Amplifying Traveller Voices

Catalyst International Film Festival

Limerick City Gallery of Art

How can filmmaking and music offer a platform to ethnic minorities like the Travelling community to share perspectives and aspects of their culture? This panel will include Traveller artists and supporters. (A special curated screening of short films exploring diverse lives and experiences will follow at the People&#x27;s Museum at 3:30pm)Guest Speakers: <ul><li>Alice McDowell</li><li>David McDonagh</li><li>Wilzee </li><li>Martina Durac ( Moderator)</li></ul>Alice McDowell is an Australian-Irish filmmaker based in Galway. Specialising in creative documentary, she has worked both locally and internationally, producing films that explore diverse cultural and artistic expressions. In 2020, she won the Pitching Competition at the Galway Film Fleadh, with her feature documentary project Rainsong. Alice is the founder and Co-Artistic Director of Misleór Festival of Nomadic Cultures, which celebrates artists and activists from Traveller and nomadic communities. She is also a founding member of Atmos Collective, a group of Galway-based artists from culturally diverse backgrounds, who work in community music and film production.David McDonagh is a traveller who works for the HSE. As a kid, he had the responsibility of remembering vhs titles as his grandfather was illiterate and he has always been influenced by film, once jumping from the stairs in Dunnes wearing a Superman costume and Thomas The Tank Engine wellies. Working in A&amp;E and a psychiatric Unit takes a toll so he decided photography would help, it did and that soon became film. Willzee‘s first official appearance was as the lead actor in the music video of fellow label artist Enda Gallery’s single ‘It’s Alright’. Willzee also channels his talents into spoken word and script writing. He won the 2019 Virgin Media Discovers Short Film Competition with his script for the film ‘Innocent Boy’ which premiered at the Dublin International Film Festival in February 2020. With his early 2020 work Dear Friend II, a spoken word piece that plots a different potential course for Limerick but moreover, for communities in need of care all over the world, he urges us to “Let the past be the past, but take it further.” On his latest single “Nick Nack” Willzee collaborated with UK rapper Mic Righteous to reflect the life he managed to escape before it was too late.Dr. Sindy Joyce is a Mincéir/Traveller from Newcastle West, County Limerick. She is a Human Rights Defender (HRD), a sociologist and a member of President Michael D Higgins Council of State. Her research focuses on Human Rights, racism, hate crime, ethnicity/identity, and social/political constructions of Irish Travellers. Her PhD thesis ‘Mincéirs Siúladh: An ethnographic study of young Travellers’ experiences of racism in an Irish city’ addressed the original and important question of how anti-Traveller racism shapes young people’s use of and movement through public space. Sindy is also on the anti-racism committee for the National Action Plan Against Racism. In 2019, Sindy was part of the Irish delegation to present evidence to the United Nations Committee on the Elimination of Racial Discrimination on the treatment of Travellers in Ireland.Please note: No food or drink allowed in the gallery at any time.

Amplifying Traveller Voices

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Amplifying Traveller Voices

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