April 2024 Conversations/Indaba

Join us online for conversation looking at the work refugee and non-refugee artists, academics, activists and art spaces are doing at the intersection where forced migration and the arts meet.

The conversations are taking place virtually on Thursday, 25 April 2024, and are in three sessions, namely: 

• 2.00-3.30pm (UK time): Session 1: Theatre, Music and Visual Arts; with Kanvee Adams,  Daniel Connell, Rana Ibrahim, Amaia Mugica, and Michael Niyomwungere, 
• 4.00-5.30pm (UK time): Session 2: Book Launch: Staging Asylum, Again (Eds., Tania Cañas & Caroline Wake, Currency Press, 2024), with Tania Cañas, Emma Cox, Samara Hersch, David Ralph, Joe Tan, Lara Thoms, and Caroline Wake, and 
• 6.00-7.30pm (UK time): Session 3: Music, Theatre, Performance, Visual Arts and Mixed Media, with Farida, Robert McNeil MBE, John Pfumojena, De Joe Quarcoo, and Shibinu S. (More detail follows below).

REGISTRATION 

Attendance and participation are free and open to all. 

To attend, scroll down and register through this form. We will then send you the Zoom link 24 or so hours before the conversations start.

THE SESSIONS

2.00pm - 3.30pm (UK Time): Session 1: Theatre, Music and Visual Arts 

Adams, Connell, Ibrahim, Mugica and Niyomwungere discuss theatre, music, visual arts and forced migration.

● Kanvee Adams, a musician and asylum seeker from Africa currently living in the UK. 

● Daniel Connell, born on unceded lands of the Kaurna, Australia 1970, has worked with people in transition since 1989 as translator and assistant in settlement for Spanish speaking refugees from Latin America and then later Sudan and South Sudan. Connell trained as a visual artist and now lectures in Art Practice and Theory at Adelaide Central School of Art. In 2007, he lived and worked in North India and since then have worked solidly with the global Sikh community who make up a significant group of refugees in US and Canada and migrants to Australia. Connell has been an affiliate researcher with University of Glasgow and currently an affiliate artist with UNESCO RILA (refugee integration through languages and arts). He has exhibited widely and completed a PhD in looking at representation in the visual arts as a form of advocacy. Most recently, he has been working with those who come to Australia by choice but whose circumstances are often similar to those that refugees and asylum seekers experience when they arrive: facing a hostile local population, job market restrictions and exploitation, loneliness and marginalisation.

● Rana Ibrahim, an Iraqi archaeologist and artist with over 25 years of experience, is renowned for her dedication to preserving cultural heritage. As the founder and Director of the Iraqi Women Art and War (IWAW) Community Interest company, she spearheads initiatives aimed at empowering Iraqi women through art, particularly in depicting their war experiences. Rana's captivating collage artwork can be viewed on www.iwaw19.com. Throughout her illustrious career, Rana has made significant contributions to various sectors of heritage and museums, including Gardens, Libraries, and Museums at the University of Oxford (GLAM). Initiatives Ibrahim has worked on include The Iraqi Women Art and War (IWAW), aimed at showcasing the artistic talents and professional achievements and contributions of women in IWAW to various fields such as art, literature, business, and academia. The project often involves exhibitions, workshops, and other events to promote awareness and support for Iraqi women's empowerment and creativity.

● Amaia Mugica, a director, movement director, somatic educator and performer with expertise in physical theatre, movement for actors and devised theatre. She is a senior lecturer at Manchester Metropolitan University and a Professional Doctorate student at UEL (University of East London). Amaia's fields of interest and ongoing work are based on intersectionality and ethnography, biography, devising, audible minorities, migrants, and women's experiences within the performing arts field. Her work has been seen in various performing arts settings, such as Guildhall, All In Actors, The Cockpit Theatre, London College of Music, Arcola Theatre, RCSSD, IDSA, ALRA, WAC and Hackney Shed to name a few. Amaia has worked internationally in countries such as Spain, the UK, Australia, Mexico, Germany and the USA to name a few. Amaia Mugica has also worked on "Miss Brexit", a pioneering and award winning project that aims to amplify the voices of young migrant theatre-makers in the UK and promote inclusion, access, and diversity in the arts.

