[Invitation] The Africa Migration Report Poetry Readings and Conversations: Session 2: Online, 4pm-5.30pm UK Time; Online, Thurs., 17 October 2024

Join us for an evening of poetry and conversation on the theme of African migration.

The event takes place online, from 4pm till 5.30pm (UK time), on Thursday, 17 October 2024.

As part of the evening, poets featured in the Africa Migration Report: an Anthology of Poems; Volume 1 (CivicLeicester, forthcoming) will share poetry and reflections on the theme of African migration, the vision they have on the matter, and how we get to a future where freedom of movement is a right that extends to and includes Africans on the continent, in the diaspora, and on the move.

The readings and conversations will be followed by a Q&A with all present.

Attendance and participation are free and open to all.

REGISTRATION

To attend, please register here.

FEATURED POETS

Jo Blackwood is an engaging and establishing street poet, writer, actress, community actress (Derby Theatre); (more recently) a digital online movie reviewer and hosts The Soothing Session (Derby Sound Community Radio Online). She has participated in development programmes, commissions, with Renaissance One London and volunteering programmes within the East Midlands community.

Anayo Dioha is a lawyer and writer from the Igbo tribe of Nigeria. His poems lie on the online and print pages of The New Verse News, Queen's Quarterly, Password: Very Short Poetry and The Literary Cocktail Magazine. He's on course to complete a PhD in law.

Samuel Julius Habakkuk Kargbo was born in Wilberforce village, Freetown, Sierra Leone, and is a poet, preacher and songwriter. He has a BSc in Chemistry from Fourah Bay College, US and an MSc in Environmental Sciences (Hons) from Cyprus International University. He is currently researching Environmental Toxicology at Nagasaki University in Japan, and is the CEO and founder of Poem Makers SL, a poetry brand that motivates and mentors young brilliant minds in Sierra Leone and abroad.

Ilan Kelman is Professor of Disasters and Health at University College London, England and a Professor II at the University of Agder, Kristiansand, Norway. His overall research interest is linking disasters and health, integrating climate change into both. Instagram/Threads/X @ILANKELMAN 

Anton Krueger has published plays, memoir, short stories, criticism and arts journalism. Lately, he’s been experimenting with spoken word collaborations with improvising musicians, including Tony Bental, Warrick Sony, Francois le Roux and Paul Hanmer. He lives in Makhanda where he heads the Department of Literary Studies in English at Rhodes University. To sample his work, visit: https://amateurist.weebly.com/writings.html.

Octavia McBride-Ahebee's poetry is informed by the convergence of cultures and the many ways people move throughout the world. She presents relationships within the context of global inequality.

Remind Mugwambani is a young man born in 2001, in Kwekwe, Zimbabwe. He is the third of four children. His published works include "Today is Your Day, Go and Win," "Resilient Driver," and "I Will Be Home to Tell the Story," all of which were featured in the anthology "Wind on My Face: Motorcycle Diaries."

Francis Muzofa (aka@Pope) is Zimbabwean poet. His poems have been published by various Platforms both locally and internationally. He is a philosophical poet, who use humor, allegory and satire to poke into the eyes of those who cause harm. His writings are inspired by nature and the social ills that hurt the innocent and vulnerable. If he was God for a day, he would kill poverty and spread kindness.

J.O. Neill is a freelance writer, producer and funeral celebrant based in Bristol, UK. Born and raised till aged nine in Jamaica, her work is concerned with liminality, history, memory and belonging. She has also written, produced and directed two independent, crowdfunded films exploring her family's story. Find out more on her website - jessicaolivianeill.com - or follow her Instagram @jessolivianeill

Ejime Ijeoma Victory, born in Nigeria, is an multiple award winning essayist, poet, and humanitarian. In 2019, she was the first recipient of the Delta Short Fiction Award prize. Her work includes the novel, where the rivers go, which is due to be published in 2025; short stories, among them, "a song of ashes", and the poetry collection, a burning road. Ejime is also founder of the Anwumilli Foundation, and a book editor. She is currently studying at the College of Nursing Science in the city of Agbor, Nigeria.


