Townhall Talks By Young Shubbak

Kiln Theatre Town Hall Talks presents: Resist, Record, Remember

by Young Shubbak

Young Shubbak re-collect stories of Kilburn's SWANA communities in a communal act of archiving.

This summer, Young Shubbak takes over Kiln Theatre, transforming it into a buzzing, creative, and restorative family-friendly space for the local communities of Kilburn. Join us as we reminisce, remember, and celebrate the diverse lives and stories of Brent's SWANA communities.

We ask what it means to document, exist, and archive at a time when the erasure of our bodies is normalised in the news and media?

How can we visually preserve our existence?

What does it mean to capture our everyday?

How much power can we claim through the act of archiving?

PROGRAMME

3-6 pm: Participatory Archiving Station
at the John Lyon Space
Existing, documenting, archiving: an interactive space to reflect, express, and imagine SWANA lives and stories of our past, present, and future. Featuring a public art canvas | zine making station | video booth inviting members of the community to leave their marks and visually document what it means to exist in a moment of widespread erasure.

This will be a self facilitated space, with a guided zine making session from 4PM by Chantal Makar, Tasalla Tabasom and Anayis N Der Hakopian of Young Shubbak.

5-7 pm: Building a Sonic Archive (Workshop)
at the Baldwin Studio - register here for workshop only
This workshop invites participants to collectively challenge the traditional concept of archiving, from motive to medium. Offering a warm space of open dialogue, this workshop welcomes new ideas and explorations of archiving as a practice, alongside practical demonstrations and accessible audio production tools to develop technical skills needed to build your own sonic archive. We journey together to preserve family, community and personal histories through audio recording and archiving - all experience levels welcome!

Led by Olivia Melkonian of Young Shubbak - a producer, DJ and sonic archivist who has worked across radio, record labels, film production and the cultural sector. Invested in projects of cultural preservation, Olivia archives dialect, ritual and
collective memory with a focus on family and the home. Through her practice, she presents memory as a tool of resistance, and recording as an act of revolution.

7:15 to 8:45 pm: Remembering what’s left of us…Writing in the Wake of Destruction
Community Conversation at the Kiln Cinema
This is a panel conversation - reimagined. We bring together an ensemble of writers, publishers, and theatre makers in conversation with Young Shubbak to talk about how to (and perhaps more pertinently why we should) continue writing amidst all the destruction
and ongoing horrors of the world we're living in. For decades, even centuries, writers and storytellers of the SWANA region have been encouraged to perform in order to gain attention and acclaim for the stories that matter to them, the stories that are lived realities. And yet, nothing changes for people across the region despite our greatest attempts at rescuing and
remembering them with language.

What, if anything, happens then?
Where do we go from here?

Young Shubbak writer Mariam Tell in conversation with Sabrina Mahfouz, Hassan Abdulrazzak, Carmen Nasr, Elizabeth Briggs, (and our guests).

9-10 PM Community Mixer: Stay back for a drink and share some delicious snacks to decompress, unwind and connect with the artists and Young Shubbak – to find solace and ease in the knowledge that we’re all in this together and we celebrate our existence with radical joy, fierce commitment and a shared solidarity.

We hope you will join us for a day of resisting, recording, and remembering!  

About Townhall Talks
Kiln Theatre’s Townhall Talks is a heritage-focused series created in partnership with local organisations, residents, and artists. This series brings to life the diverse stories of Kilburn through live music, workshops, panel discussions, short films, and food.

Townhall Talks is part of the Celebrating Our Stories: The Kilburn High Road Project, a three-year National Lottery Heritage Funded initiative that celebrates the rich heritage of Kilburn’s communities.