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Snap, Rhythm & Rhyme
conFAB, Paragon Ensemble & Street Level Photoworks
Friday 20 & Saturday 21 June 2008
Tron Theatre (G1 5HB)
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'Chromatic Voices - six poets who present collaborative poetic performances - team up with Paragon Kaleidophone Ensemble and Street Level Photoworks to create this unique multi-disciplinary art event exploring human rights and cross-cultural issues.'
Approximate Attendance: 119
Background
Snap, Rhythm and Rhyme was developed as a professional arts event by conFAB, Paragon Ensemble and Street Level Photoworks - three arts organisations who share a drive to create intercultural work which genuinely reflects the society in which we live and also gives both national and international artists a platform to develop their practice.
- conFAB - an umbrella organisation which aims to support, develop and expand opportunities for writers of all mediums, encouraging the growth of written and spoken word across Scotland and internationally.
- Paragon Ensemble - a music company that commissions, performs, experiments and teaches new music of all kinds with the aim of inspiring audiences to take part in creating and performing their own music.
- Street Level Photoworks - founded in 1989, Street Level is recognised for its integrated practice, its curation of an ongoing series of challenging exhibitions, an education and outreach programme and open access facilities and training courses for artists and the public.
Along with Scottish Refugee Council and other organisations, these arts companies have formed ICAN (Inter-Cultural Arts Network), working together to identify and bridge gaps in inter-cultural arts provision. The Network is currently in the process of producing an online resource which offers advice and guidelines on developing arts and cultural projects for children and adults who have come to Scotland seeking asylum.
Overview of Event
This event took place in the Tron Theatre's Changing House. The performance space was transformed in to a cabaret-style environment, with the audience seated around café tables. In the corner, Paragon's Kalediophone Ensemble was resident with five of its twelve international musicians. Amongst the instruments, there was Djambe (African Drums), Tombak (Iranian Handheld Drum), Double Bass, Guitar, Flute and Voice (Farsi and English). conFAB's Chromatic Voices - a collaboration of six poets who write and perform multi-vocal poetry - weaved themselves and their poetry round the café tables, with a central performance space for longer pieces. The poetry and music was interspersed with Street Level's film excerpts along the length of one of the walls, fusing vintage Scottish and African film footage.
In FOCUS: Rachel
Published poet, writer and producer, Rachel Jury, created conFAB in January 2004, with the dual aims of both supporting artists and producing work. In brief, conFAB seeks to:
- Facilitate and nurture the needs of the writing community.
- Develop opportunities for those working within a text based medium.
- Produce a wide range of high quality work, including poet's solo shows, publications, theatrical productions and films.
Rachel's passion for the arts, and the written and spoken word in particular, has ensured that this company has gone from strength to strength, developing into a vibrant organisation whose work engages with a diverse audience.
For the last four years, conFAB has created work in partnership with communities as part of Refugee Week Scotland, but 2008 was the first time that they developed a professional arts event with other artists and professional organisations. This departure was something of a risk for conFAB, not least because there was the big question of who their audience would be, as well as the inherent challenges of new collaborations. With community based work, a portion of the audience is inevitably made up of family, friends and neighbours but with a professional event, there are no guarantees. However, Rachel speaks positively about the experience, saying: "Working with Street Level and Paragon was really rewarding, really enriching. We attracted an audience who were there for the art, as much as anything else. It gave conFAB a great platform for developing professional work and it was great to be at the Tron."
This year's Refugee Week Scotland event also allowed conFAB to continue their development of multi-vocal performance work with the six poets who make up 'Chromatic Voices.' Originally, conFAB was approached in 2006 by poet Ashby McGowan with his idea of creating this collective of poets. Rachel was taken by how unusual and unique this idea was, likening traditional poets to the solo-presence of the stand-up comic, and was also intrigued by the interesting boundary between poetry and theatre that this work would explore. Over the next year, funding was secured, Chromatic Voices developed, and the collective performed Ashby's work at Human Rights Day 2007. The success of this spurred the group to continue their collaboration, with all six poets writing new work specifically for 'Snap, Rhythm and Rhyme.' The great achievements of this collective to date are testimony to the invaluable support that conFAB provides.
Talking with Rachel, it is apparent that her work is informed by her ethics from the inside out. She is aware that the challenging content of some of the work may not appeal to everyone, and that some may disagree about how appropriate it is for a person who has never been an asylum seeker or a refugee to speak about that experience in such a public forum. For Rachel, it comes down to finding a way to strike a balance: "It is important that asylum seekers and refugees are heard, but it is also important that artists who support their situation have a chance to express that to. You have to do it with integrity and it has to be informed. Having knowledge impacts on your life, whether you are a refugee or not, and it is important to know what your culture, politics and government are doing to other people."
Despite this departure to a professional arts event for this year's Refugee Week, Rachel and conFAB remain committed to community engagement, saying: "It is really important. It is about empowerment. Also, it is about expressing realities. When I was growing up I was a pretty wild child, but I wanted to be an actress. If I hadn't of had that focus, I'd either be dead or in jail now. I know that, and that's why I know that it has a transformative power … [and] it's generally something people are congratulated on. In a world in which you are told that you are worthless in really subtle and sophisticated ways, to be congratulated is really important and valuable."
Rachel is not the kind of person who will let an opportunity pass her by, and so the future for conFAB is full of possibilities. For example, whilst waiting at Glasgow Airport for a recent flight to the Isle of Harris, Rachel was fortunate to meet a leading figure in Gaelic Arts, and now they are planning to develop multi-vocal poetry using Gaelic legends. Over the next year, conFAB would also like to produce a film, and they will continue to develop projects for Refugee Week Scotland too. On this, Rachel remarks: "Refugee Week is great. It is a celebration and the real power is in the small celebrations of work that have been carried out throughout the year. I see Refugee Week as being like a Christmas for this kind of work. Integration is something that is happening but this is not something that a week in itself can achieve. It is an accumulation. We need to change the focus as the year's go on - this is how we will make a Refugee Week that is sustainable." |
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