NOTES

Organised by Forced Migration and The Arts in collaboration with CivicLeicester and Regularise, the Africa Migration Report Poetry Anthology Series draws inspiration from the 2nd Edition of the Africa Migration Report, jointly published by the African Union Commission (AUC) and the International Organization for Migration (IOM) in March 2024. Through poetry, the series explores multifaceted narratives surrounding African migration, capturing personal, familial, community, national and international histories and experiences of African migration. Because every day is Africa Day, our call for submissions is open 365 days a year.

Forced Migration and The Arts is an international network that brings together people with lived experience of forced migration, refugee and non-refugee artists, academics and art spaces for conversation looking at work taking place at the intersection where forced migration and the arts meet. Developed with support from the University of Manchester’s Humanities Global Scholars Fund, the network hosts monthly indabas or discussion forums on the last Thursday of each month and encourages mutual support and collaboration.

Regularise is a migrant-led collective founded in late 2019, prior to the COVID-19 pandemic. The collective aims 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.

CivicLeicester is a community publisher that uses print and digital technologies, social media platforms, the arts, and online and in-person events to highlight conversations of transnational interest and significance. Books we have edited and published 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).

[Invitation] The Africa Migration Report Poetry Readings and Conversations: Session 1: Online, 2pm-3.30pm UK Time; Online, Thurs., 17 October 2024

Join us for an evening of poetry and conversation on the theme of African migration.

The event takes place online, from 2pm till 3.30pm (UK time), on Thursday, 17 October 2024.

As part of the evening, poets featured in the Africa Migration Report: an Anthology of Poems; Volume 1 (CivicLeicester, forthcoming) will share poetry and reflections on the theme of African migration, the vision they have on the matter, and how we get to a future where freedom of movement is a right that extends to and includes Africans on the continent, in the diaspora, and on the move.

The readings and conversations will be followed by a Q&A with all present.

Attendance and participation are free and open to all.

REGISTRATION

To attend, please register here.

FEATURED POETS

Ayo Ayoola-Amale is the author of six volumes of poems. She believes that art expresses the inherent beauty in human experience and the environment with a sense of poetry and unbridled sensitivity. Ayo is a Social Justice Poet and the founder/director of Splendors of Dawn Poetry Foundation.

Philippa Hatendi-Louiceus was born in Zimbabwe and traversed three continents for education. Her journey culminated in a bachelor's degree in the arts. Scribbling since her teens, her pen dances to the rhythms of African culture, mythos, and folklore, weaving tales that honor the richness of her heritage.

Tifany MarSah is an all rounded creative currently solidifying herself in the UK poetry scene. As a poet she encapsulates vulnerability through imagery, storytelling and conversation. Through “spoken letters'' her pieces send a message from experience and paint a connection to past/present/ futuristic emotions and moments that are mutually experienced. Tifany to confirm.

M Sahr Nouwah is a poet, humanitarian worker, and advocate with roots in Liberia, Sierra Leone, and Guinea. Born June 15, 1985, and educated as a refugee, he has travelled widely across Europe, the Middle East, Asia, and the Pacific. Sahr writes articles on LinkedIn, Academia, and Medium, sharing his varied experiences.

Collins Chibunna Nwachukwu is a Nigerian and a Pan-African. Some of his works appear in anthologies, among them, Love Birds (2024, an Indian publication), Words Are Forever (2023, India), Spirit Anthology (a Radha Krishna publication, India), Achebe, The Soul Brother (7th edition of the publication of the Young Society of Nigerian Writers, Anambra state chapter, Nigeria). Others appear in magazines such as the Fringe Poetry Magazine (2024 edition, UK), and Mount Kenyan Times e-magazines (2023). He has garnered several awards and certificates of participation and excellence in several online literary groups. A lover of music and musical instruments and a topnotch goalkeeper, Collins holds a (BA in Mass Communication) from the University of Nigeria Nsukka, and an (MA in Communication and Language Arts) from the University of Ibadan.

Joseph C Ogbonna is a prolific poet from Nigeria. He has published very widely in magazines, anthologies, journals and in online blogs. His poems 'Napoleon to Josephine’ and ‘Josephine to Napoleon' were aired by the BBC Radio 3 in a documentary Napoleon: Words and Music to mark the bicentenary of the death of Napoleon Bonaparte on May the 5th, 2021. He lives in Enugu with his wife, Chizoba Josef-Chidindu.