● Michael Niyomwungere, a young Burundian by nationality staying in Kakuma Refugee Camp, Kenya, is a singer, songwriter and music composer. Niyomwungere, a recent graduate from Somali Bantu Secondary School 202, is involved in activities like the Journalism Club and has recently completed a UNHCR journalism mentorship program. In addition, Niyomwungere trains young people in Journalism and Music. 

4.00pm - 5.30pm (UK Time): Session 2: Book Launch: Staging Asylum, Again

Staging Asylum, Again (Eds., Tania Cañas & Caroline Wake, Currency Press, 2024), an anthology that exposes Australia’s mistreatment of people seeking refuge, builds on the success of its predecessor, and presents a timely and powerful exploration archive of artistic resistance to one of Australia’s most enduring and unjust policies. The anthology showcases a diverse range of plays that delve into different facets of seeking asylum. 

● Dr Tania Cañas is a Banting postdoctoral Fellow at Western University, Canada, working with the Surviving Memory in Postwar El Salvador initiative. She is an artist-researcher formally based in Narrm (Melbourne) Australia; working at the intersection of memory, performance, borders and socially engaged practice. She recently co-edited Staging Asylum, Again (2024) with Currency Press Australia.

● Emma Cox, a theatre and performance scholar based at Royal Holloway, University of London. Originally from New Zealand, she received her PhD from the Australian National University (ANU). Cox’s research focuses on contemporary refugee-responsive theatre, film and activism, as well as cross-cultural commemorative performances involving Indigenous and migrant communities, and postcolonial museum ceremonies. Cox is the author of the books Performing Noncitizenship: Asylum Seekers in Australian Theatre, Film and Activism (Anthem 2015) and Theatre & Migration (Palgrave 2014). She is the editor of the play collection Staging Asylum: Contemporary Australian Plays about Refugees (Currency Press 2013), an anthology of six Australian plays about and by refugees and the first collection to recognise the role theatre has played in one of Australia’s most hotly debated and urgent issues. Cox is currently developing an interdisciplinary project on the ceremonial and theatre histories associated with human remains, repatriation and cultural memory.

● Samara Hersch, an artist and theatre director working between Europe, Australia and Asia. Her practice investigates the encounter between contemporary performance and community engagement and her research explores intimacy as a political act, imagining different modalities that can be inhabited by non-professional performers and the public together. Samara received the prestigious Caroline Neuber Scholarship in Leipzig in 2023 and is part of the EU Network; ACT; Art Climate Transition. She completed her Masters at DAS Theatre in Amsterdam in 2019. Samara acknowledges that her practice has been developed and presented on the lands of the Kulin Nation whose sovereignty has never been ceded and pays respect to Elders past, present and emerging.

● David Ralph, a producer, theatre manager, and production manager. Before joining Theatre Deli he was Executive Director of The Bunker Theatre having joined the theatre as General Manager in 2017, and was Associate Producer of The Hope Theatre. He also produces theatre with his company, Loose Tongue, and writes plays. Productions for The Bunker include the sell-out My White Best Friend (and other letters left unsaid) festival, This is Black, Breaking Out, Germ Free Adolescent, Little Miss Burden (co-production with Harts Theatre), Where Do We Go Next?, We Anchor in Hope and Killymuck/Box Clever (co-productions with W14 Productions). Other productions include The Trick (Bush Theatre/HighTide), Sea Fret (Old Red Lion Theatre/HighTide Festival), Hotel Europe (Green Rooms Hotel/Old Red Lion Theatre), Brimstone & Treacle, The Wild Party, Steel Magnolias, Sea Life, The Window/Blank Pages (The Hope Theatre). As Associate Producer: Her Aching Heart (LWL Productions/The Hope Theatre). David is a recipient of the Stage One New Producers Bursary.

● Joe Tan, a human rights lawyer and theatre practitioner.

● Lara Thoms, a queer artist interested in socially engaged, site-specific and participatory possibilities in contemporary art and performance. Much of Lara’s work is collaborative with people beyond the arts including past works with an ex funeral director, Indonesian Metallica fans, and over 300 Western Australian women. Projects include The Director which toured to the Sydney Opera House, SICK! (UK) and ANTI festival (Finland); Ultimate Vision Monuments to Us MCA C3West, Before The Siren for Perth International Arts Festival and A Singular Phenomenon at The Malthouse. Her work with child activists and asylum seekers on Nauru for We all Know What’s Happening with Samara Hersch was awarded the prestigious Patronage Prize and the Audience Prize at Theatrespektakle, Switzerland. Lara is also a member of arts collective Field Theory who co-won the 2020 Melbourne Sculpture Prize.

