 Okay, welcome everyone. Welcome to our events on the Hidden History series, organized by the SOAS Library Decolonizing Working Group. Welcome everybody. My name is Angelica Baskera. I am one of the co-convener of the series, together with my colleague, who are here, you can say hello to a new video on, if you like, Ludi Price, Amapoko and Fazana Kureishi. We are the co-convener of the series, hello there, and we are very pleased of the result of the series, which was launched this year, and we have had five very successful events, and we hope to continue the series in the next academic year. It's been really inspiring to hear many different stories from many different individuals and organizations, and as some of you may already know, the aim of this series precisely is to bring about the hidden voices, the hidden histories of people from the African Caribbean and Asian communities in the UK, diaspora communities and beyond, to talk about their own experience and share vision of decolonizing knowledge production, and therefore documenting the voices and experiences of diaspora communities. So that's a little bit about the series, and I mean some of you probably followed us before we had, as I said, quite a few events that are all captured on our blog, that perhaps Ludi, you might want to put in the chat the blog link, and if you miss some of our events, you're welcome to go back to them because these events are recorded tonight as well, the event is recorded, and therefore if you miss some of the previous one, please do go and listen to them. Okay, so this is a little bit about us. Now I'd like to introduce our speakers for tonight, and to talk a little bit about tonight's event that is entitled Somali Storytelling Our People Home and Landscape. As probably most of you know, Somalia had a long history of upheaval, and there was a civil war in 1991 that created a situation that one of the biggest humanitarian crises of recent times, and a very huge amount of people, diaspora, had to relocate across the world really, and it was an incredible moment in history that tonight we would like to reflect on and talk about that experience, but also the experience of those that had to leave Somalia at that particular time, who were probably very young, and we have here some of the panelists that I'm going to introduce now. So our first panelist is Abir Hussain, who is a curator of digital and virtual realities exhibition of Somali cultural artifacts and images from before the Somali civil war, and she's also an independent researcher and curator, specializing in Somali heritage, digital archive, migration and health, and in recent years she's worked with the British Museum, the British Library, the London Metropolitan Archive, the Refugee Council Archive, and the Somali Festival to deliver a number of projects and workshops engaging with the Somali community, and in 2017, very interestingly, she created one of the first VR experience of coming home in partnership with the British Museum and funded by the Brighton Digital Festival, and it was shown as a succinct humanities lab, so we are very lucky to have here tonight Abira, who will talk to us about the experience of understanding heritage and how Somali heritage is experienced in this country and the work that she's trying to do to make Somali heritage more prominent in the diaspora. Our second speaker is Yusuf Shego, sorry, maybe I mispronounce, Shego, apologies. Yusuf is a part two architecture assistant at an award-winning international practice in Manchester. He was born in Mogadishu in Somalia and he studied at Manchester School of Architecture, where he gained his bachelor and also his master of architecture, and while studying, he founded the Somali architecture in 2015. Again, he started his own, this is his own initiative, he started as a platform to share images of pre-war Somalia and then he evolved into a research project involving the creation of a historic building into 3D form, and so we're very looking forward to hearing from Yusuf's story. In 2018 Somali architecture had been invited to the London Design Biennale, along with 40 other countries and cities to exhibit at Somerset House, revealing how design influences our emotion. With the exhibition, what remains, the Somali civil war left its rich architecture heritage in ruins. As you can imagine, obviously heritage is one of the, as we've seen in them in Syria, is one of the way in which war, you know, sort of presented itself by destroying all the heritage. So it will be very interesting to hear from Yusuf about his experience. So just to conclude, I mean, there's so much to say about Yusuf, all of them, so I'm trying to cut it short. The work of Somali architecture in teaching many news articles and publications, these include not only specialized news agencies such as Archdaily City Lab Design in Deba, but also mainstream news such as the BBC, The Guardian, UNESCO Youth and Courts. And just to end, you, as it's like to be known, I guess, it was invited to give a talk at the Mogadishah Tech Summit, where it was a guest speaker to talk about Somali architecture and the importance of preserving the country heritage. So, you know, very interesting. We're really looking forward to hear all of this. Our final speaker is going to be Mohammed Mohamud, who studied international politics, and he has a very strong interest in development, conflict resolution and human rights. So it comes more from sort of political development studies, background and human rights. And he's the founder and published author of an international platform called Somali Sideways. And so again, he developed this platform that began as a photo project, which was looking at repositioning the perception of Somali in the diaspora. And as you know, unfortunately, we all know Somali people in the UK Somali diaspora have suffered a lot of misrepresentations. And then, you know, we've been obviously constantly trying to push this boundaries. So it would be really good to hear exactly experiences and what this young emerging Somali diaspora leaders are going to keep doing about this issue. He also has an MSN politics of conflict rights and justice. So us, I didn't realize, you are an alum, brilliant. And Mohammed has traveled to more than 23 countries, participated in speaking, engagement, panel discussion, book