Intercultural theatre company Border Crossings have announced details of this year’s ORIGINS festival, a multidisciplinary arts event that celebrates and promotes Indigenous arts and culture.
The year-long programme will showcase the work of Indigenous artists and writers from around the world. According to Border Crossings, it will be guided by the three principle themes of “Covid, Climate Change and Colonialism,” exploring them from cultural, political and scientific perspectives. In particular, it will examine the links between environmentalism, social justice and the Indigenous experience.
Border Crossings’ Artistic Director Michael Walling commented that “ORIGINS believes we need to acquire a sense that there are other ways of living open to us that are sustainable & just. This can only be done artistically, through direct & productive interactions with cultures that offer positive models for change.”
The festival opens on Thursday 13 May with an online welcoming event which will include a performance of KATHARSIS, a short play by Yvette Nolan. The festival also features the ORIGINS WRITERS series, a collection of literary talks. Speakers will include novelist Stephen Graham Jones, children’s author Nicola I. Campbell, and poet and musician Joy Harjo, who in 2019 became the first Native American United States Poet Laureate.
As the festival progresses, it will also include what Border Crossings describes as “performance-based interventions in public spaces.” The company has also promised that all events will be COVID-19 7secure for both artists and audiences.
Full details and free tickets for all events are available on the festival’s website.
Words by Emma Curzon.
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Image: Border Crossings