Film by Hanne Nygard
In October 2024, Mikey Kirkpatrick, KV (King Vito Speaks), Refrain (Omar Elsaaidi) and Tboy (Timothy Wairama) spent a week in Stavanger, Norway, with the Kunsthall Stavanger ‘Mobilising Citizenship’ programme. Mobilizing Citizenship is an educational and research project where Norwegian and international artists and designers are invited to work with a small group of youth at Kunsthall Stavanger during one semester. Alchemy delivered a week of workshops as part of this programme with a group of local young artists, creating new music and performance that was showcased as a show called ‘Are You Listening?’ in the main Kunsthall Gallery room.
We worked with 10 talented young artists. Over the course of the week we did songwriting, music production, traditional Norwegian farmer calls, sound design, music videos, experimental performance, singing, research into Stev, an ancient Norwegian ‘rap’ – an old form of rhythmic poetry. You can see somebehind the scenes footage for each day below, as well as the With You music video, and some feedback from the participants.
Day One
Day Two
Day Three
Day Four
Day Five
With You (Music Video)
Reflections from the participants
We would like to thank everyone at Kunsthall Stavanger, especially Kristina Ketola Bore, as well as the project youth worker Trine Ottosen, project manager Madelaine Gordon Graadahl, and all of the incredible young participants: Alvar, Isaac, Nadin, Alexandra, Alex, Mary Grace, Hanja, Dea, Linus and Athena, who star in the videos above. You can read more about the project at the Kunsthall Stavanger Website and Mikey will be writing up an Alchemy Toolkit as a follow up to this workshop series for others who would like to run similar initiatives. A professional film of the week will also be available soon.
(Photo: Helle Navratil / Kunsthall Stavanger).