Omobola Osamor‘s poetry examines the intersection of relationships—both human and institutional—and the emotions that arise from failures and successes. Her work, which includes poetry and fiction, has been featured in a range of publications, including Brittle Paper, African Writer, The Shallow Tales Review, and Flash Fiction Magazine. Born and raised in Lagos, Nigeria, she currently lives in Chicago.

Adaora Raji’s recent article for Salzburg Global Seminar explores how migrant fiction can challenge the narratives surrounding the complex global system of migration. Her fiction stories has appeared in Fictionable, Lolwe, Arlington Literary Journal, Midnight and Indigo Literary Journal, the Coachella Review, the Bookends Review and as 1st runner up in the 2022 Kendeka Prize for African Literature.

Patrick Kapuya Tshiuma is a software developer and father of four living and working in Israel with a refugee status obtained in 2004.

NOTES

Organised by Forced Migration and The Arts in collaboration with CivicLeicester and Regularise, the Africa Migration Report Poetry Anthology Series draws inspiration from the 2nd Edition of the Africa Migration Report, jointly published by the African Union Commission (AUC) and the International Organization for Migration (IOM) in March 2024. Through poetry, the series explores multifaceted narratives surrounding African migration, capturing personal, familial, community, national and international histories and experiences of African migration. Because every day is Africa Day, our call for submissions is open 365 days a year.

Forced Migration and The Arts is an international network that brings together people with lived experience of forced migration, refugee and non-refugee artists, academics and art spaces for conversation looking at work taking place at the intersection where forced migration and the arts meet. The network hosts monthly indabas or discussion forums on the last Thursday of each month and encourages mutual support and collaboration. 

Regularise is a migrant-led collective founded in late 2019, prior to the COVID-19 pandemic. The collective aims 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.

CivicLeicester is a community publisher that uses print and digital technologies, social media platforms, the arts, and online and in-person events to highlight conversations of transnational interest and significance. Books we have edited and published 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).

[Invitation] The Africa Migration Report Poetry Readings and Conversations: Online, Thurs., 10 October 2024; 6pm-7.30pm UK Time

Join us for an evening of poetry and conversation on the theme of African migration.

The event takes place online, from 6pm till 7.30pm (UK time), on Thursday, 10 October 2024, as part of Journeys Festival International which takes place in the UK cities of Leicester, Manchester and Portsmouth annually, and which explores refugee and migrant experiences through the arts.

As part of the evening, poets featured in the African Migration Report: an Anthology of Poems; Volume 1 (CivicLeicester, forthcoming) will share poetry and reflections on the theme of African migration, the vision they have on the matter, and how we get to a future where freedom of movement is a right that extends to and includes Africans on the continent and in the diaspora.

The readings and conversations will be followed by a Q&A with all present.

Attendance and participation are free and open to all.

REGISTRATION

To attend, please register here.

FEATURED POETS

Abíọ́dún Abdul is a Yorùbá-Nigerian English Language Lecturer and UNESCO Global Poetry Slam Champion 2022. Her poems focusing on social justice and celebrating our common humanity are published in various anthologies. She also writes short stories, life essays and memoir-polemics exploring social issues encompassing her schooling across Yorùbá-Nigeria, Scots-Britain, and Japan.

Nzingha Assata (nee Bedward/Gordon) is from Jamaica and has lived in England since January 1959. Nzingha is a mother, grandmother and great-grandmother holding a BA (Hons) in Social Science. She is also a retired health professional. As a community activist, she is a Garveyite, Pan-Afrikanist here in the UK, Jamaica and on the continent of Afrika. She takes her politics with her and aims to link with other activists when she travels.

Efua Boadu. British-Ghanaian writer. In 2021, Efua was shortlisted to join the Southbank Poetry Collective. Her work has featured in Isele and Afritondo journals. She has been longlisted for the 2022 Afritondo Short Story Prize, the 2023 Mary Prince Award, and the 2024 Commonwealth Short Story Prize. Twitter/X handle: @FRH210

Sierra Leone born artist and poet Amanda Holiday moved to the UK aged five. She has exhibited artworks at INIVA and Tate Britain and has shows forthcoming with Vivienne Roberts. Founder of Black Sunflowers Poetry Press, Holiday is currently completing a PhD in Poetry, Race and Art at Brighton University.