events and signings, and his publication are called Somali Sideways. A photo book in changing the perception of the Somali and the Somali Sideways are a way of addition. So that was the introduction of our panelists. Without too much further ado, we would like to hear from them now rather than me. And so we are all very excited to have you here. Welcome to so us. Well, thank you for, you know, giving up your time to come and talk to us today. And we're really looking forward to your presentation. And then after the presentations, we're going to all come back for Q&A. So the attendees, please put your question in the Q&A box. And we will try to answer your question at the end of the sessions. I will now pass it on to Abira, who is going to give her presentation. Many thanks. Thank you, Angelica. I'm just going to share my screen. Just one moment. Can everyone see my slides? Yeah. Okay. Thank you so much. Thank you, Angelica, Ludi, Emma and Frizana for inviting me in this Hidden History series. As Angelica mentioned, I have an interest in Somali heritage, being both from Somalia but also in understanding how diaspora communities develop a sense of belonging and identity, particularly in countries that want to colonize their own. And so I should say that I'm archivist, but I'm interested in the process of archiving and curation and how that plays a part in how we engage with our culture and how others perceive us. And as the theme relates to Hidden Histories, I was particularly interested in how history is hidden through the process of categorization, the discipline of anthropology and ethnography, and also the process of colonization and how that led to the construction of museum and cultural spaces. In a way, by design, created the other and defined us as an inferior, quote, unquote, kind of, culture, and how that assists today in our experiences when we engage with these cultural spaces. And so initially, my contact with a kind of heritage that related to Somalia, I should just apologize and say that if I get interrupted, my kids are across the door, making a bit of noise. And so this was the first image that I had come across, and this is a copy of the seat that was collected as part of a project led by Autograph Association of Black Photographers. They're a photography space based in Shoreditch, London, and their work is focused on the representation of Black Asian and marginalized communities through photography. And they received a significant grant from Harris Lottery Fund on a project related called Missing Chapters of History. No, sorry, my son's just walking on the Missing Chapters of History. And that project was looking at collections both found in personal, public, and private archives. So these were images from the Getty Images, the National Portrait Gallery, and other personal collections. And so this is an image of a Somali group that was taken in Crystal Palace in 1895. And so it's a reconstruction of what they imagined to be a Somali village. Just one second, son's playing with a ball in my room. I'm just going to have to carry on. If you hear a ball bouncing in the room, please just ignore it. And so this was a reconstruction of a Somali group. And this is typical of how I guess how the colonize were represented and brought over as a kind of curious display of what was over there. And so this was the kind of the first contact that I had. And I guess the initial feeling was actually this isn't something that I understand of my cultural and in terms of how it was kind of constructed or reflected. And so part of that was thinking, well, this is the only representation I have of Somali heritage. How do I think about constructing one that reflects how I experience my heritage, but also is from the perspective of the Somali diaspora. And so I was particularly interested in, and we just had this image without much information surrounding it, any kind of metadata or as the metadata referring to kind of any other kind of contextual information about the people, the individuals. Photography is often used as a way of kind of silencing as well as a way of silencing and also subduing those that are in the photograph. And so I was reflecting on how we're not named in records and also thinking about how the process of archiving kind of how things are catalogued also fail to kind of name the people. And I reference Sadie Hartman's work when she was in her book, The Venus Two Acts, reflecting on kind of records related to enslaved African Americans. And when all she had a documentation was ledgers kind of notes about the individuals, sometimes quite violent. And then thinking, well, how do you construct a history or a narrative or a way of understanding what their experiences were when these are all the records that you have. And so this, Caswell also referred to this as a type of symbolic annihilation, where she said the ways that mainstream heritage and cultured organizations kind of ignore, misrepresent, malign, and so and that also relates to the discipline of anthropology. And I was really interested in how this legitimizes power, enabled power to kind of continue as well as thinking about how then when you come across these records, how you can use it as a tool to either tell different stories as well as how we can use archiving to their witness to other stories as well. And so this resulted in a project which was called Healing Through Archives, where I invited the Somali community to come to autograph to share images, which I'll share later on. A lot of my work involves both looking at archives and museum objects. As I mentioned, the discipline of anthropology and archiving and information studies means that these segments are often separated. But for me, I was reflecting on the work of Otlet where he mentioned that anything can be a document, be an object, an image, a book, or even a memory. And so I was trying to think about how to, even though the intellectual discipline had kind of separated these collections, how we could bring them together. And so this image again is what I had come across. These are kind of catalogs of the objects that were brought in and donated to the British Museum with a brief description again. And that because the theme is the idea of objects and descriptions, but the people and the place that were integral to this culture heritage are often missing