● Caroline Wake, a Senior Lecturer in Theatre and Performance at UNSW Sydney, Australia. Her research focuses on the relationship between theatre and history: how theatre responds to and represents history and, conversely, how theatre’s own history is archived and recounted, especially in Australia. She has a particular interest in artists, genres, and organisations that have typically been excluded from Australian theatre history, including artists with refugee and asylum seeker backgrounds, genres such as theatres of the real, and organisations like Performance Space, a Sydney-based establishment that has been at the forefront of contemporary art since the early 1980s. 

6pm - 7.30pm (UK Time): Session 3: Music, Theatre, Performance, Visual Arts and Mixed Media 

Farida, McNeil, Pfumojena, Quarcoo, and Shibinu discuss music, theatre, performance, mixed media and forced migration.

● Farida, a visual artist, is a Fellow at Axis and a recipient of the National Art Council Developing your Creative Practice (DYCP) funding, and a part time support worker lives in Folkestone in the UK. Farida, a refugee from Bangladesh, studied Fine Art at Dhaka University (1998) and has a Masters degree in that subject from Visva-Bharati University in West Bengal, India (2003). In her artistic practice, Farida experiments with different media, from photography and drawing to live performance, exploring issues of feminism, body politics and cross-cultural identity. Through her art, she engages with the cultural expectations and ideological restrictions that confront her as a woman, as an artist and as an immigrant. Negotiating barriers of language - as well as staging her 'otherness' - she communicates using her body, gestural mark making, painting and voice.

● Robert McNeil MBE, FAAPT, is a Glasgow-based painter and author who, following his retirement from a long career as a forensic specialist, including providing evidence of genocide and crimes against humanity for the International Criminal Tribunal for the Former Yugoslavia in The Hague from mass graves in Bosnia & Kosovo now focuses on his roles as an ambassador for Remembering Srebrenica UK and is an Affiliate Artist for UNESCO’s Refugees Integration through Language and the Arts.  .

● John Pfumojena, a distinguished Zimbabwean composer, theatre director, accomplished actor and researcher with music published by Warner Chappell Music (Warner Music Group), joined the Oxford Research Centre in the Humanities' Cultural Programme as Visiting Fellow for 2022/23 and was elected Visiting Fellow at Exeter College, Oxford University for 2023/24. Director of seminal play, Sizwe Banzi is Dead (MAST Mayflower Studios, 2023); composer for the award winning play, Enough of Him (National Theatre of Scotland/Pitlochry Festival Theatre); musical director for award winning play, _For Black Boys West End_ (The Garrick & Apollo Theatre)/Royal Court/New Diorama. Drawing on his experiences, Pfumojena engages an autoethnographic approach to exploring ‘Belonging’ and ‘Assimilation’ from the perspective of a Black Zimbabwean Mbira musician, composer, and theatre practitioner in the UK. This includes an examination of the barriers and limitations experienced in the theatre sector, delving into the negotiation of roles, identities, and the power dynamics that impact creative expression and collaboration.

● De Joe Quarcoo, a musician, activist scholar and visionary, works with the pan-African youth movement, Voice1Africa. His musical activism, initially labeled Musical urbanism, translates research findings into provocative and evocative music targeted towards African youth and political systems for advocacy and civic action. In line with his pan-African vision, his songs also empower African youth to get involved and think and act beyond the artificial national barriers which will expand opportunities and pan-Africanism from the grassroots up. His songs include Southern Cities, City in the Sun, Young African Leaders, and Say it Out Loud.

●Dr Shibinu S, a Senior Research Fellow at the International Institute for Migration and Development (IIMAD, is the Director of the MK Haji Chair for Migration Studies, PSMO College, Kerala. He is currently a Research Guide and is a member of the AC Steering Committee and Faculty of Humanities at the University of Calicut. He has published in international journals on the socio-economic and cultural implications of migration on individuals, communities and the economy and authored three books. He has coordinated three research projects funded by the UGC and the IUCAE. Presently he is the Co-Investigator of the World and Traditional Music Section of a British Library-funded project in Northern Kerala and Lakshadweep part of which includes a focus on the Mappilas, a Muslim community on Kerala's South-West Coast, forced migration, the distinct musical genre known as 'Kathupattu' or ‘letter songs’, and translocality in music.

