Dialogmøte: Flerkulturelt kulturliv - TrAP om rekruttering til kulturlivet

When artist and KhiO-student, Illavenil Jayapalan, went to public school in Groruddalen in Oslo, he told his advisor that he wanted to pursue media and communication as a specialization in high school. She looked at him with surprise and asked if this was because he was lazy and just wanted to sit down all day long? It soon occurred to him that all the students with minority backgrounds from his school had been advised to choose vocational subjects - even though they had very different interests. This early experience with a challenged recruitment when it comes to the creative field is only one of many he has experienced though the years. When Illavenil´s experience is put together with the fact that minorities are almost non-existent in some parts of the arts- and cultural world - even in Oslo where 1 out of 3 have a minority background - we need to focus on exactly this: recruitment to the creative field.

For this seminar, we asked Ilavenil Jayapalan put together a panel of young cultural workers and journalists with different backgrounds, who all work to create more diversity in the arts and cultural field. Their personal experiences was in focus when TrAP hosted a seminar on recruitment to the creative field and a broader understanding of the the role arts and culture can play in society.

Panel:
Ilavenil Jayapalan, artist and student
Jenny Marie Hviding Schjerven, artist
Danby Choi, editor, critic, DJ and media producer
Dahir Doni, artist and producer
Begard Reza, activist, freelance journalist, postcolonial queer feminist
Sulekha Ali Omar, choreographer, actress and dancer