Pro-democracy campaigner, Omoyele Sowore, co-founder of the #BringBackOurGirls movement, Aisha Yesufu, theatre practitioners, scholars and artists including an advocate for responsible policing and Executive-Director, Rule of Law and Accountability Advocacy Centre, Okechukwu Nwanguma, are among the Nigerian panellists and speakers for the 2024 Centre for Socially Engaged Theatreâs (C-SET) Festival of Arts and Discourse.
The centre is located in the Faculty of Media, Arts and Performance at the University of Regina, Saskatchewan, Canada.
The C-SETâs Director, Dr. Taiwo Afolabi, who is the Canada Research Chair in Socially Engaged Theatre and interdisciplinary artistic scholar, said in a statement that the event would also showcase and celebrate various projects on policing.
The five-day event scheduled to take place at the centre is a research showcase of the Canada Research Chair in Socially Engaged Theatre programme holding from 25 to 29 November 2024. The free event will include exhibitions, talks, debates, and also feature panels on policing, justice and socially engaged theatre practitioners, artists, and scholars.
The five-day event is scheduled to take place at the centre. Commenting the projects on policing to showcase and celebrate at the event, Dr Afolabi, stated that they included highlights of âStaging Justice: People, Places, Planet, and Practice,ââ echoing the CATR/ACRT 2024 conference theme held earlier in the year, research presentations by the centre’s graduate students and display of the play, âPast Shadows, Present Shades,ââ reflecting on migrantsâ past and present experiences and imaging new futures staged in Regina for two days during the Cathedral Village Art Festival in May.ââ
Also, the C-SET director noted that there would be an exhibition of protest artworks capturing caricatures of policing in the three countries. The theatre expert added that the works were provoked by protests against police brutality and publicly accessible with the artists endorsing their use in most cases as they are purely for education purposes.
According to him, the event’s thematic areas centre on activism, policy, artivism, and policing in Canada. The event dates and time are Monday, November 25, 11:00am – 1:00pm (Saskatchewan time), Tuesday, November 26, 6:00pm – 8:00pm (Saskatchewan time), Wednesday, November 27, 11:00am – 1:00pm (Saskatchewan time), Thursday, November 28, 11am – 1:00pm (Saskatchewan time) and Friday, November 29, 6:00pm – 8:00pm (Saskatchewan time). Accomplished stakeholders in policing matters, activists, academics and journalists within and outside Canada will be part of the hybrid event.