NETWORK NOTES

[1] Forced Migration and The Arts is a global/international network that brings together people with lived experience of forced migration, refugee and non-refugee artists, academics, activists and art spaces from around the world. The network hosts monthly discussion panels around forced migration and the arts. A playlist of videos of conversations we have had so far is accessible here.  The network aims to: bring together refugee and non-refugee artists, activists, scholars and art spaces; create a platform for conversation, dialogue, discussion and the sharing of ideas, experiences, knowledge, information and approaches, and encourages mutual support and collaboration.

[2] Currently, Forced Migration and The Arts is purely volunteer-driven. Donations are most welcome and can be made through BuyMe a Coffee.

[3] We are also drawing attention to Sunday Lawrence's appeal for support. Lawrence, a refugee from South Sudan and a second year Law student at the International University of East Africa in Kampala, Uganda, has so far raised €3,532 of the €5,256 he needs for tuition and sustenance. Lawrence needs to raise the remaining €1,724 so that he can finish his studies. Any support you can give him will be most appreciated.

[4] The next Forced Migration and The Arts network forum/indaba will take place on 30 May 2024. If you are a refugee or non-refugee artist, academic, activist or art space working at the intersection where forced migration and the arts meet, and you would like to speak as part of the conversation, please let us know through this form.

Call for Submissions - The Africa Migration Report: An Anthology of Poems

Forced Migration and The Arts, in collaboration with CivicLeicester and Regularise, is inviting and accepting poems on the theme of African migration.

We welcome submissions exploring any of the images, enslavement, issues, visa applications, deportations, time spent in immigration queues, triggers, drownings, borders you crossed, the histories, killings, borders that crossed you, causes, deaths, cases, brutalisation, armed conflict, lives, exploitation, hopes, births, dreams, criminalisations, demands, plundering, detentions, pillagings, realities, personal, family and community histories of migration,  the effect that funding from the European Commission and others is having on how African refugees and migrants are being treated on the continent, in deserts, at borders, in camps, in slave markets, in mass graves, at sea, in informal refugee camps, in roadside graves, on barges, on the streets, in prisons, for fleeing conflict and persecution, outcomes, futures that we are seeing, being, witnessing, experiencing, living, dreaming, feeling, hearing, screaming at, sensing, dying to get out of, dying to live, arrival, departure, journeying, memories, encounters, experiences, ... past, present, future ... around African migration.

We welcome submissions from writers of all ages, based anywhere in the world.

The provisional title of the anthology, Africa Migration Report: An Anthology of Poems is inspired by the 2nd Edition of the Africa Migration Report published by the African Union Commission (AUC) and the International Organization for Migration (IOM). Speaking at the launch of the report, on 26 March 2024, H.E. Ambassador Minata Samate Cessouma, AUC Commissioner for Health, Humanitarian Affairs, and Social Development (HHS) described the report as a "joint initiative between the AU and IOM aimed at preserving historical perspectives, portraying the right narrative on African migration. While informing policy frameworks to support migration and human mobility on the Continent". 

We commend the AUC and IOM for the report and encourage the African Union to ensure they inform policy frameworks to support African migration, mobility and rights on and beyond the Continent. We stress that freedom of movement is a fundamental human right that should be enjoyed by all, including Africans.

We invite poems that explore the personal, familial, communal, continental, intercontinental, transnational past, present and possible futures of African migration across time and space, in and around this world and beyond.

What is Africa? Where is Africa? When is Africa?
What does it mean to be African? Who is African?
What is Africa and Africans' relationship or experience of or with migration?
What are the images, feelings, associations, realities, hopes, practicality, the day to day bits, dreams, pasts, presents, futures etc. of African migration? 

What are we seeing, hearing, feeling and sensing? What do we know? 

