Writing Workshops
As an associate artist with Eastside Educational Trust, I ran workshops on journalism, poetry, and creative writing for children and teens in London in 2012.
Using a mixture of dialogue and structured activities, I engaged students' imaginations and connected with their own life experiences. For me, writing demands an open mind and active empathy. Not only must you be able to put yourself in another person's shoes. You must be willing to be changed in the process.
One workshop explored the relationship between words, music and silence to help three young women prepare for their Arts Award.
Another project was a two-day event preparing London schoolchildren to interview a WWII Spitfire pilot. You can see a video of the project below.
Untitled Project: Baha'i Higher Education and Human Rights in Iran
In 2012, I worked on a documentary about the denial of education to the Baha'i religious community living in Iran.
Baha'is in Iran are not allowed to go to school. They are barred from universities and other academic and professional organisations. So in 1987, the Baha'i Institute of Higher Education (BIHE) was founded to provide young Baha'is with the opportunity to obtain degrees and further their curiosity and knowledge of the world.
But the Iranian government continues to persecute and imprison Baha'i students and teachers. People are arrested suddenly and taken to undisclosed locations. Their stories are passed through friends and family members to the outside world, but too often the world turns a blind eye.
Some Resources:
Education Under Fire
Can You Solve This?
Iran Press Watch
Baha'is in Iran are not allowed to go to school. They are barred from universities and other academic and professional organisations. So in 1987, the Baha'i Institute of Higher Education (BIHE) was founded to provide young Baha'is with the opportunity to obtain degrees and further their curiosity and knowledge of the world.
But the Iranian government continues to persecute and imprison Baha'i students and teachers. People are arrested suddenly and taken to undisclosed locations. Their stories are passed through friends and family members to the outside world, but too often the world turns a blind eye.
Some Resources:
Education Under Fire
Can You Solve This?
Iran Press Watch
The Untold People: Literacy and Roma (Gypsy) Youth
The Roma are Europe's largest minority group, yet among its most vulnerable populations. With significantly shorter life expectancies, limited employment prospects, and high illiteracy and dropout rates, the Roma are often viewed as a problem to be fixed rather than a culture to be understood.
In 2011, I tutored Roma children in East London, using their love of art and storytelling to help them with reading and maths. I wrote my MSc dissertation on the relationship between UK policy and Roma literacy, and hope to continue bringing this issue from the margins to the mainstream.
Here are some successful projects that I hope can be used as a springboard for new collaborations between Roma and European communities:
Roma Children, London 2011
Boundaries and Borderlands
Borderlands, as the spaces "in-between," are often the centre of human relations and the birthplace of cultural "translation and negotiation" (Homi Bhabha 1994, 46). They are also, in my opinion, some of the most fascinating and dynamic places in the ongoing creation of art and culture.
In 2010, I completed a case study comparing the divided cities of Bethlehem/Jerusaleum and San Diego/Tijuana. I was looking, not for conflict and destruction (which are prevalent), but for what I call "new space" - new art forms and collaborative ventures born from the friction along the urban divide.
Some findings:
Revistas Entre Lineas (Between the Lines) - blog exploring the socioeconomic and cultural discourses generated along Mexico's northern border.
Yonder Lies It - blog of a cultural border-crosser
La Pocha Nostra - borderland performance art as you've never seen it before
Border Council for Arts and Culture (COFAC) - bridging the cultural divide between the US and Mexico
Friends of Friendship Park: Tijuana-San Diego - coalition devoted to cross-border understanding and environmentalism
Voices Beyond Walls - participatory media org working with refugee youth in Palestine
Museum on the Seam - Jerusalem's home for questions of identity and (common) humanity along the urban divide
Humans Without Borders - facilitating direct contact between Israelis and Palestinians through medical and educational opportunities
Al Rowwad - a cultural and theatre training centre based in Bethlehem
Sunbala - Jerusalem-based fairtrade nonprofit supporting Palestinian women and traditional crafts
Stories and Relationships
Quantitative methods are considered the gold standard of social science research. And while I agree that statistics are useful, I find that the best information is often discovered through a combined narrative-relational methodology - which is just a fancy way of saying that people's relationships and the stories they tell form the substance and fabric of human society, and require more study.
If we want to understand both the individual and the group, we need to look at narrative form and function. But I disagree with postmodern theorists who posit that "everything is story". There is something deeper and more real than story, namely, relationships. Of course, relationships themselves are storied and many different perspectives on the same relationship exist (a perfect case in point is the political relationship between Israelis and Palestinians).
At the same time, once reciprocal communication is established (a huge if, in some cases), the possibility arises that two people or groups may start to see each other clearly, as free and moral beings. Thus, stories do not necessarily have to clash or muddy our relationships. Instead they can provide us with different but compatible paths to the same truth.
Given my interest in boundaries and borderlands, I am especially interested in studying the borderlands of our relationships, those in-between spaces where different worldviews collide - and the possibility of new wisdom is born.
Some Resources:
- Arendt, Hannah. 1998. The Human Condition. London: The University of Chicago Press Ltd.
- Crossley, Nick. 2011. Towards Relational Sociology. New York: Routledge.
- Donati, Pierpaolo. 2011. Relational Sociology: A New Paradigm for the Social Sciences. New York: Routledge.
- Jackson, Michael. 2002. The Politics of Storytelling. Copenhagen: Museum Tusculanum Press.
- Young, Iris Marion. 2002. Inclusion and Democracy. Oxford: Oxford University Press.
