Political or humanitarian concerns don't exactly trouble the sleep of many arts organisations, but they're very much there in the community-oriented, left-leaning policies of the City Arts Centre, Dublin, and its latest World Stories Festival - a two-week jumble of events, starting next Tuesday (May 18th 29th) which aims to celebrate the various ethnic minority cultures in Dublin.
The British Council has long assisted City Arts Centre in bringing in acts and subsidising study trips to similar community arts initiatives in the UK, and World Stories will be launched next Tuesday by Lord Mayor and Fine Gael Senator, Joe Doyle (who recently launched an Initiative on Racism: Many People, One City), as well as the chair of the British Council, the barrister, Baroness Helena Kennedy, whose title was conferred under the Blair government.
Predominantly working in criminal law, Kennedy acted in the Brighton bombing trial and the Guildford Four Appeal case, and among other engagements in Dublin, will give a talk on international human rights at Trinity College law school next Tuesday. The World Stories festival will feature a reading from Courttia Newland, a young west Londoner of West Indian descent, who became a publishing phenomenon with his 1997 novel, The Scholar.
Written when he was 23, in the subversive Cockney argot of his mixed-race Greenside estate, it focuses on the realities of life for black London kids, their out-ofthe-ghetto aspirations often crushed by police and local violence, and a youth culture of hiphop and kingsize spliffs, whizz, crack and heroin - typical perils of the urban poor. Newland will read alongside Ugandan-born, Dublin-based, George Seremba, who will perform another run of his hurting, oneman autobiographical show, Come Good Rain.
This is an exposition of Ugandan state oppression under Idi Amin and General Obote, in which Seremba literally exposes the scars of having been shot and left for dead by Amin's government forces when he was a student. Other performers include Camilla Dorcey, a Lesotho-born singer, dancer and storyteller, Bisi Adigun, a Nigerian percussionist and storyteller, and Brazilian dancers Claudio and Kaete - all appearing in a World Cafe night, with Arab and Japanese finger foods provided by the Irish Black and Migrant Women's Forum. Meanwhile the once-monthly Friday late-night club (May 21st) will host The Shrine, an Afrobeat collective of dub poets, a seven-piece Nigerian/Gambian band, dancers and DJs who operate from the Fridge in Brixton, inspired by Fela Kuti's legendary politicised club in Lagos in the 1970s.
Other events are more suitable for kids: the movement-oriented tales from Camilla Dorcey and Sudanese Amel Omran's tales from the Quran. Meanwhile Claudio and Kaete will give Lambada dance classes, while Nigerian artist Dare Mahalali will give a workshop on the design, symbolism and tribal identity behind the African mask tradition of West Coast Africa.
Certainly, racism and xenophobia are live issues in the wake of the London nail bombings and the Stephen Lawrence case, and indeed the revelation of our own Irish brand of race hatred which has greeted many asylum seekers - never mind the big deal made of the cost of supporting 1,000 dispossessed Kosovars, before the first 150 arrived on Tuesday.
There is some representation from the scatter of organisations representing asylum seekers here, including Zairean Kensika Monshengo, Human Rights Officer for the Association of Refugees and Asylum Seekers in Ireland, who will conduct a workshop of re-enactments of incidents of discrimination at the hands of customs officials.
Another workshop will be held by Paul Ledesma of the Refugee Agency, the body set up and funded by the Department of Foreign Affairs, which deals with the cultural resettlement of so-called "programme refugees", such as the tranches of Bosnians, Vietnamese and now Kosovars (Ledesma is currently in Macedonia). Unfortunately, such workshops are open to small numbers of people - 15 or so - and some are already booked by youth groups.
A couple of photo-exhibition projects have been revived for the occasion: A Day at the Races, a Community Media Network project of a few years ago, in conjunction with the Pavee Point Travellers Centre and the Refugee Council; and A Part of Ireland Now, about settled refugees, with photos by Derek Speirs and interviews by Andy Pollak of this newspaper.
While attempting to "celebrate difference" and socially welcoming the new ethnic minorities in Dublin, City Arts Centre is addressing the inner city's lurch into multiculturalism as new shops open up, catering for everything from ethnic cuisine to the elaborate and very different range of hair and skin products used by black people.
Mindful of racism in our midst, it is a great pity World Stories has no representation from Irish travellers. Operating on a miniscule budget, one could also question the festival's potential penetration (some refugee groups approached were too caught up in pressing issues of survival and deportation).
But this is just the first time out, and World Stories is now booked into the City Arts Centre calendar for the next three years. At least they're trying - and trying hard.
World Stories Festival begins at City Arts Centre on Tuesday. Further information from: 01- 6770643.
