Posted 20th March 2024
Join (opens in a new window)Festival in a Van for a lunchtime open-air celebration of music, spoken word, and theatre.
Tues, 9 April, 12pm – 1.30pm
Location: O'Reilly Hall Lawn
On stage as part of this special visit to UCD will be Rhythm Africana performing traditional songs from all over Africa sure to get you dancing.
The main event is an outing of Deities, a short, specially commissioned spoken word theatre piece by acclaimed group (opens in a new window)WeAreGriot which explores themes of migration and home. We’ll also be opening the stage to performances from some UCD students. All are welcome to this free event which aims to brighten up your lunch break and broaden your horizons with some of the best performers on the scene in Ireland today.
A mobile live arts event, Festival in a Van brings live performance to you. A trad session in the town square, a classical concert on the green, Shakespeare at schools, craic at care homes, and poets proclaiming in parks... Festival in a Van tours nationwide, bringing the magic of live performance to places and spaces that other venues can’t reach.
Rhythm Africana was founded in 2013 by Justine Nantale to highlight traditional African styles of music and rhythm. Following the success of their first EP My African Dream, the band has been invited to perform at events by AFRI-Action from Ireland, Trocaire, Concern, Oxfam, Action Aid, Community festivals Comhlámh- action for global Justice seminar, Fields of Life Charity fundraiser, Dun Laoghaire Refugee Project. Rhythm Africana has also been one of the headline acts of the Malaika stage at Africa Day, the annual festival supported by Irish Aid and the Minister of
State. Rhythm Africana band performs a variety of traditional songs from Africa. Musicians are based in Dublin and hail from Uganda, Zambia, Congo, Nigeria and Ireland.
WeAreGriot is a collective of Nigerian-Irish poets and storytellers: Dagogo Hart & Samuel Yakura. Together they have curated poetry-plays and theatrical shows like Boy Child, See True and Sthory. They host the celebrated Dublin hip hop and poetry slam series, Talkatives. WeAreGriot have worked with many arts organisations to curate and commission events, theatrical installations, featured poetry performances and workshops, including Poetry Ireland, Dublin Fringe, International Literature Festival Dublin, Dublin Book Festival, Guinness, Tradfest to mention a few. Their goal is to reflect the times they live in through their work, to celebrate culture and community and to stretch the boundaries of poetry. WeAreGriot was created to serve both art and agenda.
This event is funded by the Arts Council and Dún Laoghaire-Rathdown Arts Office and made possible through the support of members of UCD’s Creative Futures Academy and College of Arts and Humanities and UCD Estates.