On Africa Day, Monday 25 May, the Mermaid Arts Centre in Bray will host four screenings of animated short films made by African filmmakers, as part of African Animation Day, according to a press release from the Mermaid.

This is a new concept, designed by Mermaid to mark Africa Day in Ireland and to celebrate African culture and society and the diversity of the continent. As is true of animation worldwide, animation in Africa does not only exist in the realm of children’s entertainment, but also acts as a document of local narrative and myth, political criticism and social commentary.

The work to be presented stems from a variety of African countries: Nigeria, Niger, Senegal, Zimbabwe, the DRC, Kenya, Uganda, Tanzania, Egypt, Ghana and South Africa. Animation, as such an accessible medium, is very suitable for introducing young children to Africa.

The daytime screenings will be suitable for children and offered to school groups. With funding from Irish Aid, Mermaid will be able to offer the screenings free of charge to the public.

The programme of animations for children presents a collection of works that are both entertaining and educational in their scope. The content differs greatly from European animations, presenting images that reflect the identities of African children and the environment, in which they live. The animations draw from the imagery and symbolism of the respective countries, as well as their own myths and fables. With African animation at the cusp of a new and exciting period, it deserves the attention of a wider audience.

The schedule is as follows:

10am & 11.30: Primary level screenings

2pm: Secondary level screening with introduction by Curator

8pm: Arthouse screening with introduction by Curator, Paula Callus (SOAS)

In the reshuffle of junior ministers (Ministers of State) last week, John Curran TD was appointed Minister with responsibility for integration. In his first remarks in the Oireachtas since then, he spoke this week in the Seanad on the subject of 'Minorities, Crime and Justice', on the occasion of a debate on the annual conference of the Association for Criminal Justice Research and Development.

The Seanad (the second, or upper, chamber in Ireland's houses of parliament, the Oireachtas) gets paltry coverage in the Irish media, so I thought it of potential interest to report this speech at length here. The full speech is available here. The statement in reply by Fine Gael senator Eugene O'Regan, and further statements in the debate, are here.

Curran prefaced his remarks with some general comments on the subjects of immigration and integration:

'The most striking aspect of inward migration to Ireland has been the speed with which it has taken place, largely since 1 May, 2004, following the expansion of the European Union. There are currently about 550,000 non-Irish nationals living in Ireland.

'Another striking feature is the fact that the census for 2006 recorded that 29% of immigrants, about 140,000 people, came essentially from the countries of Eastern and Central Europe, most of them in the previous two years.

'Since the census was taken, more have people have arrived as evidenced by the number of PPS numbers issued by the Department of Social and Family Affairs.

'It is important to stress that these people are using rights under the EU Treaties in the same way that Irish people have used the same rights to seek employment in other EU countries.

'In the context of this debate, I think it is important to stress that there is no suggestion that those people who have come here are in any way more involved in criminality than anybody else. One way of seeking to prevent people in this category from becoming involved in anti social behaviour is to encourage them to become involved with their local communities.

'My Office has made funding available to major sporting bodies, the GAA, FAI and Basketball Ireland to assist them in promoting increased participation by non nationals in their games. My Office also made funding available to local authorities to assist them in their efforts.

An example of the way in which local authorities used this funding was to promote voter registration among migrants in order to further improve the participation of migrants in the forthcoming local and European elections.

My Office, together with the Iris O'Brien Foundation, is providing financial support for the extension of the Fáilte Isteach project, started in Summerhill, Co Meath, by Mary Nally of Third Age... I am happy to support this project, bringing together as it does older people and migrants, enabling both to learn from each other about different cultures, languages and traditions...

'I want to say very clearly that it is important that we avoid repeating the mistakes made by others in this area. In the current economic climate, there may be those tempted to scapegoat migrant workers as in some way contributing to our decline in employment. This would be wrong.

'The people who have come here to work and live have made and continue to make a valuable contribution. They pay their taxes here, many have established families here and they are enduring the same economic challenges as everybody else...

One of the areas of concern has been that of road safety. Since March, 2006, the Road Safety Authority has been running an ongoing foreign language road safety campaign. The campaign focuses on legal and road safety advice when driving in Ireland. Areas covered are licence, tax and insurance, the National Car Test, speed limits, penalties for breach of speed limits, seatbelt regulations and drink driving laws. A leaflet and poster entitled Road Safety and the Law have been produced and have been translated into 8 foreign languages- Russian, Polish, Latvian, Lithuanian, French, Portuguese, Arabic and Chinese. The leaflets and posters are distributed through the minority ethnic press, ethnic shops, advice centres, ports and airports as well as An Garda Síochána and local authorities. The new Rules of the Road have so far been produced in Russian, Polish and Mandarin Chinese.

In addition, Garda road safety awareness programmes are conducted in schools, 3rd level colleges, workplaces and other facilities, with the aim of educating road users, including persons from minority ethnic backgrounds of the obligations of all road users.

Staff of the Garda Racial and Intercultural Office, established in 2000, have responsibility for coordinating, monitoring and advising on all aspects of policing in the area of ethnic and cultural diversity. The remit of the Office was recently expanded to cover other areas of diversity and it has begun a consultation process with other diverse communities such as the Gay, Lesbian, Bisexual, Transgender and various organizations representing people with disabilities.

