UBUNTU: Local is Global is a community-engaged arts-practice research project from the CIPHER: Hip Hop Interpellation Team (ERC CoG 819143 – 2019-2024) that culminated in a televised documentary on the Irish national broadcaster, RTÉ. In consultation and collaboration with young people and youth mentors from the local NGOs, The Cork Migrant Centre (CMC) and The Kabin Studio, the 2020-2021 project generated new arts outputs and knowledges by asking young rappers, slam poets, beatmakers, and dancers to consider and respond to the word “ubuntu” (a Zulu word for humanity: literally “I am because we are”)—a concept that the CIPHER project theorizes as “a gem of hip hop knowledge.”
The hour-long public performance of UBUNTU in the amphitheatre outside of the University College Cork Student Centre not only created stunning new pieces of art, and new iterations and understandings of the ubuntu gem, but forged bonds between these young people of diverse non-Western (African, Middle Eastern, and South Asian) backgrounds and under-resourced youth from Cork’s North Side, advancing the national conversation on immigration, belonging, and the future of Ireland. That most of the CMC youth were living in “Direct Provision” (Ireland’s controversial asylum seeker regime) during the year of planning meetings and rehearsals before the 19 September 2021 UBUNTU show, brought to the fore international commonalities and imagined solidarities between the global Black Lives Matter movement (BLM) and Ireland’s End Direct Provision movement (EDP)—which espouses more humane treatment than the current system of financial and social isolation.
In the end, UBUNTU: Local is Global reached over 140,000 people through its primetime television premiere, and countless more through its re-airings and media discussion. More importantly, as the documentary concludes, through this community consultation and public arts outreach project "these kids' lives have changed.”
Watch it here: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=nEV_IgorLaY&list=PLo8-GxQ7C67BOQFDHFLwQDglUZzyBOnMK&index=21&t=3s
Black Lives Matter, End Direct Provision, Hip Hop Arts, Music, Art, Dance, Immigration, Racism