Sello Huma is a spirited and musically inclined poet and social entrepreneur from Limpopo in South Africa. His poems and songs are the books of our ancestors focusing on issues related to African unity, culture, history, futures and justice for people of color. Alongside his stage performances, his work can be found in the Sol Plaatjie European Union Poetry Anthology, Ons Klyntji, Afritondo, Agbowó, New Coin, Brittle Paper, Tampered Press and elsewhere.

Nandi Jola was born in Gqebera, South Africa. She holds a Master of Arts degree in English (Poetry) from Queen’s University, Belfast, Northern Ireland. Nandi is a poet, storyteller, playwright and creative writing facilitator, and is well known in Northern Ireland and beyond for her work in the Arts and Museum and Heritage sector. Nandi was curator of the Golden Shovel Poetry Jukebox and is a creative writing facilitator for Quotidian. Among her plays, the topically titled Partition, and The Rise of Maqoma, engage with and also seek to move beyond Eurocentric themes. https://www.doirepress.com/writers/nandi-jola

Mark Kennedy Nsereko is a Muganda writer, and lawyer. His works are reflections on injustice. They are also glimpses into the orchestra of beautiful chaos that is his mind. These have been featured in the poetry anthology, I Promise This Song Is Not About Politics, and in the magazines Brittle Paper, African Writer, and Akpata Magazine. Other works are forthcoming in Transition, and Iskanchi Magazine.

Helidah Ogude-Chambert is a South African-Kenyan Pan-Africanist whose work, both scholarly and creative, flows through bodies of water, state cruelty, affective forces of resistance, and the everyday brutalities of living—and dying—while Black. She is captivated by how Black and migrant bodies carry stories of refusal across multiple temporalities, challenging the colonial linearity of time. She teaches at Oxford University, seeking new ways of understanding race, mobility, and resistance.

Elly Ray is a poet from Hargeisa, Somalia. She has been writing as hobby since childhood. She is a counsellor, a word magician and a healer who wishes to bring some healing upon the wounded among us.

Laurène Southe, a 24-year-old Congolese-Austrian writer, discovered her passion for poetry at 17 through the Vienna African Writers Club. Her full-time pursuit began after a 2021 performance at the African Diaspora Festival. She showcased her work in group exhibitions and at the Vienna Design Week, and completed her first poetry book, Child of Congo, during a writer residency at Echo Correspondence, aiming to publish it in coming years.

NOTES

Organised by Forced Migration and The Arts in collaboration with CivicLeicester and Regularise, the Africa Migration Report Poetry Anthology Series draws inspiration from the 2nd Edition of the Africa Migration Report, jointly published by the African Union Commission (AUC) and the International Organization for Migration (IOM) in March 2024. Through poetry, the series explores multifaceted narratives surrounding African migration, capturing personal, familial, community, national and international histories and experiences of African migration. Because every day is Africa Day, our call for submissions is open 365 days a year.

Forced Migration and The Arts is an international network that brings together people with lived experience of forced migration, refugee and non-refugee artists, academics and art spaces for conversation looking at work taking place at the intersection where forced migration and the arts meet. The network hosts monthly indabas or discussion forums on the last Thursday of each month and encourages mutual support and collaboration. 

Regularise is a migrant-led collective founded in late 2019, prior to the COVID-19 pandemic. The collective aims 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.

CivicLeicester is a community publisher that uses print and digital technologies, social media platforms, the arts, and online and in-person events to highlight conversations of transnational interest and significance. Books we have edited and published 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).

[Book Launch] The Africa Migration Report: In Conversation with Profs. Lokangaka Losambe & Tanure Ojaide (eds. The Routledge Handbook of the New African Diasporic Literature. Routledge, 2024) _ Online, Thurs, 3 Oct. 2024; 6pm-7.30pm UK Time

Join us for a presentation and conversation with Professors Lokangaka Losambe and Tanure Ojaide, editors of The Routledge Handbook of the New African Diasporic Literature (Routledge, 2024).

The book launch takes place online on Thursday, 3 October 2024, from 6pm till 7.30pm UK time, as part of the Africa Migration Report Readings and Conversations series.

Attendance and participation are free and open to all.

To attend, please register here.