There are currently over 600 trained Ethnic Liaison Officers nationally. These Gardaí liaise with ethnic minority communities, the Traveller Community and inform and assure them of Garda services and protection.

The Garda Pulse system has been adapted to include a modus operandi for recording incidents of racism. All such incidents are captured on the system and are monitored by the Racial and Intercultural Office on a weekly basis.

In addition, there are regular meetings with members of ethnic minority communities as part of the Garda Síochána’s commitment under the National Action Plan against Racism.

Turning to the prisons, all foreign nationals are facilitated in contacting consular representatives and are entitled to receive a visit from their consul at any reasonable time. Cloverhill Remand Prison, which holds the highest proportion of foreign nationals in our system, translates prisoner induction/information leaflets into a number of languages – at present Arabic, Russian, Romanian, Spanish, Mandarin Chinese, French and Latvian. Other institutions with a high proportion of foreign national prisoners follow a similar practice. Any special dietary requirements of prisoners are catered for in all institutions. A module on Intercultural Awareness and Racism is now part of prison officer training.

In the Courts, the Courts Service has produced a wide range of leaflets in various languages available both in hard copy and on its website. The leaflets are available in Irish, English, French, Spanish, Polish, Russian and Mandarin Chinese. These leaflets cover a range of procedures including Bail, Family Law and the Small Claims Procedure.'

Curran also spoke extensively on the issues of people smuggling and human trafficking, and on the state of current legislation in these regards.

Next Thursday evening, 7 May, sees a public lecture and reception at Dublin's Alliance Française, 'A Sikh Face in Ireland: Photography and Life History.

Over the past year and a half, Glenn Jordan and Satwinder Singh have been travelling across Ireland, photographing and documenting the life stories of members of the Sikh community. This research project represents the first systematic exploration of the Sikh presence on the island of Ireland – providing both a profile of the present and a social and cultural history of Sikh immigration. More generally, it is a portrayal of the lived experience and narratives of people who are often perceived as ‘Other’ in mainstream Euro-American society – especially since 9/11.

The key themes addressed in the project involve issues of culture, experience and identity. ‘Being a Sikh’ is not a homogeneous experience: thus the study accounts for the various symbolic manifestations and sub-sects of Sikhism, highlighting generational and gender-based differences of experience among the Sikh community in Ireland.

Glenn Jordan is Reader in Cultural Studies, Cardiff Centre for Creative and Cultural Industries, University of Glamorgan, and Director of the Butetown History and Arts Centre in Cardiff, a community-based archive, gallery and educational space. He is an experienced ethnographer with a longstanding background of documentary photographic work with immigrant communities. He has published widely on race, identity, visual culture and immigrants and minorities in Wales.

Glen Jordan has been an active partner with FOMACS since its inception. Some of his previous projects are here and here. There is a selection of his Sikh portraits here.

Satwinder Singh is an active member in the Irish Sikh Council and the Gurdwara in Dublin. He is an MPhil student in the Centre for Transcultural Research and Media Practice, DIT. His research engages with the Dublin Gurdwara as a political, social, communal and spiritual site.

This event forms part of the Centre for Transcultural Research and Media Practice public lecture series: ‘Negotiated Identities, Histories and Public Cultures’.

The lecture is at 6pm at the Alliance, 1 Kildare Street, Dublin 2. Please RSVP to Maeve Burke at FOMACS: maeve.burke.fomacs@dit.ie.

The following interview with Glen Jordan, by Colin Murphy, was published in the Sunday Tribune, 18/11/2007, on the occasion of his exhibition 'Mothers and Daughters: Portraits from Multi Ethnic Wales' in Dublin.

I was interested in revolutions, " says Glen Jordan, with a chuckle. "The revolution was happening in Angola, Mozambique, South Africa, Zimbabwe, so that was where I wanted to go."

Instead, he went to Cardiff, Wales.

That's a long story. He tells it.

There is a radicalised youth in California, his father descended from East Texan slaves, his mother descended from Cherokee Indians.

Aged nine, he starts a lone protest against the daily pledge of allegiance. In high school, he leads a school boycott that succeeds in getting black history and literature on the syllabus. There is a liberal arts degree, black power activism, anti-Vietnam war activism, and a mentoring with a leading black anthropologist. Then there is illness, nearly causing him to drop out of his studies. So he doesn't get to go to Angola, despite his Portuguese classes.

He goes to Cardiff, to do research on the Butetown docklands community, multiethnic long before anyone had conceived of the term.

He's an anthropologist. They go places, ask questions, and then go home and write about them. If they're good, they get jobs in nice places like Harvard and Princeton. But Jordan doesn't go home. And he doesn't really write about the people. "Mostly I facilitate them writing about themselves."

He helps set up the Butetown History and Arts Centre (www. bhac. org), and settles down to a life mixing academia with community activism. He turns down a job in Princeton. "I wouldn't want to work at any place where I couldn't do exhibitions, where I couldn't build a community archive." Then he gets into photography. He shoots big, beautiful portraits and hangs them at eye level in public spaces "so you as a viewer encounter it directly. . . You walk among the images."

You can walk amongst his images at the moment, on the ground floor of the Civic Offices on Wood Quay in Dublin.

