Among the many dimensions of Shani Levni‘s creative life, perhaps the most socially significant is her work with The Root Collective — a community arts initiative that reflects her belief that creative expression is not a luxury reserved for trained artists but a fundamental human capacity that deserves to be nurtured across all communities. Understanding The Root Collective means understanding something essential about what drives Levni beyond the studio.
What Is The Root Collective?
The Root Collective is a community-oriented arts programme associated with Shani Levni’s broader creative practice. It operates at the intersection of artistic production and social engagement, bringing workshops, creative sessions, and collaborative projects to communities that might otherwise have limited access to formal arts education or cultural institutions.
The name itself is telling: “roots” gestures toward something foundational, something that sustains growth from below rather than from above. The collective model — rather than a traditional nonprofit or institutional structure — suggests a horizontal approach, one in which participants are collaborators rather than recipients. This distinction matters both philosophically and practically: it shapes the kinds of activities the collective undertakes and the relationships it forms with the communities it works with.
This community orientation did not emerge in isolation from Levni’s personal artistic development — it grew directly from it. For context on her background and creative journey, see the full Shani Levni biography.
How and Why It Started
The Root Collective grew from Levni’s longstanding belief that the separation between “professional” art and everyday creative life is artificial and harmful. In interviews and public statements, she has spoken about observing how communities — particularly those under economic pressure or experiencing social marginalisation — often lose access to creative practice precisely when they need it most. The collective was, in part, her response to that observation.
Tel Aviv’s social landscape is more complex than its international image as a vibrant, progressive city might suggest. Pockets of deep inequality exist alongside the galleries and cafes, and certain communities — immigrant families, elderly residents in older neighbourhoods, young people without access to cultural capital — can feel effectively excluded from the city’s creative life. The Root Collective was designed with these specific communities in mind.
The timing of its founding also reflects a broader regional and global moment in which artists were increasingly questioning whether studio practice alone was a sufficient response to the world they found themselves in. Levni was part of a generation of practitioners who felt that art had obligations beyond aesthetics — without abandoning aesthetics entirely.
Programmes and Activities
The Root Collective operates through a range of programmes, most of which are workshop-based and participatory rather than lecture-based or purely observational. Participants are encouraged to make things — photographs, drawings, written pieces, collaborative installations — rather than simply to receive information about art or culture.
Photography workshops form a core part of the offering, which reflects Levni’s own primary medium. These sessions are designed to be accessible to people with no prior technical knowledge, using available equipment (often smartphones) rather than expensive cameras, and focusing on observation, composition, and the act of attention rather than technical mastery. The message is: you can make meaningful images with what you already have.
The collective also runs sessions that combine visual making with discussion — of community histories, personal memories, social issues, and cultural identity. These sessions treat art as a vehicle for conversation rather than as an end in itself, which has proved particularly effective with groups who might be sceptical of “art” as an abstract category but who respond readily to the invitation to tell their own stories visually.
This thematic focus on memory, identity, and storytelling connects directly to the themes that run through Levni’s own artistic practice — explored in depth in our article on Shani Levni’s art style.
The Philosophy Behind It
At its core, The Root Collective operates from a set of commitments that are worth making explicit. First: that creativity is not a talent distributed unevenly across the population, but a capacity that everyone possesses and that can be developed given the right conditions and encouragement. Second: that access to creative expression has a measurable effect on wellbeing, community cohesion, and individual agency. Third: that the role of a practising artist in relation to community is not to bring culture to the cultureless, but to create conditions in which people can access and develop their own cultural voice.
These commitments place The Root Collective within a well-established tradition of community arts practice, but what distinguishes it is the seriousness with which Levni’s own artistic rigour is brought to bear on the work. This is not diluted art or art-for-therapy; it is genuine creative engagement, held to a standard of intention and attention that reflects Levni’s own practice.
Community Impact and Reach
The Root Collective has worked with a range of communities in and around Tel Aviv, with particular focus on immigrant communities, elderly residents, and young people from lower-income neighbourhoods. Participants have produced work that has been shown in public contexts — community exhibitions, online platforms, and collaborative installations — giving them the experience of being seen as creative agents rather than as subjects of charity.
This aspect of the work — the public presentation of participant-made work — is understood as integral rather than optional. Being seen matters. Having one’s creative output taken seriously, framed, and presented alongside professional work is a different kind of experience from simply making something in a workshop. The Root Collective insists on that difference.
Some of this community-facing work has intersected with Levni’s exhibition practice — for more on her gallery presence, see our article on Shani Levni’s exhibitions.
How It Connects to Levni’s Art
The Root Collective is not separate from Shani Levni’s art — it is an extension of it. The same sensibility that produces her photographs and paintings — the attentiveness to quiet moments, the interest in ordinary life as worthy of serious attention, the conviction that emotion and experience are valid artistic subjects — animates her community work. The collective is, in a sense, her practice made social.
This integration of studio practice and community engagement is increasingly how a generation of artists are choosing to work, and Levni is a representative figure of that tendency. She resists the framing that would separate “her art” from “her community work” as if they were different aspects of a portfolio. They are, she insists, expressions of the same underlying commitment.
Frequently Asked Questions
- What is The Root Collective?
- The Root Collective is a community arts initiative associated with Shani Levni. It runs participatory workshops and creative programmes for communities with limited access to arts education, primarily in and around Tel Aviv.
- Who does The Root Collective work with?
- The collective works with a range of communities, including immigrant families, elderly residents, and young people from lower-income backgrounds in Tel Aviv and surrounding areas.
- What kind of workshops does The Root Collective run?
- Core programmes include photography workshops (accessible to beginners using smartphones), visual storytelling sessions, and collaborative projects that combine creative making with community discussion.
- How does The Root Collective connect to Shani Levni’s artistic practice?
- Levni does not separate her community work from her studio practice — she sees them as expressions of the same creative and ethical commitments. The themes of memory, identity, and quiet observation that run through her art also animate the collective’s programmes.
- Where can I find out more about The Root Collective?
- Information about The Root Collective’s activities is periodically shared on Shani Levni’s social media channels and through her broader creative network in Tel Aviv.
Explore more on ShaniLevni.com: Full Biography | Art Style | Shani Levni & Michael Aloni | Exhibitions