from these documents. And so I was thinking about how to use storytelling as a way of kind of weaving what knowledge we do have from museums and archives, as well as knowledge from the diaspora, try to create, I guess, what I refer to as a kind of recombinant history. And so these are some images that were donated as part of the Healing Through Archives project. And these are images of taken in Somalia before the Civil War. I was particularly interested in before the Civil War because I had experienced a lot of second hand memories and stories from my parents about this time. And I really wanted to understand what this moment in history was for those who've got to live through it, but also for those of us who may have only experienced it through other stories or through family albums. And so these images, for me, were a way of evidencing that memory and also thinking about how in a post-conflict society can these memories help us to find healing, to repair, to find a sense of belonging. And so I was interested in not only our stories of migration, but also artifacts that we had brought over. And particularly our own archives, because part of being colonized was that a lot of these objects and archives migrated and exist both in museums, but also in the national archives. And they're particularly difficult for communities who have found independence, where these records are kind of taken away, the idea of building stability and independence as well as kind of developing the nation is, I guess, hampered when parts of that history is taken and brought over. And so I was interested in these images as well as images that showed weaving, that showed making. And so these were taken in 1982. And so also I was interested in the types of records that were found in cultural institutions. So for instance, the British Museum, which has the second largest collection of Somali objects and archives, you can find objects, images, but also what you can find images of rock art sites as well. And so this is an image of a Somali rock art site in the northern part of Somalia called Les Gill. And when we're engaging with this type of heritage, it's often very linear, where it's difficult to find a connection to history that are thousands of years old. And so I was also interested in how one creates a connection to this past, when you are separated by thousands of years. And Ruth Tringham speaks about the ideas of creating narratives and thinking about using database as well as doing that. So also thinking about place in the archive. So this is an image of a project that we, the beginning of an image of a project that we did, that was looking at Somali objects. And so just to kind of go back a step, I had mentioned that I was collecting or beginning to collect images from for the Civil War. I was particularly interested in that time period, because it was also thinking about stories of Somalis that had came over. Because a lot of the images, when you do come into contact in archives, were either kind of during the colonial time period, or archives and records that related to housing issues that related to social issues, but not necessarily about Somali people, their experiences, who they were. And there were other archives that you can find within the Maritime Museum, which relate to cruise registers of this. And so some of you may or may not know, the Somali community arrived here in the mid 1800s, initially as merchant seamen, when they were part of the British protectorate. And then the second wave came after the Civil War. And so those that arrived as merchant seamen, settled across port cities like Hull, Liverpool, Cardiff, and the East End. And so those were the types of other histories that I was engaging with. And this project began as part of a wider project by the British Museum, which was called Object Journeys. And that was exploring how, as they refer to, communities, can better tell their stories or engage with museum collections. And so the focus of this collection was thinking about Somali pastoralism, which is a significant part of Somali heritage, the environment in across the Somali regions, especially the northern northwestern part is quite arid and dry. And so significant portion of the Somali population is nomadic. And a lot of that meant that that development, the creation of objects that were both mobile, that they could carry with them on the back of their camel. And so it was utilitarian, but also it was really richly decorated. And so the majority of museum objects that are collected from Somali were ethnographic objects. And so that played a significant part of this display. But part of the issue was that these objects and how they were displayed created a sort of a binary in the sense that we were working with the museum. But it didn't really reflect how Somali cultural heritage is practiced, considering that oral history and orality plays a significant part of Somali heritage. It was the mode of how knowledge was shared, how information was shared, and a lot of these objects, particularly in their making and their use would be associated with works songs, which are often held in the British Library. And so there was a bit of tension around, well actually these objects are quite static, and they don't really reflect how Somali heritage is practiced. And again, even though museums are kind of trying to move away from this idea of their difficult past, still when they're engaging with, as they refer to a source communities, were still being documented. And so that kind of led to the project, which you can see some of the engagement activities called the Nomad Project, which I worked on, was just thinking about the use of digital as a way of being able to think about representing multiple modalities and experiences using an online platform, such as a games engine. And I don't have very long left, so I'm just going to show a quick video of what the project was about. Hopefully you can hear. Nomadic Somali people walk great distances, never staying in one place for too long. With each move, they take all their belongs with them, their animals, their possessions, even their homes. Imagine you had to carry all your belongings with you. What would you take? We would like to invite you to spend some time with the nomadic family, to see the objects and hear the songs which are part of