These are some of a series of portraits of mothers and daughters, Asians, Africans, Polish, Greeks, Iranians, Irishf but Welsh also.

At the opening of an exhibition in Dublin, Jordan was approached by some Irish Sikhs. "I know nothing about Sikhs, " he says, but that didn't bother them. His next project is photographing them. "I'm interested in people who wear Sikh turbans and Nike jumpers. How they negotiate culture in complex ways."

Jordan calls it "humanist photography. Because we're all human beings, we're more alike than we're different. I'm interested in helping to enable people, " says the white-bearded, gravely voiced old-timer. Princeton doesn't know what they're missing.

Driving north over Easter, I took a road stop at the Ulster American Folk Park outside Omagh and was hugely impressed. The Park is built around the original homestead of Thomas Mellon, who was born in 1813, and emigrated to America in 1818. His descendants funded the restoration of the cottage in the late 1960s, and the Park around it was subsequently developed in the mid 1970s. Now, it tells the story of emigration from Ulster to America in the 18th & 19th centuries through a series of "living history" exhibits. A walk through the Park brings you to a succession of homes and public buildings, recreations of those typical of Ulster and those subsequently built across the US by emigrants. The buildings are peopled by staff in period costume, occupied with appropriate tasks (a woman sits spinning yarn in front of the hearth, for example), who explain their 'own' occupation and lifestyle with endless patience.

On Easter Monday, there were a series of festival events at the Park, with a particularly lively market day in a fully recreated street from the time, complete with bars, drunks, food stalls, policeman, printer's shop, etc. It was both illuminating and entertaining.

The Park is also home to the Centre for Migration Studies, affiliated with Queen's University Belfast. There is an ongoing exhibition on two centuries of Irish emigration, and various festival-type events upcoming.

It took us two hours to drive from Dublin (going north on the M1 all the way to Newry, then west via Armagh).

At the Ulster American Folk Park, I picked up Brian Lambkin and Patrick Fitzgerald's recent 'Migration in Irish History, 1607-2007'. The authors are staff at the Centre for Migration Studies at the Park (see previous post).

By coincidence, Fintan O'Toole cited this ('superb', he said) in a review last Saturday of 'The Literature of the Irish in Britain: Autobiography and Memoir, 1725-2001', by Liam Harte.

Some excerpts:

'The figures given by Brian Lambkin and Patrick Fitzgerald in their recent and superb overview, Migration in Irish History, 1607-2007 suggest that over three million Irish-born people have emigrated to Britain since 1600. Over the course of the 20th century alone, 1.6 million Irish left for Britain, more than twice as many as went to North America... Yet, compared to the Irish in America, the Irish in Britain have an oddly low profile.

'This is a rare book, a real act of discovery that overturns inherited perceptions and opens up a rich terrain of Irish experience... Harte’s selection from 63 narratives published between 1725 and 1993 amounts, as he acknowledges in his introduction, to a corpus of writing that is collectively “fragmentary, eclectic, amorphous, uneven and obscure”. Yet if that sounds like an apology, it is in fact a brave declaration of intent. Harte does include the better-known autobiographies, like the great Irish-language writings of Micí Mac Gabhann (The Hard Road to the Klondike) and Donall MacAmhlaigh (The Diary of an Exile), and the much-read accounts of WB Yeats, Patrick MacGill, Elizabeth Bowen, Sean O’Casey, Louis MacNeice and John B Keane. But the real excitement of the book is its archaeological uncovering of the fragmentary and the obscure, of names and stories that, if they were ever remembered, have long been forgotten.

'There are also significant gaps. Harte could not find any surviving narratives by Irish Protestant labourers in 19th-century Scotland, and the women who worked so prominently as nurses and domestic servants are largely absent from the record. (Though Harte did find one fascinating account by a Tyrone-born woman, Mary Loughran, who wrote under the pseudonym Maureen Hamish.)

'Yet these absences draw attention to the remarkable range of Harte’s research. His sources include St Crispin: A Magazine for the Leather Trades , whose issue for May 1869 yields the autobiography of a London-Irish shoemaker, John O’Neill. The story of the tailor JE is drawn from an 1857 edition of the Glasgow didactic magazine The Commonwealth . One grippingly unsentimental account of post-famine emigration, by Owen Peter Mangan from Co Cavan, is previously unpublished, and comes from the Public Record Office of Northern Ireland.

'As any Irish emigrant knows, the carefully maintained religious and social distinctions of the Irish mean little in Britain, and it is fascinating to discover that this has been so since the 18th century. Irish otherness was often inescapable, even for émigré Protestants. Laetitia Pilkington, who grew up privileged and Protestant in early 18th-century Dublin, is assailed by the London toughs who have come to haul her off to debtors’ prison as “you Irish Papist bitch”. The mid-19th century tailor JE, a sober-minded Antrim man, finds himself among his colleagues in the north of England, “the butt of their ridicule and scorn”. The hand-loom weaver William Hammond, another sober Ulsterman, is reminded of his origins by his Glasgow co-workers: “some of the baser sort”, he writes with sublime understatement, “made me understand that it was not an advantage to have been born in Ireland”.

'... Harte undermines the whole notion of “the Irish in Britain” as a single entity and restores the complicating factors of class, gender, religion and geography. Above all, he restores in his wonderful book the individuality of each one of the millions of painful, hopeful journeys across the Irish Sea.'

