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21
COUNTERING XENOPHOBIA THROUGH STORY-TELLING
By Cameron Thibos and Vanessa Kisuule
Cameron Thibos is the managing editor of Beyond
Trafficking and Slavery and Mediterranean Journeys
in Hope. He holds a D.Phil. from the Department of
International Development at the University of Oxford.
Vanessa Kisuule, a Bristol-based word artist, was invited to
speak at the Global Forum for Migration and Development in
Dhaka, about the power of art to combat rising anti-migrant
sentiment. Read her thoughts and hear her poems below.
Cameron Thibos (oD): You’ve given me the basic sketch
that you are British-born and Ugandan by descent. But
what brought you into this whole field of spoken word
art and to talk about things like migration, integration,
and identity issues?
Cameron: Where do you see potential for migrants to gain
a platform to counter this xenophobia? How do you see
the arts, migration, and integration meshing together?
Vanessa: That’s a good question. In schools at the moment,
there’s this programme that contains things like retaining
our heritage, maintaining tolerance as well as integrate
patriotism and nationalism. I am hoping that we really do
find space to let people tell their stories in their own way so
as to not project our own ideas and presumptions. We need
to find a way to facilitate people who want to speak or who
feel able to speak. But, the difficulty with that is that people
in the position of being an asylum seeker or a refugee are in
danger of being exposed or deported.
Vanessa Kisuule: I was in Uganda just before I went to
university. I stayed with my family, and one of my cousins
who lives out in Canada and we were bonding over the
fact that we were second generation kids, raised in western
countries and that we were going back to this country of
‘origin’ or ‘roots’ and not quite feeling this sense of being
at home that you are supposed to feel.. At first I thought it
was pretentious but later on he showed me some clips on
YouTube which I binged watched. I never thought this would
be my career path. I had written a little poem so I went to an
open mic in London to explore my options. I mostly wrote
short stories so the concept of going up and reading a poem
about me, or my life, or my opinion was kind of revelatory. Cameron: You’re much more clued into the Bristol
arts scene than I am, but from the posters on the wall
there seem to be a lot of art projects going on to try to
increase empathy for new arrivals. In other words, how
much do you think this is already happening?
Cameron: Some of your work speaks to the themes of
the Global Forum for Migration and Development. Are
these simply some of the themes in your work, or are
they a particular focus for you? Vanessa: Absolutely. And that to me is something that can
and should be funded. We probably need that boost now
more than ever. We need the colour, we need the light relief,
and we need the expression.
Vanessa: This is the great thing about what we could very
tentatively call graffiti “street art”. Graffiti seeps into your
subconscious whether you realise it or not. That creates this
background sentiment, where the city has this sentiment
that we are wearing quite literally on our walls. I feel like
graffiti is a very powerful example of how communal art, or
street art works.
Cameron: We need more truly public art.
Vanessa: I try to avoid being didactic as well as sitting down Cameron: What was the focus of the poems you presented
and thinking, “Ok, in this poem, I am going to write about at the Global Forum for Migration and Development?
this issue”. When this happens, it can make you drown out
Vanessa: The poems that I performed at the Global Forum
the nuance of the story and the nuance of the situation,
for Migration and Development were just stories told with
particularly if you are passionate about something. I know
as much honesty and fallibility as I could give them. I think
that my opinion and my lens is always going to be there,
that’s a really powerful thing, vulnerability and fallibility.
but the issues that I address are never more important than
Read full interview at: https://goo.gl/FtAEZg
the stories or the people in my poems.
Watch videos: https://youtu.be/Pne_gfXzrJI - https://youtu.be/hIJ79omKfhc