As part of the event, Professors Losambe and Ojaide will give a presentation on The Handbook and share thoughts and reflections on what works of literature add to the conversation that is taking place at a familial, community, national, continental and international level, on African migration.

The presentation and discussion will be followed by a Q&A session with all present.

ABOUT THE BOOK

The Routledge Handbook of the New African Diasporic Literature introduces world literature readers to the transnational, multivocal writings of immigrant African authors. Covering works produced in Europe, North America, and elsewhere in the world, this book investigates three major aesthetic paradigms in African diasporic literature: the Sankofan wave (late 1960s–early 1990s); the Janusian wave (1990s–2020s); and the Offshoots of the New Arrivants (those born and growing up outside Africa).

Written by well-established and emerging scholars of African and diasporic literatures from across the world, the chapters in the book cover the works of well-known and not-so-well-known Anglophone, Francophone, and Lusophone writers from different theoretical positionalities and critical approaches, pointing out the unique innovative artistic qualities of this major subgenre of African literature. The focus on the “diasporic consciousness” of the writers and their works sets this handbook apart from others that solely emphasize migration, which is more of a process than the community of settled African people involved in the dynamic acts of living reflected in diasporic writings.

This book will appeal to researchers and students from across the fields of Literature, Diaspora Studies, African Studies, Migration Studies, and Postcolonial Studies.

ABOUT THE SPEAKERS

Lokangaka Losambe is the Frederick M. and Fannie C.P. Corse Professor of English at the University of Vermont. He previously taught African, African Diaspora and English literatures at universities in Nigeria, the Democratic Republic of Congo, Swaziland, and South Africa. His numerous publications include Postcolonial Agency in African and Diasporic Literature and Film: A Study in Globalectics; Borderline Movements in African Fiction; An introduction to the African Prose Narrative; Literature, the Visual Arts and Globalization in Africa and Its Diaspora (edited with Maureen Eke); Pre-colonial and Post-colonial Drama and Theatre in Africa (edited with Devi Sarinjeive); and The Routledge Handbook of the New African Diasporic Literature (edited with Tanure Ojaide). Dr. Losambe also served as the president of the African Literature Association (ALA) in 2012-2013.

Educated at Ibadan and Syracuse Universities, Tanure Ojaide has published twenty-five collections of poetry, as well as four novels, five short story collections, three memoirs, and fourteen self-authored and co-authored scholarly books. He has won the Association of Nigerian Authors’ Poetry Prize four times (1988, 1994, 2003, and 2011). His other awards include the Commonwealth Poetry Prize for the Africa Region (1988), the All-Africa Okigbo Prize for Poetry (1988), and the BBC Arts and Africa Poetry Award (1988). He was the Winner of the University of North Carolina at Charlotte’s prestigious First Citizens Bank Scholar Medal Award for 2005. In 2016 he won both the African Literature Association's Folon-Nichols Award for Excellence in Writing and the Nigerian National Order of Merit Award for the Humanities. In 2018 he co-won the Soyinka Prize for Literature in Africa. He has won the National Endowment for the Humanities grant, twice the Fulbright Senior Scholar fellowship, and twice the Carnegie African Diaspora Program fellowship. Ojaide is currently the Frank Porter Graham Distinguished Professor of Africana Studies at the University of North Carolina, Charlotte.

ABOUT THE ORGANISERS

The event is organised by Forced Migration and The Arts, CivicLeicester and Regularise as part of the Africa Migration Report Poetry Anthology’s Readings and Conversations series which hosts a series of online readings, presentations and conversations focusing on the arts and African migration.  

The Africa Migration Report poetry anthology series, which we are currently working on, was inspired by the Africa Migration Report: 2nd Edition, a report by the African Union and International Organisation on Migration, published in March 2024, which presents research on African migration and mobility, and on the status of continental integration policies as outlined in the African Union Agenda 2063. While the AU-IOM’s African Migration Report is a formal report, our poetry anthology series explores the pasts, presents and futures of African migration through poetry, short prose and conversation with poets on the African continent and in the diaspora. 

Forced Migration and The Arts is an international network that brings together people with lived experience of forced migration, refugee and non-refugee artists, academics and art spaces for conversation looking at work taking place at the intersection where forced migration and the arts meet. The network hosts monthly indabas or discussion forums on the last Thursday of each month and encourages mutual support and collaboration among participants. A playlist of some of the conversations we have had so far is accessible here.

