Affiliate Artist collaborations in 2017
October 2017
In October 2017, our Affiliate Artist Chirikure Chirikure visited Glasgow as part of our Black History Month programme of events.
He presented a lecture at the University of Glasgow entitled The use and abuse of art in the Zimbabwean political environment.
He also delivered a masterclass for young actors of Ignite Theatre company on their annual development retreat in Ardoch.
Later that week, he participated and performed at Seeds of Thought, Tawona Sitholé and Tarneem Almousawi's regular open mic night in Glasgow's Centre for Contemporary Art
He finished his trip with a workshop in the Museum of Slavery in Liverpool. An outline of his workshop can be found below:
A little film on The Elmina and Cape Coast Castles
We share a common history of slavery, the trans Atlantic slave trade, colonialism and the impacts of the British Empire. There are difficulties surrounding modern discourses on these shared histories where in many cases places and people who continue to be enriched by the wealth created and maintained through slavery and its legacies find it uncomfortable to engage in accepting and addressing today's implications of the shared histories.
What ways can we deploy the Arts as a way of creating new spaces and opportunities to remove the discomfort of historical and modern injustice and inequalities that are a result of slavery, colonialism and the lack of the willingness to discuss?
It is important to stress that there continues to be a pressing need to begin creating new opportunities that allow young people especially, to explore possibilities of shaping their shared futures in a manner that draws on our shared histories into a positive direction. How do we facilitate these opportunities through international artistic collaboration?