The Forum Polonia is organising a round table discussion in Dublin this Sunday: 'Opportunities and Challenges - Poles in the Local Elections'. The forum will bring together various authors and authorities on migration and local politics with Polish candidates in the forthcoming local elections.

'New Guests of the Irish Nation' by Bryan Fanning, Co-Director of the Migration and Citizenship Research Initiative and author on migration and racism in Ireland.

'Migrants in local politics - Experiences in the US and Ireland', by Cormac O’Donnell of Dublin City Council. Cormac O'Donnell is the Strategic Policy Manager at Dublin City Council’s Integration Office. He leads the Migrant Voters campaign in Dublin.

'Polish Voices – Vote in the Local Elections campaign' by Emilia Marchelewska of Forum Polonia. 'Polish Voices...' is an information campaign aimed at encouraging Poles to register and vote in the local elections.

'20th Anniversary of the Collapse of Communism in Poland and Eastern Europe' by Jacqueline Hayden of the Political Science Dept at Trinity College Dublin. As a young journalist at the beginning of her career, Jacqueline Hayden went to Poland in 1980, where she met the underground opposition activists, KOR-u, labelled ‘dissidents’ at the time. She was also introduced to Lech Wałęsa when he still worked as an ordinary electrician in the Gdańsk shipyards.

The roundtable is at Polish House, 20, Fitzwilliam Place, Dublin 2. Contact Info@forumpolonia.org for more.

Some background from Forum Polonia:

Various sources estimate that the number of Poles working and living in Ireland exceeds 150,000, making it the second largest minority after the UK community. Many Polish people will remain in Ireland for the next few years, and some of them have already decided to live permanently in their new home. The Polish community is a vibrant part of Irish society and has a huge input into the development of the country. Poles work, they pay taxes, they set up businesses, and they create jobs.

This year the Polish community will have the opportunity to participate in local elections. They have the chance to vote, and even more importantly to stand for election, which many of them have already decided to do.

The aim of our conference is to understand what the benefits of being active in local elections are for migrant communities, particularly for the Polish community. We would like to introduce to the wider community people who have decided to stand as candidates at local level, as well as Polish activists within political parties. By doing this we would like to demonstrate to the public that the Polish community understands its role in Irish life, and that it would like to participate more actively and take its share of responsibility for the future of its new homeland.
Our hope is that on April 26th, we will host representatives, candidates and activists from different parties, Polish organizations, as well as people actively involved in the Polish community in Ireland.

Forum Polonia is a cooperative platform that brings together representatives of various Polish community organisations, the media, and individuals involved in projects relating to the Polish minority and its links to Irish society as a whole. The Forum operates through information exchanges, mutual supports, social integration, and promoting and developing the interests of the Polish community in the Republic of Ireland.

A press release for Sunday's Polish roundtable on the local elections (as reported above) lead me to the Forum Polonia website for the first time. It's an elegant, simple, multimedia platform, mostly in Polish, featuring some short video reports. Amongst the leading items are a call for submissions for the Irish Polish Society Art Exhibition, to be held at Dublin City Council, Civic Offices Wood Quay from 22nd June to 3rd July, and details of a training course being run by community radio station NEAR 90fm. The course will take place over two successive Saturdays (May 9 & 16) and will cover media literacy, community radio, studio, portable recorders and production values. Trainees will be invited to apply to be part of the station's programming schedule. Cost: €50. Email alan@near.ie for more information. Deadline for applications is Friday 1st May.

Hana Makhmalbaf is a 19 year old Iranian filmmaker, the youngest in a family of filmmakers: her father, Mohsen Makhmalbaf is an influential, controversial figure in Iran; his wife, Marzieh Meshkini, is also a director, as is his elder daughter Samira, 28, who has directed four films.

Stumbling across an interview with Hana in the Guardian archives (from last July), I was struck be this description of the impact of her family’s profession on their own lives and identities:

‘Film-making has made our family into nomads and refugees… My father, in order to make films, lives abroad and moves from one place to another.’

In 2001, when Hana made The Joy of Madness, two kidnap attempts were made on her in Kabul. And she is always on her guard in Iran: ‘Whenever I leave home, I don't know what will happen to me. Incidents are quite common. I might be arrested by a policeman because my scarf is not quite right. Or, if I walk with my brother, they might come and ask who we are. There might be a knock at the door and I might be arrested - because of my thoughts and the films I have made.’

Hana was interviewed on the occasion of the release of her film about Afghanistan, ‘Buddha Collapsed Out of Shame’, set against the background of the Taliban’s destruction of the giant statues of Buddha.

‘Many people think that if there are statues of Buddha, this represents peace… There was the contrast between what they represented and what was going on in daily life. I wanted to say that the level of atrocity could make even a statue, which has no feeling or humanity, fall apart from the shame of it.’

‘When I talked to the people, they all complained that everybody throughout the world was very worried about the destruction of a statue - but not so concerned with thousands of people being killed."

There is a Q&A with Hana Makhmalbaf here, and a trailer for the film here. There is a family 'film house' website here, with extensive interviews, stills, etc, from the whole family's filmography.