What are we not seeing, hearing, feeling, knowing, being, living, when, why and how etc.?
The African migrant, who is he, she, they ...? Whose mother, father, sister, daughter, friend, relative? What is the present of the African migrant's past? What is the future of their tomorrow?
Who else is the African migrant coming into contact with? Who or what are they encountering where, when, and how? What is happening on that contact? Why are things happening this way? Is this new? How long has this been going on?
How are African governments, the African Union, the European Commission, the United Nations (UN), International Organisation of Migration (IOM), NATO, ECOWAS, countries in Asia, North America, South America, Antarctica, Australia and the Caribbean, Africans on the continent, Africans in the diaspora, communities etc. ... how are they responding to African migration and migrants? What are the pasts, presents and futures of these responses?
What are Africans' experiences of migration on the continent and abroad?
What pasts, presents, futures, hopes, dreams, nightmares, joys, loves, memories, griefs, visions, seeds etc. are African migrants carrying, loving, singing, experiencing, living, gaining, losing, feeling, dancing, being, dreaming, moving through, reaching towards, living with, through, by, so etc.? What is happening to all this that they are carrying?

What are the pasts, presents and futures of African migration?

Please send the poems and short fiction to forcedmigrationandthearts@gmail.com by 12 noon on Saturday, 25 May 2024, Africa Day.

SUBMISSION GUIDELINES

● Poems should be 40 lines or less, and short fiction,100 words or less.
● The poems and short fiction should be on the theme, African migration.
● Submissions must be in English. In the case of translated work, it is the translator’s responsibility to obtain permission from the copyright holder of the original work.
● If submitting a poem or short fiction which has been previously published, please give details of where it has appeared and confirm that you are the copyright holder.
● Ideally submissions will be typed single spaced and submitted either in the body of an email or as a .doc attachment.
● Please include a short biography of 50 words or less. This will be included in the anthology if your poem is accepted. 
● You may submit a maximum of three poems or three pieces of short fiction or a combination of poems and short fiction. You do not have to submit all three at the same time, but the editors can only consider a maximum of three submissions.
● We welcome submissions from writers of all ages, based anywhere in the world.
● Please send the poems and short fiction to forcedmigrationandthearts@gmail.com by 12 noon on Saturday, 25 May 2024, Africa Day.

NOTES

[1] CivicLeicester, an indy publisher that uses digital and print technologies to highlight glocal issues, are publishers of poetry anthologies that include Black Lives Matter: Poems for a New World (2023), Poetry and Settled Status for All: An Anthology (2022) and Bollocks to Brexit: An Anthology of Poems and Short Fiction (2019).

[2] Regularise is a collective of humans made up of migrants, citizens and allies who are committed to centreing and amplifying the voices and needs of undocumented migrants. The collective was founded in late 2019, prior to the COVID-19 pandemic, to address the years of sustained hardships that undocumented migrants experience in the UK and continues to organise and campaign for justice and for the rights of undocumented migrants.

[3] Forced Migration and The Arts is a global network that brings together people with lived experience of forced migration, refugee and non-refugee artists, academics and activists from around the world. The network hosts monthly discussion panels around forced migration and the arts, and encourages mutual support and collaboration. A playlist of conversations we have hosted so far is accessible here. The Network is currently purely volunteer-driven. Donations are most welcome and can be made through BuyMe a Coffee.

[4] We are also drawing attention to Sunday Lawrence's appeal for support. Lawrence, a refugee from South Sudan, is a second year Law student at the International University of East Africa in Kampala, Uganda. Lawrence needs to raise €5,256 for tuition and sustenance so that he can finish his studies. Any and all support you can give him will be most appreciated.

This post was updated on 9 April 2024 to indicate that Forced Migration and The Arts is collaborating with CivicLeicester and Regularise on the initiative.

March 2024 Conversations/Indaba

Join us online for conversation looking at the work refugee and non-refugee artists, academics, activists and art spaces are doing at the intersection where forced migration and the arts meet.

The conversations are taking place virtually on Thursday, 28 March 2024, and are in three sessions, namely: 

• 2.00-3.30pm UK time (with Matthew Hahn, Dr Tetyana Hnatyuk, and Innocent Creus Rugamba), 
• 4.00-5.30pm UK time (with Samuel Hatungimana, Kat Velastegui, and Sophie Watt), and 
• 6.00-7.30pm UK time (with Malka Al Haddad and Loraine Masiya Mponela). (More detail follows below).

Attendance and participation are free and open to all. 

REGISTRATION

To attend, register through this form. 

