Affiliate Artist collaborations in 2018
November/December 2018
At the end of the year, Alison Phipps and Tawona Sitholé travelled to Zimbabwe, to be part of LitFest, an annual literary festival organised by affiliate artist Chirikure Chirikure. This was a separately funded project and more information can be found on the project page.
October 2018
In October we teamed up with Glasgow Museums to organise an event for Black History Month entitled Celebrating Africa.
At the event, Pieter van der Houwen presented one of the lightning talks. His presentation Africans around the World Today was part of a larger programme with pecha-kucha style short presentations.
At that same event, Ricky Dragon performed some of his rap-poetry. More information about the entire programme can be found on the event's page (see above).
June 2018
In June we worked with Clare Robertson at the Refugee Cycle 2018. Clare performed at one of the stops, singing songs about the theme of despair.
Later on in June we worked together with Ricky Dragon and Predencia Dixon at the Solas Festival. Both performed several short sets of their own poetry.
May 2018
Adel Salmanzadeh came to Glasgow to present his Project Pensive at the Spring School.
As part of his work and research with schools and their cultural competency training he uses creative methods and projects to engage them with social cultural issues that impact on their refugee background student’s lives. One of his past efforts involved engaging with teachers and educational professional about why New Zealand should increase it’s intake of refugees, through creating two works of art based on two of his poems (see below). This was about increasing schools and teacher’s awareness of the plight of refugees as well a small contribution to years of campaign by many people to increase our intake. This are now becoming a reality as New Zealand is now considering to increase its intake with another 500 people per year.
Project Pensive is an arts based refugee educational initiative that has been created as a result of his engagement with many refugee background students over many years through his work and research. Many of them have expressed that they value personalised feedback on their school work and achievements; their teachers’ recognition and knowledge of their religion, culture and language; their teachers understanding and empathy for their back ground, family circumstances and history; and most of all they would like words of encouragement and support to inspire them to reach their goals and aspirations.
Project Pensive provides teachers and school staff with an opportunity to handwrite a feedback; thoughts and words of wisdom on a personalised greeting cards given to the student on a special occasion like a graduation; religious holyday or cultural celebration; or any other suitable event. The teacher also provides the student with a blank card for the student only if they want to provide a feedback and thoughts about the teacher. The student can write both in English and in their mother language. Otherwise, the student can use their card to write to another staff they want to acknowledge, or a friend or a family member.