their everyday lives. To find out more about these and other Somali objects, please visit nomad- project.co.uk. And so the experience that you saw was a mixed reality experience. And it was thinking about how to use things like motion capture, digitized objects from the British Museum and archival sounds to create an experience that reflects how the objects might have been used, the people that would have used them, and kind of thinking about time and place as being important to reflect that. And that also led to workshops where we shared experience because part of that was thinking about trying to de-center this experience and this cultural heritage from museums to community spaces. And these are also the other workshops we did, part of the free word center where we invite people to use the augmented reality postcards. And these were more images of workshops. Part of the project was also thinking about teaching digital skills, as well as thinking about how to democratize access to the heritage, was also the tools to be able to document as well. And this is the archive that we created. The other element was thinking about hidden histories, was also how objects can be hidden in terms of how they're catalogued, how they're described. And when they are digitized, it's often very difficult to find because they're not catalogued correctly, but also the access to digitized objects that are freely available is also a challenge. And so processes like digitization can also be, can also hide heritage, both in not allowing people to have access to those records. And so these are the AR postcards as well. So it's also thinking about making the heritage accessible, not just an experience that requires a headset that can be expensive and prohibitive. I mean, this was also just trying to explore how everything connected together, both in the immersive experience, digitization and the learning. I was very much about trying to de-center the museum space and make community spaces and events integral to both the sharing of the culture heritage, but also where the work was happening. Yeah, so thank you. And I'll stop now. And then I'll introduce, well, invite the next speaker, Yusuf Shago, to speak about Smiley Architecture. And I'll just stop sharing. Hi everyone. Can you see me? Yes. Thank you. I'll just share my screen. So my name is Yusuf Shago, and I'm the founder of Smiley Architecture. And I'll try to summarize what Smiley Architecture is and what we've been up to, and the challenges we faced over the years. It's been exactly seven years since we started a Smiley Architecture, but before I started back in 2015, I first went back to Somalia in 2013. I was still second year of university in Sweden at the time. And before I went there, there wasn't a lot of architecture available on the media or anything that I could research about Smiley Architecture. And at the time, usually for our whole holiday, we'd go to Mombasa in Kenya. That's where the majority of my family are. But this year, we would be I decided, you know, let's go to Mombasa. You know, I'm studying architecture, I want to see what's out there. My brother was working there as well at the time. So I decided to go to Mombasa University. I wanted to come home. Every afternoon when my brother finishes work, I would go around the city with him. And we are a family of bakers. So he would usually tell me when he was young, where he used to sell traditional Smiley food on the streets and everywhere. And he knew about the city quite well of how it used to be before the war. And he would describe how amazing it was and how it used to become a weapon of the Indian Ocean and the Switzerland of Africa just to name a few. But for me, it was very difficult to imagine this city actually existed or, you know, there could be such a city as he was describing. But what he was describing was this image or just one of the few images. When we took the pictures just behind the building here. And so this is what he was talking about. This is what my whole family talked about when they say Mohteshi used to be an amazing city. And the same picture was taken from the Hotel Araba, a very famous hotel in Mohteshi before the war. It's completely destroyed now. And I recently had one of my friends, you know, you would hear a lot of stories from the hotel. But recently one of my friends from Mohteshi said, you know, this is the way Spain's got married. And this is Hotel Jibba looking back towards Araba. This is where my grandfather used to work. And again, when Riyan used to tell us about what the city used to look like, the delegators or other nationals who used to come to Mohteshi, you know, the basketball players, the international basketball players that used to come to USA. And for me, when I was researching about these images, you would usually go, you know, you have to dig deep, you have to go to books, you have to go Acaval images, the libraries, a few of them be the British Library or some of them in Italy. So if you search for Somalia on Google back then, you couldn't really find anything that was what the city used to look like. This is just one of the buildings in the ex-parliament. It just shows the multicultural, the city used to be, how the multicultural city used to be in different architecture, different faith that existed in Mohteshi. And it still exists in Mohteshi. And this is what remains of that building. And when I went back in 2013, this is what I would see throughout the city. It felt like you're walking in a warm years here, just the historical part of Mohteshi. There's a lot of development, but it was quite sad to see once very important buildings to be left off like that. This is what's left over there. It's completely gone now, but some of these buildings have been rehabilitated and they're in a good condition at the moment. And going back to multi-faith, what the city used to be, this is the Roman Catholic Church. This is what's left over the church. Mohteshi used to have at least, well, he used to have three churches and his mind blow into a city like Mohteshi to have three churches. Two of them were destroyed just before the war, the last one. And this is what's left of the lighthouse of Mohteshi. Despite what was going on, despite what was going on back in the days, the city was growing. And this is what the city is at the moment. This was