North Tyneside Art Studio - KARIBU

North Tyneside

KARIBU

The image in this link is 100k

KARIBU is an arts programme for Africans in the North East. It will create opportunities for people to play a part in the region’s cultural life and to address issues across the spectrum of education, employment, health, crime, and social exclusion.

KARIBU is about collaboration and dialogue between artists and non-artists and between people from different cultural backgrounds. It is about encouraging ways of thinking which are informed by the perceptions and experiences of Africans. KARIBU will use many different art forms to create new work which explores, challenges, modifies and contributes to life in Britain. KARIBU will not be one event, but will be a creative programme and process which engages participants from different fields and which embraces the use of arts and culture for social change.

Click here to see the press release issued by the Art Studio concerning the KARIBU project.

This page has also been translated in to French and Portuguese. Click one of the flags to see the translation.

EXAMPLES OF PROJECTS SUGGESTED SO FAR:

Art/Science collaboration with Newcastle University researching specific health related properties of African food and medicinal plants.
Making a “living history” of the lives and experiences of the African community in the region which will be an important archive in the future.
A project working with the police to form positive and mutually beneficial relations with Africans.

There will be many other suggestions and ideas and we welcome them from you.

KARIBU is developing its work in several different areas.

Storytelling/poetry workshops have taken place in Sunderland, Middlesbrough, Stockton and Newcastle. See the writing by Johnny Voza Zola and Alfred Mensah published on this site. We also put on a photographic and writing exhibition at Teeside University as our contribution to “A Place to Call Home”, a conference organised by the Social Futures Institute (www.tees.ac.uk/socialfutures) (photos by Alan Vaughan).

Hilaire and Alan also produced a report from research into the needs and aspirations of the African community in the North East.

The Travelling Ethnographic Resource, has been travelling the region, being booked out on a regular basis, and was presented at the British Library in October.

Artist Omar Rassidou is a volunteer tutor for percussion and ceramics workshops for the Learning Disabilities Federation, and other KARIBU artists have contributed to a variety of cultural events, including “The Big Draw” and the African festival “L’Afrique à Newcastle” with workshops in ceramics and African Geography.

Programme leader Hilaire Agnama and several others have also been giving drumming and singing sessions in care-homes for elderly people and in prisons as well as at other events such as Tynemouth Station Festival.

Ezekiel Williams has started the first ever “African Arts and Culture” course in the North East of England. It takes place at the Art Studio with the support of the Workers Educational Association.

The latest KARIBU projects are:

A collaboration with Tees Valley Archives to begin research and a collection of items from the African community. KARIBU will be creating “Archive Champions” and recording living histories of migration.

A project with Middlesbrough Council, which will see public transport being used as a site to promote the work undertaken by volunteer street-wardens from the African community.

KARIBU has also been chosen as one of the best examples in the country for its work with refugees and asylum seekers and will be featured in the report “A Sense of Belonging” published by Creative Exchange (www.creativeexchange.org.uk)

I am a human rights activist from the Democratic Republic of Congo who is asking for asylum in the UK.

By belonging to this league of human rights, I have found myself in this situation. But the English government has refused by request and neither has it taken into account my state of health , because I have to undergo surgery to replace a valve in my heart.

Johnny Voza Zola

This is a story of a teenager called John (from Kisangi)

John had a dream. He dreamt of a place where everyone would live in peace, where the bombs would not kill him, his family, his friends and their animals; a place also where he could go to school. People of his town told him that place existed but was far away from their home. His dad explained to him that the journey would be dangerous. He went on to convince him that people who had tried it had died of thirst and hunger on the way. The following night, John's town was bombarded; his family died. John decided to leave. John didn't take any food or drink or clothes. He spent his first day running, the road that led to safety was covered by dead bodies.

The following day, he came across a woman of his town and other people who took him with them and they continued the journey. They had walked for days, through deserted villages. At one stage they crossed a farm full of mines and some of them died. Instead of foods they were eating leaves.

Some days later, people started to die from hunger and tiredness. On another day they were bombarded and some died again. Finally, John and some others crossed a border and reached a refugee camp. Today, John is in the UK where he is going to school and has an adopted family.

However, John admitted that he misssed home. More importantly he reckoned that he had found home from home and that he was proud to call this new place home.

Just like John, there are many people living in the North East who were traumatised by war or persecuted in their countries of origin. Some don't know what the future holds for them. For these people there is always a question that they ask themselves;

ARE WE GOING TO FIND A PLACE THAT WE CAN CALL HOME?

Alfred Mensah

North Tyneside Art Studio is supported By


Baring Foundation	Lloyds TSB Foundation	Northern Rock Foundation	North Tyneside Council - Adult Services