Creative Producer Yemisi Mokuolu is bringing a unique outdoor public art project to the coastal city of Brighton, inspired by the tradition of gathering local stories and singing them to the sea.
Yemisi’s project, titled I Sing My Song To The Sea brings together local visual and spoken word artists to gather insights, questions, and reflections from the community on Brighton & Hove’s relationship with the transatlantic slave trade. These narratives will be transformed into video clips displayed as QR codes across the city, a landmark mural, and spoken word pieces to be performed and sung to the sea.
To bring this ambitious project to life, Yemisi has brought together a team of talented local artists as mentors and producers. Spoken-word artist Akila Richards and illustrator Mark Culmer as mentors, Pacheanne Anderson as artist manager and King Jasiah as mural installer and operations management. Together they have collaborated with six emerging and well-known local artists to capture Brighton’s understanding of the transatlantic slave trade.
On 16th September a salon event was collectively designed and hosted by the artists to bring together local residents from all walks of life, nationalities and experiences to share their questions, knowledge, thoughts and opinions on Brighton’s relationship with the transatlantic slave trade. These responses are now being turned in turned into video clips, a mural and spoken word pieces that use the arts to reflect Brighton & Hove’s relationship with the transatlantic slave trade.
The Brighton & Hove Culture Alliance and Brighton & Hove City Council are delighted to have supported this project through the Exhale Creative Grant and look forward to seeing the final outputs of this important initiative for the city.
Alt Text: Images of an open day for a group of emerging artists working on a community engagement arts project. A team of local residents supported by producers and mentors, gather insights, opinions, questions, thoughts and reflections on Brighton’s relationship with the slave trade which is being developed into Spoken-word pieces to be performances presented to the sea and a large-scale ‘landmark’ mural.
