Commisioned Essay
What we proposed to do | Opening Text.
What we proposed to do | Opening Text.
Superprojects in partnership with artist Alice Rekab and the collective Eireann and I (Curators and cultural producers Beulah Ezeugo and Joselle Ntumba) devised a series of school workshops entitled ‘Let Me Show You Who I Am’. The workshop series took place between Adamstown Community Centre and Adamstown Educate Together.
The school workshops focused on the use of storytelling to explore diversity, heritage and identity. Storytelling is a method of recording and expressing feelings, attitudes, and responses of one's lived experiences and environment. Its function is to produce and share knowledge across generations. Within traditional African culture storytelling is an art form that is conducted through the vibrant retelling of stories or narratives and can incorporate mediums such as music, play, poetry or dance. In this light we want to use storytelling as a culturally congruent attempt of record producing and knowledge producing. Within our practice, we acknowledge and directly challenge the silencing that occurs in the cases of marginalised narratives.
We intended to work with 6th class students as we recognised that this is a pivotal time in their life when they are beginning to understand the nuances of race or ethnicity and forming their own cultural awareness. We reflected on our experiences as black and mixed race Irish people and recognised that representation within the classroom would have bridged a cultural understanding with our peers.
As there was a large cultural diversity represented amongst the class we chose visual art, storytelling and performance as our media because of their shared importance within Irish and African cultures. The workshop was designed to build awareness and respect for the richness of African culture and to amplify shared cultural practices such as storytelling and performance to build a sense of community and dynamic hybridity within the classroom.
We intentionally chose to work with young black and Irish performers and artists. As we wanted the children to develop new positive references of black identity and self image. Coming from diverse cultural and class backgrounds exposure to young artists would encourage the students to aspire beyond what they perceived as possible for themselves. The workshops were designed to allow for lateral expression and movement between artists and children.
What we did | Artist.
What we did | Artist.
- Before the workshop we introduced the idea of bringing in an object from home to work around. We let the artists know about this activity in advance so that they could base their activity days around the object, engaging with ideas about heritage and family histories. We also used this discussion as a chance to hear about what they would perform for the kids and how they planned to keep them engaged over the three days. We then shared these plans with the teachers.
- Day 1 of the series was structured as a Performance Day where the invited artists interacted with the pupils via performance/interactive workshops. We travelled together with the artists giving them a chance to meet together before the workshops began. Before the kids arrived, we prepared the community centre. The artists took this time to develop ideas together, negotiate the order of events, and discuss any crossovers or collaborations that could happen.
- It began with an outdoor activity where everyone could meet in a neutral place. By arranging the activities outside the school we allowed the children to enter a new frame of mind and engage with different types of learning outside of what they had become used to.
- Through this workshop, students had the opportunity to experience how identity can be expressed and explored through different art forms. For the first performance, the kids gathered indoors in a circle and witnessed an interactive storytelling performance from Osaro Azams. Following this, a dance session was led by dancer and artist Tobi Balogun.
- A mid-session lunch was provided by the community food project, Bia Zine, where kids were encouraged to taste and ask questions about traditional west African finger foods.
- After lunch musicians Daranijoh Sanni, Aka E the Artist, and Lychee lead a DJ session where the children were encouraged to learn how to use musical equipment and make different sounds and beats for each other. Lastly, the children enjoyed a card reading workshop with artist Samantha Brown, where they learned about different cultural signs, symbols and alphabets.
- At the end of the day children were invited to choose an object from home that they felt told their family story and bring it the following day. Artists encouraged the children to speak with their parents and elders in choosing this object. Lead artist, Alice Rekab provided an example of this by bringing their own object from home and sharing its meaning.
- On Day 2 participants were separated into working groups of 10 where artists invited them to tell a story about themselves using the object they brought in. Artists encouraged children to listen intently as other peers told their stories and experiment with an art form that they saw the day before (storytelling, song, dance).
- In Day 3 children were supported to continue working on their performance to then share it with their classmates in a reflective session before home time.
- Some students were interviewed during the programme and the workshops were recorded by Tessy Ehiguese, a Dublin-based photographer and videographer
Future Resources.
Future Resources.
Feedback from a child stated “I would like it if we listened to more music to understand how it makes us feel”. As students had already been familiarised with storytelling, future workshops should prioritise making connections between lived experiences and media. Engaging students to think about their lived experiences will form a greater understanding of the duality of their cultural experience and the cultures they are forming for themselves in Ireland. The merging of traditional memory frameworks with contemporary arts forms a neo-culture which pays homage to the cultures being built here but also preserves the history and heritage of our ancestors.
The “let me show you who I am” workshops experimented with an artistic educational approach to discuss cultural heritage within a school setting. The lead artists used the outcomes of the workshop to format a learning resource that will act as a repository of black-irish culture that can be shared across schools in the future.
THANK YOU
Thank you to all the pupils taking part, Tom, Ita, Diarmuid and Orlaith, at Adamstown Educate Together and Adamstown Community Centre (@adamstowncommunitycentre) for hosting the workshops and The Arts Council (@artscouncilireland) and South Dublin County Council (@sdublincoco) for supporting the project.