Hub collective celebrates first Afro-Centric International collaboration

The Hub Collective a Bequia-based entity says it is overjoyed to announce its first global collaborative project with youth organisations Owari Kids (Ghana/Zimbabwe) and Youth Art Connection(Nova Scotia, Canada) who are part of a three week workshop that began earlier this month.

The Owari Kids Creative Workshop is a pilot project which aims to generate children’s content based on African/Caribbean stories, lore and mythologies, a release states. Through virtual workshops led by Owari’s multidisciplinary team, participants will co-create works that acknowledge the power of sharing personal stories informed by our history and culture while looking deeply at our connected identities. 

Owari Kids’ core goal with this collaboration mirrors the mission and vision at The Hub Collective. We too want to bring more dynamic content to the children, youth and public of St. Vincent and the Grenadines with the hopes that we can reignite the power of our culture, storytelling and memories, the release adds. With this partnership, The Hub Collective also solidifies our first collaboration with a non-profit youth organisation located on the African continent. Together with Youth Art Connection in Canada, we are working to reframe blackness and identity while interrogating the global lack of cross-cultural exchange. 

The three-week workshop, which started on November 20, brings together six creative youth from Canada, Ghana and SVG to gain a deeper understanding of each other and generate multimedia pieces for young children. The sessions involve collaborative research, ideation, rapid prototyping and testing with an audience. 

 The six workshop participants from Canada, Ghana and SVG are: Shea-Lynn Johnson, Dravin Peters, Jude Obuama Addy, Akley Olton, Akosu-Asamoabea Ampofo, and Carmahn McCalla. 

The Hub’s participants are Dravin Peters, a core youth at The Hub and budding musician from Bequia, and Akley Olton a Vincentian filmmaker and visual artist. Some of the creative outcomes and objectives for this pilot project include diversifying the world of kids content, building more profound and more nuanced cultural awareness, cross-continental links and relationships, and the creation of a marketable product that can be added to the participant’s respective portfolios. 

Like Owari Kids and Youth Art Connect, we at The Hub believe that creative outputs have the power to rebuild a positive image of who we are and what we are capable of not just for others to see but within ourselves. The critical place to start is with children and youth. We continue to be excited by the organic connections that are opening to us. Collaborating directly with Africa and the African diaspora will open new channels of intel, exchange and remembering to our Vincentian creative communities.