We reported previously on the bizarre media antics of controversial US sheriff, Joe Arpaio, who has garnered international attention for his harsh treatment of immigrants in Arizona, and has courted publicity with staged round-ups and reality tv appearances. Now Arpaio is again the focus of media attention: a series of investigative reports on his immigration enforcement measures has just won a Pulitzer Prize, as reported on America's Voice, here.

The stories ran in the East Valley Tribune, and won reporters Ryan Gabrielson and Paul Giblin a Pulitzer for local reporting. They're published online here, and are accompanied by an impressive array of interactive multimedia items.

There is a rather grim twist to this story, from a media perspective. Reporter Ryan Gabrielson (pictured) was laid off in recent months due to financial difficulties at the Tribune. The Tribune itself is clearly struggling: it went from being a daily paid-subscription newspaper to a free-circulation tabloid, published four days per week. More recently, it announced it will cease its Saturday edition, publishing three days each week, and also will resume paid circulation.

Meanwhile, Gabrielson has gone on to set up a new online paper, The Arizona Guardian, focussing on the state legislature, with other reporters laid off. Going against the trend, this is a subscription news site.

On a lighter note, Arpaio was a guest of US comic Steve Colbert, who has a faux-right wing talk show, on Monday.   

The editor of the Tribune has an article on the background to their investigation on their website. Here are some extensive excerpts:

'Six months ago, the Tribune began an investigative project to answer three basic questions about Arpaio’s illegal immigration enforcement effort: How does it work? What is it costing the taxpayers? And what is the effect on other aspects of his agency — and public safety in general — if his focus has become so heavily on illegal immigration?

'This five-part series marks the first time anyone has examined Maricopa County Sheriff’s Office operations in such depth. Sheriff’s officials were uncharacteristically responsive to public records requests, saying, at first, they were happy to show off the enforcement effort. Arpaio and his top deputies made enforcement files, budget numbers and numerous other records available to the Tribune. That hasn’t always been the case with the agency, and one story in this series discusses some ways the agency tried to block county auditors and the reporters.

'Moreover, several top-ranking officers candidly discussed their policies and their concerns about the toll that is being taken on their operations as the cash-strapped agency tries to serve an area bigger than New Jersey and take on illegal immigration enforcement, too.

'Tribune writers Ryan Gabrielson and Paul Giblin began by reviewing MCSO case files from 2006, when Arpaio’s operation began, through 2007. Using thousands of pages of unredacted records provided by the sheriff’s office, they built a database of criminal immigration arrests that includes in-depth information on the immigrants and well as the enforcement effort. The database is unique; not even the sheriff’s office has compiled such a systematic examination of the human smuggling enforcement operation.

'Using other records obtained from MCSO, the state, the county, the federal government and cities that MCSO contracts with, the reporters were able to explore staffing levels and personnel assignments, budget and payroll information, response times, arrest rates and the status of MCSO operations throughout the county. They examined interagency e-mails and other correspondence, state and federal grant documents and the rules governing the so-called 287(g) authority that Immigration and Customs Enforcement extends to local agencies that agree to follow strict guidelines prohibiting racial profiling, among other things.

'Beyond the facts and figures in public records, human sources were also vital to this project. Gabrielson and Giblin conducted nearly 100 interviews with deputies, federal agents, lawmakers, county and town officials, crime victims, local police chiefs and immigration experts. A number of people spoke about their concerns that law enforcement services in their communities have fallen off since the illegal immigration effort began.

'The sheriff’s office also allowed the reporters and a photographer to ride along with immigration patrols near Wickenburg and with deputies on an urban “immigration sweep” in Phoenix.

'The searchable database of criminal immigration cases is available online at eastvalleytribune.com/page/reasonable_doubt. We’ve also posted many of the county, state and federal documents used in this series as well as interactive graphics and maps and several videos, including Joe Arpaio talking at length about his immigration operations.'

Artist Anthony Haughey and the Global Migration Research Network will create a ‘live’ participatory video work during The Prehistory of the Crisis ll exhibition at Project Arts Centre Gallery and Belfast Exposed Gallery during July and August. This will involve the construction of a mobile set/installation – an allegory of ‘migratory culture’, and transcultural exchange. It will function as a ‘portal’ for filming and a situational artwork invoking references of temporality, dislocation and hospitality. Visitors to the Pre-History of the Crisis ll exhibition will be invited to participate and to respond to an emerging ‘cultural crisis’ in Ireland. Realist, fictional and humorous performances of citizen and migrant experiences will be most welcome.

See below for more on Anthony Haughey ('Further media on Irish artist documenting migration', 10/04/2009 and 'Video response to 'Fortress Europe'', 08/04/09 and 'Artist intervention at Dublin City Council', on 04/12/08, in the December archive).

This information comes from the Create collaborative arts news digest, published by Create, the national development agency for collaborative arts. The collaborative arts digest provides a summary of collaborative arts projects that have been taking place nationwide over the last number of years and previews upcoming projects. It aims to act as a source of information, dissemination and discussion about collaborative art practice.

