The target audience to include the general public, asylum seekers, visual artists, special interest groups
and organisations. The“Tool of Conversation” seminar will take place in The Lab, Foley Street on
June 30 th 2007.
Aims of Seminar
To bring visual artists, asylum seekers and stakeholder organisations together to examine the role of
visual art as a means of exploring and highlighting issues around immigration and new communities.
Objectives of Seminar
1. Looking at specific examples and case studies of collaborations between visual artists, asylum seekers and organisations.
2. Putting artists, asylum seekers and organisations together to examine issues around collaborative arts practice with new communities and exploring possibilities for future arts practice.
3. Examining the “relational aesthetics” within collaborative arts practice, for instance, how interactions, conversations and exchanges can be forms of art in themselves.
Guest speakers to include:
Ronan Mc Crea Intro and Chairperson (visual artist)
Ronan McCrea (b.1969) is an artist living and working in Dublin. His practice includes sculptural interventions, photography and slide installations. His recent work is concerned with the space between collective modes of memory and remembering as a private act. This is the basis of an ongoing slide installation work Sequences, Scenarios, Locations, evolving in various manifestations since 2000. He was one of seven artists who represented Ireland in 2005’s Venice Biennale and recent other projects include exhibitions at Galway Arts Centre (2004) Project Arts Centre, Dublin (2003) Glassbox, Paris (2002) as well as numerous group shows in Ireland and internationally. McCrea is currently a part time lecturer at Dublin Institute of Technology and is currently perusing his PhD at the University of Ulster, Belfast.
Christian Kotey (visual artist)-Airbrush Artist
-Community Artist
-Body Painter/SFX Artist
-Illustrator/Films and Comics
Christian is mixed Nigerian/Irish race. He is going to speak about developing culture through the
visual arts, incorporating storytelling, drama, make-up and sculpture and their impact on Globalisation
in today’s society.
Jesse Jones (visual artist)
Jesse Jones is a Dublin based artist. She is a BA graduate from NCAD (2002) and MA graduate
in visual arts practice from the Institute of Art & Design T Dun Laoghaire in 2005. Jones’s practice
focuses on the embedded political and social history within everyday life.
Recent work made by Jones includes 12 Angry Films, a public art commission for Fire Station Artists
Studios and Dublin Docklands.
This project consisted of an intensive collaboration with an elective community. Informed by activist
workshops in drama and filmmaking, the process led to the creation of a series of 6 short films. The
resulting films were then shown in a purpose built drive-in cinema in Dublin port in November 2006.
She has also staged various musical performances in public spaces such an impromptu operatic
performance on a bridge in Tallaght as well as a symphonic performance of Leonard Bernstein’s
score from On the Waterfront in the courtyard of a social housing project in the north inner city.
Jones’ practice focuses on how cultural intervention can create new public spheres and moments of
critical convergence. She is currently lecturing in “contextual practices” in DIT and is an artist in residence
in Fire Station Artist Studios. Jesse is going to look at access to the public sphere for asylum seekers
and how art can create an alternative public sphere, collaborative art as shared learning and how we
can find a common culture through language.
Femi-Bisi Adepoju, who received Humanitarian Leave to Remain status.
Femi is Nigerian. He received Humanitarian Leave to Remain status in Ireland last year. Studied Buisness/Administration and Financial Management ACCA in England. Currently studying sociology
in an Institute in Cork . Femi is going to talk about the assimilation of foreigners into Irish society and the adverse effect it has on women especially. He is also going to give examples of some phobias and propaganda,
Nigerians has which causes problems for integration between immigrants and host communities.
Ann Walshe, art project co-ordinator, SPIRASI, centre for the education and integration of migrants
Abstract: Art is a tool of communication – it speaks not only of its author but also its audience. At
its best it transcends normal communication by saying what cannot be said within everyday patterns
of verbal and written communication. Furthermore, it can speak to people who do not usually listen.
More importantly art is impossible to avoid – it asserts itself in our visual landscape. My paper will
look at why members of the migrant community in Ireland should engage in the arts in their process
of integration and it will consider the part NGOs have to play.
Fidele Mutwarasibo, Research and Integration Officer at the Immigrant Council of Ireland
and founding member of the Africa Centre, Dublin,
Abstract : Art is important in expressing people identities; this is relevant in a changing Ireland.
Integration is a multi-faceted complex process and the paper will emphasize the need to move away
from the Three-D integration. Art is paramount in the celebration of diversity.
Integration though should go beyond celebration of difference and expand to the realm of things like
the redefinition of identity in the changing"globalised" world.
Key words : Art, Immigration, Social Cohesion, Integration, three-D integration (Dance, Dish, Dress)
Bio: Fidele Mutwarasibo is originally from Rwanda. Prior to coming to Ireland in the mid-1990s, he
worked as a secondary school teacher, and in community development, relief and emergency.
He currently works as Research and Integration Officer with the Immigrant Council of Ireland (ICI).
Prior to joining the ICI in 2002, he worked with the African Cultural Project and Canal Communities
Partnership. He is a founding member of Africa Centre and is involved in a number of other organisations.
He is researching "Social Capital and the Emergence of Migrant/Ethnic Minority Leaders in Ireland"
for a doctoral thesis at the University College Dublin. He is currently a member of the Consumer Panel
of the Financial Regulator .
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