviet occupation, the festival became both propaganda and resistance. Officially, it was framed as a socialist celebration; unofficially, it was a quiet rehearsal for freedom. Tens of thousands sang in Latvian, dressed in national costumes, and performed songs rooted in local folklore and myth. The act of singing itself became political: to sing together was to exist, together, as Latvians. The 1985 Song and Dance festival became a symbolic turning point. Soviet authorities attempted to remove the patriotic song Gaismas pils (“The Castle of Light” – a metaphor for national awakening) from the setlist for the final concert, as well as the conductor, Haralds Mednis. So when tens of thousands of singers called for Mednis to take the stage and perform it anyway, the resulting eruption of the song became a collective act of courage. In that moment, imagination broke through censorship, and art became a rehearsal for freedom. 

The 1990 Declaration of Independence was not an abrupt rupture but the culmination of decades of cultural self-assertion.

With perestroika and glasnost in the 1980s, suppressed voices began to surface. The Baltica folklore festivals of the late 1980s allowed Baltic peoples to publicly share their traditions once again. The USSR was an attempt to erase national characteristics and create a transnational culture. Celebration of suppressed national heritage was also a celebration of cracks that were appearing in the walls of the USSR. The red-white-red Latvian flag was illegal for decades; in 1988, it was raised over Riga Castle and became a visible act of reclaiming history and national identity. The Baltic Way the following year transformed that symbolic reclamation into a living reality and became a visual signifier of the change that was happening within Latvia and the Baltic states.  

The 1990 Declaration of Independence was not an abrupt rupture but the culmination of decades of cultural self-assertion. The late 1980s had prepared people to see themselves as free long before independence was officially restored. During the Barricades of January 1991, when Soviet forces sought to crush the movement, citizens responded with creativity rather than violence – building barricades, documenting events, and strengthening the community of Latvia.  

Carrying the legacy forward 

This legacy continues to shape Latvia today, as an assertive Russia once again poses a threat to freedom and independence. During the final concert of this year’s Latvian School Youth Song and Dance Festival, Dumpinieku popūrijs (“The Rebel’s Medley”) electrified the audience. Tens of thousands of schoolchildren sang fragments of rebellious rock songs from the 1980s and 1990s – songs that had defined their parents’ youth under the shadows of censorship. Among them was Dzeguzes balss (“The Cuckoo’s Song”), written for Rolands Kalniņš’s film Četri balti krekli (“Four White Shirts”, 1967). That film, banned for two decades, told the story of a young songwriter whose work is misunderstood and censored by Soviet authorities. The film, itself a target of Soviet censorship, was rediscovered after independence and screened at Cannes in 2018. The performance of Dzeguzes balss in 2025, with thousands of young voices singing the songs of subversive defiance from their parents’ youth, offered an image of continuity. Joy replaced fear, and what was once forbidden became a shared inheritance. This joyful act of remembrance is perhaps the truest antidote to censorship and despair – the affirmation that imagination, once awakened, cannot be erased. 

In this sense, Latvia’s story transcends its borders. It reminds us that culture is not merely a reflection of a nation’s health; it is how that health is sustained. Every song sung in defiance and joy, every film daring to imagine freely, strengthens the architecture of survival. In times of uncertainty, imagination may not promise an easy future, but it ensures that a future remains possible and shines the light that helps to find the path forward. To imagine is to resist extinction. To create is to affirm existence. And to share culture is to keep Latvia alive. 

The challenge now is to carry forward the momentum born from such moments of imagination and to transform inspiration into endurance.

In late September 2025, Latvia entered a period of political turmoil that started when one of the parties of the government, the agrarian Union of Greens and Farmers (ZZS), voted together with the opposition in favour of withdrawing Latvia from the Istanbul Convention on violence against women. While the final decision has been postponed for a year, this vote against women’s rights brought together thousands of people in protests. On 6 November, at least 10,000 people gathered in Riga – one of the biggest protests since the Singing Revolution era. Protests were also happening in other cities in Latvia and outside of Latvia’s borders: people gathered in Vilnius, Tallinn, Paris, Brussels, Madrid, The Hague, London and other places. Protestors used Latvian folk songs and powerful symbolic imagery from Latvian culture to show that women’s rights are non-negotiable. Imagination played an important role in bringing this and other protests to life as well: the carefully and consciously selected symbols from Latvian folk culture (such as the use of folk costumes and certain songs) helped to emphasise that violence against women goes against traditional values.  

The challenge now is to carry forward the momentum born from such moments of imagination and to transform inspiration into endurance. Cultural and political awakenings are not singular events but ongoing processes that demand care, participation, and renewal. The task is to build communities that can translate the emotional power of art, song, and memory into tangible structures of justice and empathy. And to trust that these communities will be able to stand up against injustice during times of uncertainty. It is exactly what we are now seeing in Lithuania: a strong community standing up against threats that endanger its very existence. Culture is not only the platform that can be used for protest but the very source of strength that is needed to stand up against anti-democratic threats.  

Latvia’s experience shows that imagination not only sustains a nation through darkness – it also builds the scaffolding for a better world. The true work of imagination begins after the song ends, when communities commit to living out the values they have sung about. To keep imagining together, to dream together, is to keep living together, to preserve the light that guides us toward a more humane, creative, and resilient future.