I was disappointed to learn that a planned Irish tour by Scottish theatre company Dogstar with their play, 'The Tailor of Inverness', has just been pulled due to lack of funding. The play will, however, be of interest to readers of Migration Matters. The play, by Matthew Zajac, is the story of Zajac's father, a tailor from Eastern Poland. In the company's own words:

The Tailor of Inverness is a story of journeys, of how a boy who grew up on a farm in Galicia (Eastern Poland, now Western Ukraine) came to be a tailor in Inverness. His life spanned most of the 20th century. His story is not straightforward. He was taken prisoner by the Soviets in 1939 and forced to work east of the Urals, then freed in an amnesty after the German invasion of the Soviet Union in 1941. He then joined the thousands of Poles who travelled to Tehran, then Egypt, to be integrated into the British Army, fighting in North Africa and Italy. He was then resettled in Britain in 1948, joining his brother in Glasgow. This is the story he told.

But there is another story, and perhaps a third and fourth one, for in order to survive, he had to adopt different identities. Like all immigrants, the tailor had to adapt and he did that very successfully, integrating himself into the fabric of Highland life. And fabric was perhaps the most important medium through which he achieved this. He made a variety of clothes for thousands of people, including himself, constructing the outward trappings which play a part in defining who we are. Fabric. Fabrication.

Crossing the borders from Poland to Russia to Iran to Egypt to Italy to Germany to Scotland, the fable reflects on the Second World War but is personal, intimate and rooted in two cultures: Galicia and the Scottish Highlands. The play uses the central metaphor of the tailor and his fabric. Layers of ghostly clothes are projected on to with a series of still and moving images from the tailor's past and present-day Ukraine. The performance combines storytelling, songs, poetry and physicality with a rich soundscape of live fiddle music and effects.

The play won a Fringe First award at the Edinburgh Fringe Festival last year. There are reviews here and here.

Two art students are currently working with a Nigerian group in Dublin to develop a 'collaborative art' project for exhibition in Dublin later this month. The project is part of the Learning Development programme run by Create, the National Agency of Collaborative Arts. Under the programme, students from the National College of Art and Design in Dublin and from a number of partner colleges in the US work in pairs with community groups across Dublin to develop an art project. Grace and Kristine, from Tisch School of the Arts in New York and NCAD, are collaborating with the Multicultural Resource Centre to develop a project with a group of Bini performers from Nigeria.

They explain: 'The outcome of this project aims to challenge Nigerian stereotypes in Dublin. By doing so, we hope to create portraits which inverse the stereotypical view of a minority group in the city centre. In all the national conversations about immigration in Dublin, it is easy to forget the individual person living in this reality. The project's aim is to go beyond this generalisation and reflect the individual personalities of this Nigerian group.

'The specific work we are doing with them entailed workshops, where we got to know the group, spending time with them, finding out what it is that they do. We've been talking about representation and also object representation, we were hoping to incorporate either photography, written word and/or audio in the final piece for the exhibition. One of the things which struck us throughout our time of getting to know them, was how proud they are of their culture and what they do, so we really want to keep a traditional aspect to the work, but by challenging this stereotype we want to juxtapose the traditional aspect with more personal stories of perhaps their life here in Dublin.'

The performance art piece that results will be on view as part of the exhibition 'From Context to Exhibition' in the Lab, on Foley St in Dublin, from 23rd April for a week.

I've just come across this two-part audio interview with Anthony Haughey, the artist featured below ('Video response to 'Fortress Europe'', 08/04/09), on the subject of his earlier work, 'How to be a Model Citizen', and other work on topics of migration, diversity and integration. The interviews can be podcast. Also, this essay on an earlier photographic work, 'The Edge of Europe'.

Plans by the Obama administration to move on immigration reform have at best a 30% chance of success, suggested Niall O'Dowd, chairman of the Irish Lobby for Immigration Reform, on RTE's lunchtime news today. This time around, the debate would be a lot more nuanced, he suggested, optimistically. The last debate was just about one word, 'amnesty', pushed by the right. This time around, there would have to be a strong argument made about the good that legalisation can do for America and the American economy. O'Dowd said it would be an uphill fight, but that the Obama administration was very committed, and he wouldn't bet against them. To listen, go here and forward to 16 minutes. The Irish Times report on the subject is here. Slate has a press review on the issue here. Frank Sharry of America's Voice - and a collaborator with Fomacs - has blogged on the subject here. I'll quote him at length:

'Today's news is not the first time the conventional wisdom regarding the prospects of immigration reform has been turned on its head. Before the 2008 elections, the inside-the-Beltway belief was that Latinos would not play a critical role during the election and that immigration was not a mobilizing issue. This myth was shattered when Latinos and other immigrants turned out in record numbers, voted to punish Republicans for their hostility and opposition to immigration reform, and turned at least four states from red to blue.

'Since the election, we have asserted that President Obama would keep his campaign promise to tackle immigration reform during his first year in office. But critics and skeptics have argued that addressing immigration reform later this year would be impossible because of the down economy. Again, this conventional wisdom misses the mark - not to mention the economic benefits of reform for the average American.

'We all know the public voted for change. Two-thirds of voters approve of the aggressive approach being taken by the Obama White House to the myriad of reform challenges facing the country. In addition, the majority of Americans agree that earned citizenship, combined with smart policies that significantly reduce illegal immigration, is the American way to solve this complex challenge. They understand that our immigration system is broken, and overwhelmingly support practical efforts to fix it. 

