Delivered by Marie Bashiru
In 2023, we are supporting Marie Bashiru “Folk Arts in the English BIPOC Diaspora” project through our Connecting People and Places Fund’s Collaborative Commissions 2023, co-funded by City of London as part of our Foundations Programme.
“Folk Arts in the English BIPOC Diaspora” will look at Black Folk Music, with a particular focus on Nigerian folksong and the cross-cultural exchange within English folk song.
These commissions will unlock further understanding on how creativity can be used to deliver arts, education, employment programming that provides creative learning opportunities, employment and leadership roles, training and fusion skills development.
They also share a commitment to developing equity in their project’s design and delivery, supporting underrepresented people’s ideas and visibility.
My project with an R&D focus, will look at Black Folk Music, with a particular focus on Nigerian folksong and the cross-cultural exchange within English folk song. To explore untold and obscured narratives, whilst also seeking to create new opportunities of “re-storying” Black British lived experience through diverse creative mediums. To research the ties between Nigerian and English folklore expression and hold a creative workshop that explores local and regional iterations of creating local and inclusive folk art.
In a massively under-researched area, my research and development work will see me exploring deeper into archives and collection of historic and recorded stories of black experience to build more knowledge and information around this. I will be researching the ties between Nigerian and English folkloric expression to imagine what local and regional iterations of creating local and inclusive folk art looks like. Furthermore, the creation of online resources and material that a non-exclusive age demographic can engage with will be some of the fruits of this research, where the next steps will be to create and develop in-person workshops and interactive knowledge-sharing events locally, and eventually, on a more nationwide scale.