Yesterday evening saw Whelan’s host “Kick Up the Arts: Conversational Craic on Art and Social Change” as part of Dublin’s Lingo festival. The event explored the role art can and should play in creating societal change. The notion that art should be socially engaging and that artists should use art as a political act were overarching themes throughout the evening.
This idea of art as a form of social protest is not unfamiliar to Irish society, and both last year’s marriage equality campaign and the ongoing repeal the eighth campaign were referenced during the evening.
Blindboy Boatclub, half of hip-hop duo the Rubberbandits and fresh from attending USI’s March for Education last week, acted as the host for the evening, which saw performances from actor, writer and comedian Tara Flynn, as well as UK-based rappers and spoken word artists Poetic Pilgrimage.
Flynn performed a poem “Art Bursts Out”, which discussed being an ally in the campaign for marriage equality and how the move to repeal the eighth amendment is a more personal struggle, expressing that “it is [her] fight”, and later revealing that she travelled to the Netherlands to have an abortion in 2006. Her poem focused on the importance of art as a medium that “makes the invisible visible”, adequately setting the scene for the evening’s theme.
After their performance, Poetic Pilgrimage, a duo of Afro-Caribbean background and who converted to Islam, discussed the responsibility to break down existing stereotypes, with the conversation moving to socially engaged art in a British context. The value of art was highlighted in a discussion regarding Britain’s vote to leave the EU, with Boatclub pointing to the lack of creativity and art in the remain side’s campaign.
Self-proclaimed “accidental activist” and drag queen, Panti Bliss, as well as poet and All-Ireland Poetry Slam champion, John Cummins and Cat Brogan, poet and winner of the BBC Edinburgh Fringe Poetry Slam, also made appearances during the night.
Bliss, of course, needed no introduction. As fabulous as ever, she took to the stage and discussed gender roles and expectations in society and how she uses her art form, drag, as a means of challenging such norms. The conversation that followed explored issues such as Panti Bliss’s famous “noble call” and its impact on the marriage equality referendum and her responsibility to join the ranks of accidental activists.
Throughout the variety of the performances, the audience was engaged in and perceptive to the ideas being discussed, with audience members later asking insightful questions in the Q&A session on topics ranging from artistic engagement in the current housing crisis to the lack of representation of black people and Muslims in the media.
The evening ended on a note of the importance of the collective engagement necessary in creating societal change. Cummins performed a final slam poem, aptly bringing the evening to a close with the words: “This is called kindness, not a form of weakness, witness the fitness, all together in this.” Appropriately enough, the audience all felt compelled to join in.