Regularise 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.

CivicLeicester, is an indie publisher that uses print and digital technologies, social media platforms, the arts, and online and in-person events to highlight conversations of transnational interest and significance. Books we have edited and published 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).

August 2024 Indaba: In Conversation with researchers, writers, photographers and filmmakers, Dr Eithne Nightingale & Stephen Okun

 Join us for this month's Forced Migration and The Arts indaba and conversations looking at work refugee and non-refugee artists, academics, activists and art spaces are doing at the intersection where forced migration and the arts meet.

The conversation takes place online on Thursday, 29 August 2024, from 3.30pm till about 5.00pm UK time.

Attendance and participation are free and open to all. 

To attend, please register here. 

SPEAKERS include:

● Dr Eithne Nightingale, a researcher, writer, photographer and filmmaker. She is also the author of Child Migrant Stories in Modern Britain: Oral Histories 1930s to the Present Day published by Bloomsbury in February 2024. This is based on research into child migration for a collaborative PhD between Queen Mary University of London and the V&A although the book is targeted at a readership beyond academia. She is also the founder of a co-produced award-winning website, films and events programme childmigrantstories.com drawing on skills and creativity of those with lived experience of child migration. She has over 40 years experience of working on issues of equality, diversity and social justice in both the education and cultural sectors.

● Stephen Okun, a professional filmmaker and photographer, and also an Artificial Intelligence researcher at FilmAid Kenya. Born in the eastern region of South Sudan and raised in the Kakuma Refugee Camp in Kenya for 24 years, he gives telling visual stories using media as one of the experiences that has contributed to his growth and development as a person. His objective is to explore the ethical dimensions of AI in media, with an aim to push the boundaries of interactive storytelling, and develop AI tools that empower creators to tell more personalized and immersive visual stories.

As part of the conversation, we will also look at aspects that include: 

● Children's experiences of forced migration, including children who are migrating unaccompanied; 

● Issues affecting refugees, asylum seekers and people with lived experience of forced migration; 

● What artists and the arts doing around the questions and issues; 

● The challenges that refugee and non-refugee or asylum seeking artists, academics, activists and art spaces are experiencing in doing this work; and 

● What can be done or what ought to be done about the challenges, by whom and how.

NETWORK NOTES

About The Network: Forced Migration and The Arts is an international network that brings together people with lived experience of forced migration, refugee and non-refugee artists, academics, activists and art spaces. The network encourages mutual support and collaboration and hosts monthly discussion panels around forced migration and the arts. A playlist of videos of some of the conversations we have had so far is accessible here.

Regional Forced Migration and The Arts networks: We would like to set up autonomous Forced Migration and The Arts networks to facilitate conversations and indabas in the following regions: Africa, Asia, Central America, Europe, the Middle East, North America, the Pacific, and South America. If you are a refugee or non-refugee artist, academic, activist or art space working in these regions at the intersection where forced migration and the arts meet, and you would like to be part of the steering group in a particular region, please let us know through this form. 

On the Radical Potential of €5: We continue 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 needs to raise €5,256 for tuition and sustenance. So far, he has raised €4,061 and needs to raise the remaining €1,195. Perhaps you can spare Lawrence a fiver (€5)?

  
September Indaba/Conversations: The next Forced Migration and The Arts forum/indaba takes place on Thursday, September 26, between 2pm and 7.30pm. If you are a refugee or non-refugee artist, academic, activist or organisation working at the intersection where forced migration and the arts meet, and you would like to speak as part of the forum, please register through this form. 

July 2024 Indaba: In Conversation with Sadia Sikandar, playwright, photographer & refugee rights activist

Join us online, from 6pm till 7.30pm, on Thursday, 25 July 2024 for conversation with artist and IMIX steering group chair, Sadia Sikandar.

Attendance and participation are free and open to all.

To attend, please register here.

ABOUT THE ARTIST

Playwright, photographer, refugee rights activist, and IMIX steering group chair, Sadia Sikandar was the first Sanctuary and Culture Artist in Residence at D6 Culture in Transit. 

She contributed to the photography project 'Family Events' with Baltic as well as to Curious Monkey's play ‘Home is where the food is’ in 2021, and was the photographer for International Migrants Day events at D6.