'Moreover, the version of immigration reform that is likely to be debated this year will focus primarily on cracking down on bad actor employers who violate immigration, labor, and tax laws, combined with the legalization of workers and families already contributing and living here in the United States. This approach will lift wages for American and immigrant workers alike, enhance tax fairness and boost revenues, and create a level playing field for honest employers. This approach is about rebuilding America together.

'President Obama is rising to the occasion and demonstrating leadership on this issue that vexes the American public. It will be up to Congress to follow his lead and make it happen. We stand ready to work with all of our elected leaders to enact this long overdue reform this year. The time is most certainly now.'

Frontex is the EU border agency tasked with patrolling the Mediterranean and Atlantic to intercept migrant boats attempting to reach Europe. While researching the background to the drownings off the coat of Libya last week ('The Libya-Lampedusa drownings: a briefing', 03/04/09, below), I came across this report on Indymedia of protests at Frontex last summer, which has various audio and video reports on Frontex and the objections of protestors. The Statewatch website ('monitoring the state and civil liberties in Europe') also has various documents on Frontex.

There are fewer irregular migrants in the European Union than assumed. While the European Commission has estimated that between 4.5 and 8 million foreign nationals are residing in its territory without a right to legal residence, a detailed review of the situation in the member states has lead researchers to estimate that the range is more likely between 2.8 and 6 million. (Both figures were calculated for the year 2005.)

This information comes from the database on irregular migration, an impressive new online resource providing detailed figures for irregular migration across Europe (though there are no figures for Ireland as yet). The Database website states: 'Irregular migration is a top priority in the European Union. Due to security and financial concerns, an increasing amount of resources are devoted to preventing people from entering without authorization, and to enforcing the return of Non-EU citizens who are not (or no longer) authorized to stay. At the same time, NGOs point to serious humanitarian side effects of this restrictive policy approach. Despite the political relevance of the phenomenon, assessments of the size of the irregular migrant population are often vague and of unclear origin. This website aims at increasing transparency in this sensitive field.'

The Database is part of the EU-funded Clandestino project, 'Undocumented Migration: Counting the Uncountable. Data and Trends Across Europe'. The project aims to bring together NGOs, local authorities, policy makers, researchers, journalists and other professionals to compare approaches on similar issues and exchange opinions on possible policy alternatives concerning some Northern European countries that share common features as regards irregular migration.

Tabs Theatre Company shines a spotlight on the issue of trafficking, in a new play by Victoria Fradgley, ‘Never After’, which finishes a short run at the Smock Alley Theatre in Dublin tomorrow night. Her play tells the stories of women caught up in the modern-day “slave trade” in Ireland, with an international cast reflecting the diverse backgrounds of their characters. Tabs Theatre also works in educational drama, and has a strong commitment to social issues. 'We are trying to raise awareness of this horrific industry that is so prolific in our country,' they say. Tickets, or further information, from 087 9333186 or tabstheatreco@yahoo.ie.

Showing this coming weekend at the Gallery of Photography in Temple Bar, Dublin, are new video works by artist Anthony Haughey on the issue of 'Fortress Europe'. According to a statement:

'Prospect' brings the viewer on a metaphoric journey across the turbulent seas off the coast of Malta. The vantage point of the camera places the viewer in the position of sub-Saharan migrants. The accompanying soundtrack and previously unseen footage records first-hand accounts of perilous journeys from Sudan and Somalia to Europe, journeys that can take over three years.

In 'Progress ll', a video work made in collaboration with Susanne Bosch, the camera moves continually around a dinner table, at which a group of recent migrants to Ireland are telling stories. The constant movement creates a spatio-temporal frame referencing the transient position of the participants as guests in the host country. The individual dialogues explore the in-between space and transcultural connections between ‘home’ and the host country.

Migration Matters previously covered Haughey's work - see the report, 'Artist intervention at Dublin City Council', on 04/12/08, in the December archive. As noted then, Anthony Haughey is an artist and Lecturer in Photography in the School of Media, DIT (which is FOMACS's host institution). There's a detailed biog of the artist here. Further information on Haughey, from the press release: He has exhibited widely in Europe and the US and his work is in public collections including the Victoria & Albert Museum, British Council, Crawford Municipal Art Gallery, Wolverhampton Art Gallery and many private collections. His forthcoming exhibitions include the Prehistory of the Crisis ll at Project Arts Centre and Belfast Exposed Gallery and his installation Class of 73 at Les Rencontres d’Arles 09.

The drownings of hundreds of migrants off the coast of Libya in the attempt to reach Italy earlier this week has thrust the issue of the 'boat migrants' back into the headlines.

There is an excellent general briefing on migration from sub-Saharan Africa to North Africa and to Europe on the Migration Information Source, here.

From that article: 'According to different estimates, between 65,000 and 120,000 sub-Saharan Africans enter the Maghreb (Mauritania, Morocco, Tunisia, Algeria, and Libya) yearly, of which 70 to 80 percent are believed to migrate through Libya and 20 to 30 percent through Algeria and Morocco. Several tens of thousands (not hundreds of thousands, as media coverage might suggest) of sub-Saharan Africans try to cross the Mediterranean each year.

'Although commonly portrayed as "destitute" or "desperate," migrants are often relatively well educated and from moderate socio-economic backgrounds. They move because of a general lack of opportunities, fear of persecution and violence, or a combination of both.'

