Ticket still available on the British Library website just copy and paste the following link to purchase:

https://www.bl.uk/events/art-and-culture-during-political-change-somali-week-festival

Celebrate the launch of Somali Week Festival

The launch of the 11th Somali Week Festival will open with an important conversation around this year’s theme of global change and how it affects the Somali Diaspora. Join us for a thought-provoking conversation between award-winning filmmaker Abdulcadir Ahmed Said from South Africa, new Islington Mayor Cllr Rakhia Ismail- the UK's first Somali-born female Mayor, MEP and Former Lord Mayor of Sheffield Magid Magid who is the first Somali, as well as the youngest, and the first Green Party councillor to hold this role. Alongside phenomenal actor, writer and theatre practitioner Yusra Warsama, founder of the Somali Museum of Edmonton (Canada) Naima Haile and UK based writer, lawyer and diraac designer Hoda Hashi (Ina’Xaashi), they will discuss the impact global change is having on artists, changemakers and cultural producers in the UK and the Somali Diaspora worldwide.

Performance poetry by British-Somali poet from Birmingham Ayan Elmi will conclude the evening.

In the Somali region artists are leading public figures and artistic forms of expression offer the public a means of engaging with new values and ideals, including ideas of good leadership. The festival considers the interconnections between leadership and creativity as well as reflecting on the spaces that Somalis have inhabited and carved out for themselves, both around the world as part of a large diaspora and as artists in their field.

This year’s festival explores how artists, activist and musicians respond and react to times of political change. Using Brexit as a catalyst, the festival looks at how the Somali Diaspora in the UK, US, as well as mainland Europe and Canada, unpack what it means to be Somali, both in the Somali Horn as well as in the Diaspora, during this globally transformative period.

In partnership with Kayd Somali Arts and Culture

Image: Somali Week Festival audience, photo by Charlotte Maxwell