Her artwork has been published in places that include the Newcastle College newsletter; Ekō Magazine, founded by students at Goldsmiths University; and by the UK for UNHCR on the theme 'What Home Means'.

Sadia has also been involved in campaigns that include the 23 reasons people seeking asylum should be allowed to work video for the Lift The Ban campaign with Asylum Matters, and was a Refugee Week ambassador for people seeking asylum in 2021.

NETWORK NOTES

On the radical potential of €5

We continue 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, needs to raise €5,256 for tuition and sustenance. 

So far, he has raised €3,836 and needs to raise the remaining €1,420. 

Perhaps you can spare Lawrence a fiver (€5)?

Regional Forced Migration and The Arts networks

We would like to set up autonomous Forced Migration and The Arts networks to facilitate conversations and indabas in the following regions: Africa, Asia, Central America, Europe, the Middle East, North America, the Pacific, and South America.

If you are a refugee or non-refugee artist, academic, activist or art space working in these regions at the intersection where forced migration and the arts meet, and you would like to be part of the steering group in a particular region, please email civicleicester@gmail.com and let us know.

In your email, please include the following details:

• Your name,
• Email address,
• A short bio (about 100 words), and
• A short statement on what you would bring to the steering group and network (about 100 words).

August 2024 Conversations/Indaba

In August, Forced Migration and The Arts takes place on Thursday, the 29th between 2pm and 7.30pm BST.

If you would like to speak as part of the conversation, please let us know through this form.

About Forced Migration and The Arts

Forced Migration and The Arts is an 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 encourages mutual support and collaboration and hosts monthly discussion panels around forced migration and the arts.

A playlist of videos of some of the conversations we have had so far is accessible here.  

Refugee Month Special - June 2024 Conversations/Indaba

Join us for a series of Refugee Month Special conversations looking at work refugee and non-refugee artists, academics, activists and art spaces are doing at the intersection where forced migration and the arts meet.

In light of how June 17-23 is Refugee Week and June 20 is World Refugee Day, the conversations are taking place on Thursday, June 6, 13 and 27 and are scheduled to run from 6pm till 7.30pm (UK time) on each of the three days.

Attendance and participation are free and open to all.

SCHEDULE & REGISTRATION LINKS

●  6 June 2024 (6pm-7.30pm UK Time): Children & Young People in Focus, with Dr Doroty Sato (University of Louisville), and Dr Anna Skeels (Cardiff University) (Zoom registration link) 

●  13 June 2024 (6pm-7.30pm UK Time): Theatre, Solidarity, Connection & Deep Listening, with Kate Duffy-Syedi (Phosphoros Theatre), and Ana Pfeiffer Quiroz (University of Ottawa) (Zoom registration link), and 

●  27 June 2024 (6pm-7.30pm UK Time): Palestine in Focus, with Dr Maiada Aboud (Zoom registration link)

Themes and art forms that will be discussed include children's drawings, video, poetry, theatre, and art as a vehicle for solidarity, care, deep listening and political liberation.

THE SESSIONS

6 June 2024 (6pm-7.30pm UK Time): Children & Young People in Focus, with Dr Doroty Sato (University of Louisville), and Dr Anna Skeels (Cardiff University)

Dr Doroty Sato has a background in psychology, and has worked in organizations as a human resources professional in different industries until she volunteered for refugees in Houston, which changed her perspective on life. She then decided to change her career and applied for a PhD in Social Work to study child mass migration. Her dissertation focused on Latino children crossing the U.S.-Mexican border, in particular, and examined the intersection of their journey with religiosity and spirituality depicted in their drawings. Doroty Sato likes to say that she is a storyteller about these children

Dr Anna Skeels is a Research Fellow in the Social Science Research Park (SPARK) in Cardiff University.  She has a PhD from the Centre for Migration Policy Research at Swansea University on the participation in protection of Congolese refugee children in Uganda. Her personal research interests include children and modern slavery, refugee and migration studies, children’s rights and protection, conducting research with potentially vulnerable groups in low income and challenging settings (including humanitarian settings overseas) and the use of participatory and creative methodologies. She has worked in the humanitarian sphere, for example as a Consultant for UNHCR (in Kenya, Jordan and Nepal) and as the lead for Save the Children on an academic-practitioner collaboration measuring the separation of children in emergencies in Ethiopia and the Democratic Republic of Congo. As part of the conversation, Anna Skeels will be showing and discussing a short 5-minute video based on the poems created by a group of young people affected by human trafficking who migrated to the UK. These ten young people formed a young people's advisory group to help steer Skeels' research evaluating support for children affected by modern slavery in England and Wales. They were supported to develop and perform poems related to the research findings by a community-based artist and performance poet.

