Hanna Ali the Artistic Director for Kayd Somali Arts and Culture writes about how the organisation showcases Somali arts, culture and heritage to national and international audience to foster understanding, tolerance and to forge links between communities and institutions in the UK.
Who we are?
Kayd Somali Arts and Culture was founded in 2009 by Ayan Mahamoud MBE, its flagship event is the annual Somali Week Festival (SWF) held during Black History month in October. It is the largest Somali festival outside of the Somali Horn and has grown over the last decade from a small festival taking place exclusively in Oxford House in Bethnal Green to a large-scale 9-day festival taking place in multiple locations across London including the British Library, Rich Mix, and Southbank Centre.
What we do?
We work to provide opportunities to develop emerging artists and to support individuals to pursue careers in the creative sector. Our aim is to link both our communities as well as our artists to engage with mainstream arts organisations and venues to access them as audiences and practitioners and to develop creative skills through community initiatives. Kayd means preservation in Somali language and seeks to promote arts, culture, and heritage, including musical, literary, dramatic, performance, dance, and visual arts as well as talks and workshops by organising and delivering arts and cultural events and festivals.
Through SWF, Kayd is able to connect with and support other community-based organisations around the UK, particularly in Bristol, Leicester, and Birmingham. In doing so, we are developing and working towards our vision of making Somali arts accessible to everyone. A great deal of effort goes into the work that we do and we are grateful to the support from our partners and sponsors including The Arts Council of England, Tower Hamlets Borough, Dahabshiil, Gecko Foundation, Kilfinan Trust and more.
The pandemic has shown us all new ways of engaging with audiences and sharing content more creatively. As an organisation we embraced digitisation and so far we have digitally archiving over a decade of festival material on Kayd’s website; some of which included iconic Somali artists no longer with us, to preserve culture and historic moments for the next generation. Additionally we also created our quarterly digital program Confined but Creative, where we supported over 100 artists to share their work through paintings, poetry, songs and more, inspired by the lockdown and pandemic, and COVID-19 vaccine. More on this work can be found on our website.
Somali Week Festival
This year is therefore particularly significant as we present our first face-to-face events in SWF2021 since the start of the global pandemic with the theme “Inspire: inspired by the past, inspiring the future” and in doing so our aim is to support the community in emerging from long periods of isolation and interact socially in a safe and responsible way. By carefully curating a programme that includes informative and interactive information related to mental health, academic discussions, artistic performances and roundtables we hope to both inspire and encourage conversations that involve both the UK and far beyond as we look towards globalisation.
Somali Week Festival is aimed at all members of our society with events designed for toddlers to the elderly and with 90% of our events in English language, it is an inclusive festival for Somali’s and non-Somalis and with support in place for those requiring sign language. The festival will take place from 26 to 30 October across London in venues such as the British Library, Rix Mix, Oxford House and Queen Mary University and more. Our opening will take place on Tuesday 26 October in the British Library where we will be in conversation with Booker Prize shortlisted author Nadifa Mohamed to open up the festival discussing her phenomenal success and the history of Somalis in the UK, inspired by her latest novel The Fortune Men. We are particularly excited to have 15 international visiting guests from both the Horn and North America as well as mainland Europe, including authors, singers and academics. This year we are looking beyond the pandemic to imagine what a post COVID-19 world will look like to both inspire and entertain through a combination of poetry, panels, visual art, music, live theatre and talks.
Visit our website www.kayd.org for further information on Somali Week 2021 via our social media pages. We can be found as @KaydSomaliArts across all platforms and tickets to our events can be bought via our Eventbrite page.