The conversations are taking place as part of Forced Migration and The Arts, a global or international network that brings together people with lived experience of forced migration, refugee and non-refugee artists, academics, activists and art spaces for conversation, dialogue and knowledge exchange. The network encourages mutual support and collaboration.

THE SESSIONS

2.00pm - 3.30pm (UK Time): Session 1: Theatre, Visual Arts & Moving Images

Matthew Hahn, an international theatre director, playwright and theatre for development facilitator, post-graduate with experience of creating, coordinating and implementing theatre projects in the United Kingdom, the United States, East & Southern Africa. He is also the Artistic Director of the Folkestone Performing Arts Company, an artist-led international theatre ensemble creating vibrant, relevant and compelling theatre through the celebration of local stories in Folkestone, UK. Currently, Hahn is working with refugees and asylum seekers at Napier Barracks, Folkestone.

Dr Tetyana Hnatyuk, a human migration researcher with 20 years of experience in the field, has a PhD degree in Political Science and a research focus on forced migration (internally displaced persons, refugees, asylum seekers). She is the author of more than 60 publications and has experience working in the migration sphere for a British local authority-led partnership, international organisation (the UNHCR), local NGOs, Ukrainian governmental authorities and academia. Hnatyuk has been a participant of the Ukrainian Sponsorship Scheme “Homes for Ukraine” in the UK since September 2022. In June 2023, she joined a British local authority-led partnership Migration Yorkshire (Leeds, UK) as a community researcher and worked on a research project on Ukrainians in the UK via the “Homes for Ukraine” programme. “Living Your Life in Someone Else’s Home”, the second part of the research project focuses on hospitality from guest perspectives. 

Innocent Creus Rugamba, a refugee from the Democratic Republic of Congo since 2012, spent 12 years in Uganda, where he witnessed first-hand the challenges faced by refugees: food shortages, educational barriers, and livelihood struggles. Despite fleeing his homeland after completing secondary school with dreams of becoming a doctor, conflict shattered those aspirations. Rugamba then began teaching English to adults in the settlement and co-founded a refugee-led organisation focused on adult literacy and financial management training. Now, pursuing a Master’s Degree in International Relations at the University of Cagliari in Italy on a scholarship, his goal is to leverage his experiences and education to advocate for refugee rights and access to education. 

4.00pm - 5.30pm (UK Time): Session 2: Theatre, Visual Arts & Crafts

Samuel Hatungimana, a Burundian refugee who has lived in Kakuma Refugee Camp of Kenya for 11 years, did both his primary and secondary education in the camp, finishing in the year 2021. After graduating from high school, he volunteered as an incentive teacher in his former school for one year where he taught Swahili language to students in Grade 9 and 10. In 2022, he joined Elimisha Kakuma, a college preparatory program which helps high achieving students to apply for college admission and scholarships. Hatungimana secured a full scholarship at Elmhurst University and was able to move to the US in the fall 2023 to start his higher education studies, majoring in Computer Science and Digital Media.

Kat Velastegui, a New York-born, Ecuadorian researcher and photographer. After her graduate studies in International Migration and Public Policy at the London School of Economics, Velastegui dedicated her time to exploring culture, identity, Latin American diasporas and the digital environment. Her work highlights Latinx diaspora creatives‘ artistic expressions and resistance beyond borders (e.g. geographical, identitarian, physical, institutional), aiming to raise the lived-experiences and creative processes of an often overlooked and invisibilized community. Her current visual project, 'Márgenes' (Spanish for 'Margins') is a curatorial platform weaving together the tapestry of Latinx diaspora creatives’ art and lived-experiences beyond borders. This exploration unfolds at the intersection of identity construction, subcultures and creative processes intricately intertwined with the threads of migratory narratives. At the heart of "Márgenes" lies the radical notion that re-imagining the meaning of transnational communities, reclaiming collective joy and daring to envision the possibility of alternative realities is not only necessary - but rather, an urgent act of resistance.

Sophie Watt, a lecturer in French and Francophone Studies at the University of Sheffield. Watt specialises in colonial, neocolonial history and migration studies in the Francophone world and has been working on alternative representation of migration for a number of years. Recently, she conducted field work in Calais and Dunkirk that was informed by work with Franco-Swiss photographer Elisa Larvego, on alternative representation of migration. Her work includes the exhibition, 'The going towards' presented at the Site Gallery in Sheffield last October/November and also exhibited in Geneva under the title 'En tous lieux' from September to December.

