Museums across New York are waging a cultural war on prejudice in Donald Trump's America, flexing the soft power of art and photography to compound the city-wide climate of protest. From talks about Islamic art to a Muslim exhibition, swapping Picasso and Matisse for Iranian, Sudanese and Iraqi artists and extending a children's exhibition, museums have dreamt up multiple ways to promote art and education in the wake of Trump's short-lived travel ban.

The British Council in the Philippines and Metropolitan Manila Development Authority (MMDA) recently launched the ‘Art for Urban Change’ partnership. The tie-up  aims to contribute to more liveable and creative cities, and includes the creation of site-specific artworks on pumping stations found along Pasig River, a traveling art exhibition, and the creation of a public art advisory group.

The concept of “Sister Cities” was first initiated by President Eisenhower after World War II and was designed to promote these kinds of bonds between culturally different areas, and, by doing so, to initiate “citizen-to-citizen” diplomacy. Karla Guinigundo, director of global partnerships in Miami’s Global Initiatives program, thinks this partnership will encourage just that.

What can cities do to create their own foreign policy? The first article laid out four steps a foreign ministry might take to help cities engage on global challenges: supporting city-based networks, helping to deploy civic technology, working with counterpart ministries abroad to encourage vertical policy integration, and convening the global community to build momentum behind significant and widespread municipal challenges

President Trump's hard-to-swallow travel ban has sparked a new series of local culinary tours and restaurant maps showcasing food from the seven affected countries. The new offerings were cooked up by a collective of fund-raising foodies who came together last weekend and named themselves Breaking Bread NYC.