13 June 2024 (6pm-7.30pm UK Time): Theatre, Solidarity, Connection & Deep Listening, with Kate Duffy-Syedi (Phosphoros Theatre), and Ana Pfeiffer Quiroz (University of Ottawa)

Kate Duffy-Syedi is an artist academic based in London, UK. She is co-artistic director of Phosphoros Theatre, who create nationally touring productions and community drama projects with refugees aged 16-25. She is awaiting the viva for her practice research PhD (Royal Central School of Speech and Drama) which explores refugee performance, care and solidarity with a focus on the experiences of unaccompanied minor youth. She is a visiting lecturer at Royal Central, focusing on applied theatre and migration. She has worked with unaccompanied minor refugees in London for over ten years. During Refugee Week Phosphoros Theatre will be putting on a week of drama workshops for refugee youth in schools, colleges, charities and adult asylum seekers living in hotels. In this session, Duffy-Syedi explores the thinking behind these workshops, which speak to this year’s Refugee Week theme ‘Our Home’. Using drama, poetry and visual art, the workshops will culminate in the creation of a public art piece reflecting radically hopeful futures, outside of conceptualisations of hope bound by linearity. Co-led by 10 facilitators and assistants with lived experience of displacement, these workshops offer relevant insight into how arts based practice can provide opportunities for solidarity, connection and deep listening.

Ana Pfeiffer Quiroz is an actress, theatre director and professor. Her research expertise is focused on diversity and intercultural dialogue in performance arts. In her theatre performances, she explores the intimacy and the political aspect of the testimony, with a specific interest in the aesthetic and theatrical narrative of that style. She is a professor at the Department of Theatre at the University of Ottawa. She is a PhD scholar in the Études et pratiques des art programs at l’Université du Québec à Montréal, Canada. She has a master’s degree in interdisciplinary theatre from the Department of Theatre at the same university (UQAM,) as well as a bachelor’s degree in acting and theatre pedagogy from the Escuela Superior de Arte Dramático, in Lima, Peru. Her PhD research, "Laboratoire des Sorcières" (Laboratory of Witches) is an artistic research about feminine intercultural cohabitation in Montreal French performance arts and she works with the travel concept of praxis of decoloniality (Mignolo and Walsh, 2018) to question, inquire and reframe the classical canonical feminine Shakespearian characters of Lady Macbeth and the Three Witches. The notions of glottophobia or linguistic xenophobia, agency, and borderland are approached throughout feminine immigrants' presences and voices in this research.

27 June 2024 (6pm-7.30pm UK Time): Palestine in Focus, with Dr Maiada Aboud 

Dr Maiada Aboud's work deals with ways that social, religious and political structures interconnect and influence the individual. Using endurance art, Maiada's interest in social and political issues draws on a unique and personal perspective. She was born in Palestine (Christian Arab Israeli), graduated from Haifa University, and received her education in the UK where she completed her Masters at Coventry University, and her PhD at Sheffield Hallam University. Her study attempts to connect cultural and political analysis to the individual’s experience by way of using performance and relating it to culture, memory, pain and social life. In this session, Dr Aboud will be exploring questions that include: How do Palestinian art deal with the fact that Palestinians are inherently invisible/Ghosted? How can art allow voiceless people to voice themselves and their Nakba (catastrophe)? and, How does art allow dead artistic agency to be reborn? 

NETWORK NOTES

[1] Forced Migration and The Arts is an 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 encourages mutual support and collaboration and hosts monthly discussion panels around forced migration and the arts. A playlist of videos of conversations we have had so far is accessible here.  

[2] We continue 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 needs to raise €5,256 for tuition and sustenance. So far, he has raised €3,742 and needs to raise the remaining €1,514. Perhaps you can spare Lawrence a fiver (€5)?