6pm - 7.30pm (UK Time): Session 3: The Poetry of Forced Migration - Malka al-Haddad and Loraine Masiya Mponela: In Conversation 

Poets and City of Sanctuary Ambassadors, Malka al-Haddad and Loraine Masiya Mponela will read and discuss each other's and their own work and share insights and reflections on the influences they draw on in their writing and activism.

Malka Al Haddad, the author of The Truth at the End of the Night (Palewell Press Ltd, 2023) and Birds Without Sky: Poems from exile (Harriman House Ltd, 2018). Malka grew up during the Iran-Iraq war and lost several close family members during the first Gulf War and American invasion in 2003. She became a poet and a human rights advocate, which attracted hostility towards her in Iraq. While she was studying English in preparation for her PhD in the UK, death threats against her escalated and she couldn't return back to her beloved home and family. Malka's asylum claim was continually refused by the Home Office and after 11 years, she was eventually granted leave to remain, but without access to public funding. She is now an ambassador for City of Sanctuary in the UK. Malka's pain and anger on behalf of all those caught up in the UK asylum system give her poetry a passionate strength and urgency.

Loraine Masiya Mponela, a migrants rights campaigner, community organiser, City of Sanctuary ambassador, and the author of Now I Sing: 50 poems to celebrate 50 years (Independently published, 2024) and I Was Not Born a Sad Poet (Independently published, 2022). Loraine was born and raised in Malawi, and currently lives in England, UK. A writer of poetry, comedy and articles, her poems have appeared in numerous anthologies, journals, and magazines. 

NETWORK NOTES

[1] Sunday Lawrence, a refugee from South Sudan and a second year Law student at the International University of East Africa in Kampala, Uganda is appealing for support. Lawrence needs to raise €5,256 for tuition and sustenance so that he can finish his studies. Any support you can give him will be most appreciated.

[2] Forced Migration and The Arts is currently purely volunteer-driven. Donations are most welcome and can be made through BuyMe a Coffee.

[3] The next Forced Migration and The Arts network forum/indaba will take place on 25 April 2024. If you are a refugee or non-refugee artist, academic, activist or art space working at the intersection where forced migration and the arts meet, and you would like to speak as part of the conversation, please let us know through this form.

February Newsletter

Call for Speakers

On Thursday, 28 March 2024, between 2pm and 7.30pm UK time, we are hosting an open forum or indaba on forced migration and the arts.

We are keen to hear from refugee and non-refugee artists, activists, academics, arts and culture professionals, practitioners and organisations on the work you are doing and the challenges and possibilities you see in this work.

If you would like to speak as part the forum or indaba, please register here.

February Conversation

You are also invited to "Gaza Genocide: Artists and Writers Speak" which is taking place online on Saturday, 10 February 2024, from 6pm till 7.30pm.

To attend, register here.

As part of the February 10 conversation, Atef Alshaer, a Senior lecturer in Arabic Studies at the University of Westminster; Rawand Arqawi, Director at Fragments Theatre (Jenin), and a big driving force in the project Mayday; Selma Dabbagh, a writer of fiction and a lawyer; Zoe Lafferty, Associate Artistic Director, The Freedom Theatre (Palestine), and founder of Artists on The Frontline, and Caroline Rooney, an arts activist and Professor Emeritus of African and Middle Eastern Studies at the University of Kent will be looking at the strategies Israel uses to silence Palestinian artists, intellectuals and journalists.

Alshaer, Arqawi, Dabbagh, Lafferty and Rooney will also offer perspectives on how the arts and alternative journalism can and are challenging the silencing, gaslighting, disinformation and violence inherent in the mass atrocities, genocide, ethnic cleansing and war crimes that Israel is committing in Gaza, and the settler colonial violence and crimes against humanity it is encouraging in East Jerusalem and the West Bank.

Books

Welcome to Britain: An Anthology of Poems and Short Fiction (CivicLeicester, 2023), among other things, offers accounts of daily life in Britain. The anthology also features contributions from emerging and established writers from around the world on the myths and fictions Britain likes to tell about itself and how these need to be contested and subverted. The anthology manifests the hope that through the power of poetry and creative writing, readers and writers alike can cultivate empathy and envision and bring about a more just world.

