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.