Celebrating Diversity in Irish Arts
Join us for an evening of art, dance, music, film, and conversation exploring the work and experiences of Black and mixed-race artists and performers in Ireland and the Bay Area. Presented with Irish Culture Bay Area’s Irish Arts & Writers Festival.
The evening’s program features a panel of presenters – Dr. Phil Mullen, Maia Nunes, Chiamaka Enyi-Amadi, and Megan Lowe – who share life experiences and will showcase their work, as well as the work of musicians Monjola and Tolü Makay. The panel will be moderated by Leon Diop, Dubliner and co-author of the award-winning book, Black & Irish: Legends, Trailblazers, and Everyday Heroes.
The evening begins with an introduction by Consul General of Ireland, San Francisco, Micheál Smith.
Our special guest Manas Itene, world renowned drummer and unique vocalist from the Isoko tribe of Nigeria, has shared a stage with many musical greats, from Mickey Hart, Peter Rowan to Michael Franti and Spearhead.
The emcee for the evening is Sherri Young with African-American Shakespeare Company.
PANELISTS:
LEON DIOP (Moderator)
Author
Leon Diop was born in Dublin, Ireland, to an Irish mother and a Senegalese father. He grew up in a mixed ethnic and religious household, and graduated from Maynooth College with a degree in Psychology. He is co-author of the award-winning book, Black & Irish: Legends, Trailblazers, and Everyday Heroes, and RTE podcast, Black & Irish. Diop strives to help transform Ireland into a global leader in equality and inclusion.
DR. PHIL MULLEN
Associate Professor of Black Studies at Trinity College
Dr. Phil Mullen, Associate Professor of Black Studies, Trinity College Dublin, Ireland. Dr. Mullen grew up in the industrial school system and went on to complete her PhD as a Government of Ireland PhD scholar. She examines the racist and racialised aspects of how Black mixed African-Irish women construct their identity.
MAIA NUNES
Performance Artist
Maia Nunes is an Irish-Trinidadian performance artist whose work weaves with voice, cloth, movement, sound, and the land to create immersive and multi-textural performance worlds in the form of films, audio-sculptural installations, and live performances. Theirs is a liberation practice; a live process of re-membering the self in dialogue with the ancestral past.
CHIAMAKA ENYI-AMADI
Poet
Chiamaka Enyi-Amadi, born in Lagos, Nigeria, moved to Ireland at a young age. She lives in Wicklow, Ireland, and works as a writer, editor, educator, and arts facilitator. She is a commissioned poet on the Poetry as Commemoration project run by the Irish Poetry Reading Archive in University College Dublin under the Decade of Centenaries 2012-2023 program.
MEGAN LOWE
Dancer/Choreographer
Megan Lowe is a fierce female dancer, choreographer, performer, aerialist, singer-songwriter, filmmaker, teacher, and administrator of Chinese and Irish descent creating work in the San Francisco Bay Area. With an affinity for dynamic places and partners, her creations through Megan Lowe Dances explore complex identities and experiences by tackling unusual physical situations and invent compelling solutions, opening up the imagination to what is possible.