Our Change the Word Fellows at The Festival of Home!
We’re super excited that our first ever Change the Word Poetry Fellows, Diyo Mulopo Bopengo and Sarah Orola, will appear as part of the Festival of the Home on Sunday 19th September at the Museum of the Home.
They’ll take us on real and imagined journeys through language and life, exploring the myriad ways of finding what it means to belong…
Their readings will be accompanied by the brilliant musician and long-time Good Chance Ensemble member Mohamed Sarrar, performer in The Jungle and co-creator of the album Sounds of Refuge at Abbey Road Studios.
Diyo and Sarah have been working with two incredible poetry mentors - Nii Ayikwei Parkes and Malika Booker - for the past six months to develop and hone their work as part of the Change the Word Fellowships.
This performance is a chance to showcase their new work, having previously performed in collective poetry shows with Change the Word at Migration Matters International Festival and in Sheffield’s Winter Garden, and most recently at the Cooper Gallery in Barnsley.
If you want a sneak peek, you can read Diyo and Sarah’s poetry in the most recent Change the Word Collective anthology, An Orchestra of Unexpected Sounds.
You can now get tickets for the Festival and see the other headliners here.
A note on The Museum of the Home
The Museum of the Home has recently reopened, with a new vision: to reveal and rethink the ways we live, in order to live better together. This aligns strongly with Good Chance’s own commitment to working with artists from around the world, bringing communities together to tell bigger stories of hope and humanity.
In collaborating with the Museum, we acknowledge the complications of the Museum’s history and its connection to Robert Geffrye, particularly his wealth made through transatlantic slavery. The Museum is undertaking ongoing consultation with local residents, its wider audience and with its Board and the government to explore options for how to engage productively and positively in this important debate, particularly around the statue of Geffrye that currently stands in the front of the Museum.
We support the Museum in its ongoing consideration of this issue, in its stated commitment to reflect the diversity of modern London through its programming, staff and board, and in its clear action plan to; tell the full story of its history; to come to a decision about the future of Geffrye’s statue, and contextualise and reinterpret his legacy; and to enact a transformative programme of structural and cultural change.
