The Festival of Belonging
International Community Dynamics CLG organised a festival of belonging during Refugee week in June 2023.
The festival was kicked off with an art exhibition of refugee artist and an artist of the Traveler Community in the renowned Triskel Arts Centre in Cork City.
The curator was Kasia Nita, a Polish artist from Cork, and Roos Demol managed the exhibtion. Artists were Naser Suleyman from Sudan, Gregoire Kalala from DRC, Leanne Mc Donagh, Elton Sibanda, a young artists from Zimbabwe, Viktoria Kondretieva from Ukraine, Sobia Rasheed from Pakistan, and Juan Carlos Moron from Venezuela.
The art exhibition was closed with a concert and spoken word event. Four poets with refugee backgrounds read some of their mesmerising oeuvres. They were Maged Mugid from Iraq, Anton Floyd, originally form Cyprus, Neo Gilson from South Africa and Kanyo Khazadi, also from South Africa. The performed in between musical performances by Citadel and Ramzy Al-Murr and friends, a Syrian music band.
The event was opened by Dan Boyle as a delegate for the new mayor of Cork who has just been elected that evening. He spoke about the welcoming nature of Cork and the pride he felt in opening this first ever Festival of Belonging.
Siobhan Clancy, assistant arts officer, spoke about the wonderful art exhibition and about the importance of the arts in Cork and Ireland to create a more diverse and welcoming country where everyone belongs.
The music and spoken word performance was sold out, the reactions afterwards were all very positive, many visitors just wanted more.
The next day started with a conversation café in the Haven Café. Tis was facilitated by Cork-based Think Speak Do and Joanna Dukipati had organised the café with a question on each table. Participants moved tables every ten minutes to meet other people and have discussions around the question on the table. There were refugees, international protection applicants and many Irish people. It was a lovely occasion to meet and greet and to get to talk to people you had never talked to before. The Conversation café was bussing, we all felt it ended too soon. But lunch was served by Taoufik Hamami from Tunisia, there was a wonderful choice of vegetarian, vegan and non-vegetarian food with a taste from North Africa. It was delicious.
After the conversation café we went to University College Cork were a conference was organised in co-operation with the university’s department of sociology and criminology.
The theme was Belonging, and some very renowned speakers gave us an insight into the meaning of belonging, and how participation between community organisations and universities is essential.
Pierrot Ngadi talked about the importance of belonging and the meaning of the Festival, Roos Demol gave an oversight of International Community dynamics and on Recruit Refugee Ireland, one of the projects to help refugees and IPAs find meaningful work.
https://triskelartscentre.ie/events/festival-of-belonging/
Kenynote speakers were Dr.Debora Kayembe, rector of the Edingburgh university, originally from DRC, telling us her very inspirational story of becoming a refugee, her battle to get to university and her rise to become the Rector of the Edingburgh university, Prof Maggie O’Neil, on participatory practice, and Dr. Wanette Tuinstra who showed us how national identity is npt what is seems. We are all or all come from migrants.
Dr Amin Sharif Isaloo, told us about Direct Provision centres and how they should be called refugee camos, as that is what they are, his experiences in them and his way to university.
Zephyrin Ngaliema, Barrister gave an overview of different stages of immigration and the various ways of getting work permits and working your way up the scale, and Poojah Priya, an Indian PhD students talked about her research into the discrimination against immigrants from DRC in India.
participants and artists had great result with 100% of people saying the festival should become a yearly event and 80% of artists and 90% of participants saying their views and ideas about refugees had changed during the festival.
Tired but satisfied, the organisers of International Community Dynamics went home, determined to repeat the process next year.