Call for Manuscripts 

Yana Meerzon and Steve Wilmer, editors of the Palgrave Studies in Performance and Migration book series have released a call for manuscripts and welcome personal inquiries and book proposals from prospective authors who might be interested in contributing to the series.  

Call for Manuscripts - Palgrave Studies in Performance and Migration (Editors, Yana Meerzon and Steve Wilmer)

With the arrival of over a million refugees into Europe in 2015 and millions of displaced Ukrainians in 2022, the topic of migration has become a major source of public concern and discussion. Wars and civil wars, failed states, authoritarian governments, abuse of human rights, marauding drug cartels, climate change, and poverty have recently caused citizens in many parts of the world to flee their countries. The number of displaced persons has now reached a record one hundred million and is still growing. However, rather than being welcomed abroad, refugees frequently encounter closed borders, nationalist restrictions, detention camps or deportation. Nations are finding new ways to avoid processing asylum claims, while the human rights of the non-citizen are ignored and thousands die on route, trying to cross the Mediterranean, the English Channel, or other dangerous territories. Because the need for asylum has been increasing and the problem is not being solved by political means, artists have been using theatrical performance to intervene in the political arena to offer insight and new perspectives.

Migration is not a new issue. From earliest recorded time, individuals and populations all over the world have migrated to achieve a better life or escape subjection and the threat of violence. The theatre has continually addressed this theme both in its dramaturgy and in its performance practices. Theatre artists have always striven to find new audiences, and the stories they have told have regularly dealt with the theme of migration. Through the centuries peripatetic artists have taken their work on the road in a variety of forms and manifestations such as pageant wagons, commedia dell’arte, touring shows, puppetry, opera, circus, dance, legitimate theatre, and mixed media. Playwrights worldwide have explored the pathos of the homeless, the excluded and the forcibly displaced to question the meaning of life.

This series brings together a range of scholarship (including monographs and edited collections) focusing on many eras of performance, as well as numerous geographical and social conditions, to offer an understanding of the complexities of theatre and migration. The co-editors understand the term ‘performance’ both as indicative of theater performances (including dramaturgy), performance arts (various aspects of this form, including dance), and cultural performances. The authors of the prospective books will be asked to define this term in relation to their individual projects; if parts of those projects will be focused on digital performance, media, games or television, we will be willing to still read the manuscript and evaluate its suitability for the series based on its academic merit, in-depth analysis of the case studies, and research.  The same type of inclusive definition and our positioning apply to the term ‘migration’, which can be inclusive of asylum seeking, exile (internal and external), cosmopolitan travel, refugees, issues of return and so on.

The list of possible subtopics below is differentiated according to themes and performance practices.

The List A includes subtopics related to performance and migration based on themes, such as the following:

• Human Rights
• Diaspora
• Race
• Nationalism  
• Memory Studies
• Historical Case Studies  
• Transculturalism and Globalization  
• War or Civil War
• Labour
• Trauma
• Issues of (No)Return
• Citizenship
• Language
• Space, including border crossing, displacement, and nomadism
• Health
• Gender    
• Climate Change
• Social Control
• Global South
• Australasia
• Middle East

The List B includes subtopics related to performance and migration based on performance practices, such as the following:

• Economics of Theatre Making
• Innovations in Theatre Practice(s)
• Innovations in Dramaturgy
• Innovations in Practice as Research
• Innovations in Audience Studies
• Activism
• Theatre Training
• Digital Humanities
• Ethnography

The co-editors are ready to begin a dialogue with prospective authors. We welcome personal inquiries at ymeerzon@uottawa.ca and/or swilmer@tcd.ie

To submit a formal book proposal, please consult the standard guidelines as outlined by Palgrave as well as contact the editors to receive a proposal form specifically designed for this series.

About Us

Forced Migration and The Arts is a global network that brings together people with lived experience of forced migration, artists, academics, activists and art spaces.

The network hosts monthly discussion panels around forced migration and the arts. A playlist of conversations we have had so far is accessible here.  

The network aims to:

• bring together refugee and non-refugee artists, activists, scholars and art spaces
• create a platform for conversation, dialogue and discussion and the sharing of ideas, experiences, knowledge, information and approaches, and 
• encourage mutual support and collaboration.

To join the network or subscribe to the Forced Migration and The Arts mailing list, register here.