The BBC had this interview with an unnamed man from Eritrea who had successfully made a similar journey previously.

'There are problems in Europe, but there is a bit of freedom. I can go normally in the street,' he said. 'In Africa, I cannot go from country to country. If I want to go from city to city, I need a permit. Here in Europe, I can go anywhere I like. Here I am free.'

There is a series of photos of the situation on the Italian island of Lampedusa here.

The International Organisation of Migration's press briefings on the issue are here.

There is a documentary from Italian television (in French and English with Italian subtitles) here.

The leading source of activist information on this subject is Fortress Europe. There is a superb recent account of an investigation into conditions for migrants in detention in Libya here. Fortress Europe's 2007 report on Libya can be downloaded here.

Migreurop has a good briefing on the relationship between Libya and the EU with relation to the management of migration here.

Lastly, I'll be presenting a short piece on the subject on RTE Radio One's World Report at some time between eight and nine am on Saturday. It'll be archived online subsequently.

‘Every community has a memory of itself. Neither an archive nor an authoritative record... but a living history, an awareness of a collective identity woven of a thousand stories.’ So proclaims the Center for Digital Storytelling, an international not-for-profit community arts organization, based at Berkeley, California, ‘rooted in the craft of personal storytelling’.

FOMACS is collaborating with the Center, and their director, Joe Lambert, visited FOMACS last October to give a workshop (see here for more) during which he introduced the work of the Silence Speaks Project, an international digital storytelling initiative that provides survivors and witnesses of violence and other forms of trauma with a safe, supportive environment in which to tell their stories through a participatory media production process. Media trainers from the Center will return to FOMACS in May 2009 to run a train-the-trainer, one-week workshop.

The Center defines their remit as follows: ‘We assist youth and adults around the world in using media tools to share, record, and value stories from their lives, in ways that promote artistic expression, health and well being, and justice. While the term "digital storytelling" has been used to describe a wide variety of new media practices, what best describes our approach is its emphasis on first-person narrative, meaningful workshop processes, and participatory production methods.’

Questions of migration, identity and home occur frequently in people’s stories, as in this story, ‘Home… in past tense’, by Bix Gabriel, from Hyderabad, India. Gabriel writes, ‘‘Home… in past tense’ is ultimately for me. It reminds me that the city I left and have always loved can never be the same, when I return there. It will always be something outside of me and part of me... present and past.’

The Center has been promoting Digital Storytelling internationally since 1994, as this map shows.

Fourteen per cent of community radio licences awarded in the UK go to ‘minority ethnic groups’ according to a new report on the sector. That’s 27 licences out of a total of 191.

This breaks down as follows: around half (14) of the stations aimed at minority ethnic communities are aimed at one or more communities with a south Asian heritage. Other services are aimed at Afro-Caribbean communities (6), African communities (2), have a strong Irish focus (2), target the Jewish community (1) or minority ethnic communities generally (2).

An intriguing statistic: stations serving minority ethnic communities received 34% of their income from advertising, whilst stations serving general audiences in urban areas took on average only 11% of their income from advertising.
On average, these stations had 77 volunteers, volunteering for an average of three hours per week. The stations averaged 89 hours of output per week, with 35% of that speech.

The report is the annual report on community radio by Ofcom, the federal communications regulation agency in England. You can download it here.

Peter Davies, Ofcom's director of radio policy, said community radio was a "real success story". "It delivers rich and varied content to listeners and provides additional benefits through community involvement and training. In just over three years, 130 stations have sprung up across the length and breadth of the UK ... We are delighted that interest from those wishing to run such stations for their own communities remains high."

There’s a story on the report, and the sector, from the Guardian, here. There's a list of all minority ethnic stations in the annex to the report.

Conor Lenihan, the Minister for Integration, last week launched a “Not just numbers” education toolkit, aimed at improving understanding of migration and asylum.

The toolkit, available here, consists of a series of short films, a teacher’s manual, a Trafficking & Smuggling Exercise, a toolkit evaluation form. Each of the films tells the story of an individual migrant, and they are strikingly shot and very personal. Réan is an Iranian refugee, Adelina is a Kosovar refugee, Doré is a young migrant, Tino is a ‘post WWII migrant worker’ and Alfredo and Veronica are ‘highly-skilled migrant workers’.

At the launch, Conor Lenihan said: “We must always remember that migrants and asylum seekers are people just like us, who have families and friends, concerns and worries, and hopes and aspirations of their own. It is important that young people are reminded of the dangers of not embracing and valuing diversity, inclusiveness and difference. Ireland must be mindful of history to ensure that racism, intolerance and bigotry are eradicated. Tragic events such as the Holocaust must not be allowed to occur again. It is vital that we all learn and constantly reinforce the fact that everybody has human rights - such rights are not dependent on race, nationality or religion.”

The Minister’s press release noted that the number of applications for asylum in Ireland has fallen from a high of 11,598 in 2002 to 3,866 in 2008, and that 524 asylum applications had been received in the first two months of 2009, a 16% decrease on the equivalent figure for the first two months of 2008.

The toolkit is being launched across Europe and is a joint venture of the International Organisation for Migration and the UN High Commissioner for Refugees, UNHCR.