Networks of Solidarity: Through Our Stories

Networks of Solidarity is a series of four monthly online talks co-organised by artist/organiser Kate O’Shea and writer/researcher Enya Moore from the Just City Collective, which aims to strengthen transnational networks of solidarity and deepen awareness of place-based struggles that reverberate from Dublin 8 to Gadigal Country (Sydney, Australia). Four interconnected and overlapping sessions entitled Between our Minds; In the Roots; Through our Stories and On the Airwaves will feature presentations and performances from invited artists, activists, community workers, designers, academics, researchers, writers, and filmmakers based largely in Ireland and Australia. This event series is supported in part by a Dublin City Council Revenue award granted to Create.

Through Our Stories

Guests: Jason De Santolo (Garrwa and Barunggam, researcher and creative producer), Oein DeBhairduin (author, activist), Amala Groom (Wiradyuri conceptual artist), Alessandra Azevado & Karen Aguiar (Go Dance For Change)
Facilitator: Enya Moore (writer, researcher)

Through our Stories explores the value of storytelling in communicating shared beliefs and cultural knowledge as well as articulating shared struggle and trauma. The talk explores storytelling, through film, images, dance, and language, as an important way of countering dominant and oftentimes exclusionary narratives. This event encompasses the diversity in storytelling practices including Indigenous storywork, truth-telling and language activism.

Go Dance for Change is a grassroots transcultural platform of dancers that provides community engagement opportunities to individuals who wish to engage effectively with, and learn more about, a diverse and multicultural demographic within Ireland. It does this through a variety of dance activities such as workshops, parades, performances and online & live events. To facilitate this Go Dance for Change uses its expertise and a strong focus on cultural education, wellbeing and female empowerment. Go Dance For Change is led by Alessandra Azevedo and Karen Aguiar.

Karen Aguiar
Karen is a mixed-race migrant woman, journalist, dancer and community organiser. Karen’s practice is rooted in the issue of race and the concept of intersectionality. Being a native of Brazil and soon to be a citizen of Ireland, this has cemented her belief in the importance of celebrating migration, individual and collective cultures. Body movement has always been her passion as she sees dance and music as common points where different cultures can meet; powerful ways of getting people together and to create connections and embody collective knowledge making practices. Inspired by this, she founded Go Dance for Change. Karen is currently exploring the connections and balance between people, art and the environment at wicklow.farm. In 2021, Karen was awarded the Research and Development Award (Artist In Community Scheme, managed by Create, funded by the Irish Arts Council) with mentorship by artist Kate O’Shea to work with the Active Hope Network Ireland, to develop a practice which challenges the barriers felt by those from migrant communities in accessing culture in a meaningful way. Karen is a performer artist at Breaking Cover: Art and Ecology encounters, an intergenerational live group performance in the grounds of IMMA in September 2021.

Alessandra Azevedo is an Afro-Brazilian Dancer, Capoeira performer & instructor from Salvador, Bahia – home to the largest African diaspora population & home of Afro-Brazilian culture. Since moving to Ireland in 2015 she has championed her culture by setting up a Capoeira training & performance group. From 2018 she established herself as a leading Afro-Brazilian dancer with notable performances at major festivals with her dance group Criola Dance. Alessandra is driven by the potential of her heritage to lead cross-cultural collaborations. Her practise has led to establishing connections between Afro-Brazilian dance, women’s groups, immigrant & minority communities. Alessandra is using her current Arts Council Bursary award to contemplate and improve her skills as a performer & facilitator to establish herself as an ambassador for Afro-Brazilian dance & for cultural growth through community building.

Oein DeBhairduin is a creative soul with a passion for poetry, folk herbalism and preserving the beauty of Traveller tales, sayings, retellings and historic exchanges. He is currently the manager of an education centre, advisor in the office of Senator Eileen Flynn and a long-time board member of several Mincéirí community groups, including having had the honour of being vice-chair of the Irish Traveller Movement and a council member of Mincéirs Whiden. Currently he is the chair of the National LGBT+ Traveller and Roma Action Group. In 2019, Oein was part of the Irish delegation to present evidence to the United Nations Committee on the Elimination of Racial Discrimination on the treatment of Travellers in Ireland. Oein seeks to pair community activism with cultural celebration, recalling old tales with fresh modern connections and, most of all, he wishes to rekindle the hearth fires of a shared kinship.

Dr Jason De Santolo (Garrwa and Barunggam) is a researcher, creative producer & father committed to forging a sustainable world for future generations through transformative research strategies, storytelling & practices of renewal. His unique research practice integrates video, creative practice & design strategies. Jason co-edited Decolonizing Research: Indigenous storywork as methodology with Jo-Ann Archibald and Jenny Lee-Morgan was published in 2019 through Zed Books. His latest documentary Warburdar Bununu/Water Shield explores water contamination in Borroloola, NT and was released by Browncabs in 2019.

Amala Groom is a Wiradyuri conceptual artist whose practice, as the performance of her cultural sovereignty, is informed and driven by First Nations epistemologies, ontologies and methodologies. Her work, a form of passionate activism, presents acute and incisive commentary on contemporary socio-political issues. Articulated across diverse media, Groom’s work often subverts and unsettles western iconographies to enunciate Aboriginal stories, experiences and histories, and to interrogate and undermine the legacy of colonialism. Informed by extensive archival, legislative and first-person research, Groom’s work is socially engaged, speaking truth to take a stand against hypocrisy, prejudice, violence and injustice.
Across her practice, Groom proactively seeks to dismantle the Colonial Project by asserting the argument that colonialism is not just disadvantageous for First Peoples but is, in fact, antithetical to the human experience. On a deeper note, Groom intends to make work that speaks to the union of all peoples and to the indivisibility of the human experience that traverses identity, culture, race, class, gender and religious worship.
Groom is a solo practitioner who works with her family, community and extensive economic, cultural, political, legal and social networks to both inform, lead and drive her practice. Groom works collaboratively with individuals and groups on a project by project basis.

Enya Moore writes, researches, teaches and runs on Gadigal Country. She is Irish, and a dual-citizen of Ireland and Australia. In no particular order, Enya has worked as a goldsmith, editor, writer, intern, designer, waitress, teacher, kitchen hand, event organiser, researcher, and volunteer.Enya studied Art, Craft and Design at Colaiste Stiofain Naofa, Cork; Metalwork and Art/Design History (BA), NCAD, Dublin, and Design Cultures (MA), VU Amsterdam. She is completing a PhD at the University of Technology Sydney (UTS) on transnational design events in the political design economy. She teaches, lectures and coordinates design subjects at the School of Design, UTS, and Design Lab at University of Sydney. She guest lectures and speaks at conferences internationally.

She is a member of The Just City Collective, a group of community-workers, artists, activists and researchers from around the world exploring ideas and practices around spatial injustices in multiple cities started by artist Kate O’ Shea in Dublin 8 in 2020. With Kate, she co-organises the Networks of Solidarity online event series with the support of Common Ground and Create. Enya’s writing is published in journals such as Design and Culture, Design Issues, Plot(s) and the Australasian Journal of Popular Culture; in design books and magazines such as Frame (NL), Icon (UK) and Indesign (AUS) and in Durty Words: A space for dialogue, solidarity, resistance and creation (2018) by Durty Books Publishing House.