taken in 2013. Mohteshi will become one of the most populated cities in Africa by 2050. As a lot of people are moving into cities, you can see Mohteshi being one of them because with the drought and climate change, you can just see how a 75% of a worldwide population going towards it. And Mohteshi is a good example of that. Unfortunately, we don't have the infrastructure to deal with this influx of population. And now for over two years, I've been collecting images of what the city used to be like. I didn't know what to do with them. I had a lot of gigabytes of images on my laptop. But so now it's 2015 when I said my master's like Manchester. And we were looking at the two weeks workshop, looking at Manchester after the world war II. There was a lot of master plans that were in the prisons for a lot of cities in the UK. Some of them did not realise, some of them not. And my group had education reasons. So the universities, both universities of Manchester and the Metropolitan. These are just few sketches of the massive plan in that way. They did the discussion at the town hall. It showcases what these cities could be like after the world war II. And we also did a 3D model of these buildings that were proposed. Some of them were built. Some of them were built but then demolished. And we did the visuals of a show in the Manchester weather or the UK weather. We also did an exhibition for it at the university. And these are just some of my classmates and Ahmed Musa and Ahmed Jami, who later became a very important part of the Somalia architecture. And then going back to, so now I have the images of Somalia architecture. So how did the making these models come to be? So I first looked at the church because it was probably one of the most documented buildings in Somalia. We just searched anything to do with Somalia architecture and the church most available from construction. At the time I was very busy at the university and I really loved the project and to the point where I was thinking of talking at the university. It would have been a disaster, thank God. I started hiring people to work with me. I didn't think of it as architecture would become a starter. I was asking my tutor for advice because he was teaching us at the time and he said just either do yourself or hire someone you need to go along with and a bit of these buildings, some of them are still there, some of them we have been this is the image of the lighthouse. So from one building to the whole city, some of these buildings are very detailed, some of them are just masking and some of them we were using google maps and open speed map to locate them where they are and we didn't really have the resource for the money to actually do proper survey of these buildings at the time. From one building to one district to at least a three district in a small issue. So now I have all this content things in my capital images to be modeled. It was too good for me just to keep hold of it for myself because I just wanted to see what's out there or if anybody would be interested in such a thing and one of the reasons why or why I wanted to do this was to raise awareness because when I started looking into some other architecture there was no inspiration for me, there was no anything available on the internet. So I really wanted to go all out on a raising awareness or make a huge campaign. So at the time there was a lot of social media pages that were looking at the history of Somalia, history of a bit of a culture but there wasn't one particular one that was focused on architecture and so it was just resharing everything that far. Now a lot of these images were available on the internet but they didn't have a story behind it. Nobody really did a detailed explanation of what they are, why they're there and we looked at one of the series we looked at mosques around Somalia and mosques really mean a lot to me personally because when I was young so after the war a volume of this and then we moved to there and then it just closed the city and then we moved to Barabe. Now when in Barabe every time there was like explosion or there was like fights between two major fights a lot of people used to run towards the mosque and people would be like oh this is a safe place and you know nobody would come here it was a sanctuary place for you know neither of the tribes would come into the mosque and you know to to satisfy anything like that. So until now the places of worship including churches are the place of worship. I really love just me personally I'm just from architectural background I'm just a huge fan of it. So it's still like with social media we still didn't make a huge impact because there wasn't like a place where all these information were located so we did a website for where this is where my friend comes to play and so just again the platforms like resharing 3D model so we're in a VR actually be able to walk around these buildings on a human scale and then we use a snapshot filters I won't go into detail but they had that 50 million view just to raise awareness just to show there's a lot of interesting buildings in Somalia and there's just a few of them and now this is where so we have the 3D models we have the account images we thought okay let's get into the media let's showcase these buildings and you know let's see what the media will say about it because usually the media are interested in either destruction specifically for Somalia they're either more interested in destruction and nobody would be interested in interesting stories like this or what Somalia used to be like or what Somalia could be like for getting what the current situation and again we went back to the church because this is where Medina the editor comes into play at the time she was in the church and he was celebrating 19 years since he was inaugurated and we thought it's a good idea to make an article about it because just to showcase how motivated he used to look he used to be and we did a proposal for it as well and one thing we didn't know was the site still belongs to the Roman Catholic Church or the Roman Catholic Church so no one can actually build anything in the city in this area and another building we looked at was the National Theater this has been refurbished now luckily this is how it used to be just after the war like the roof was missing we did like a few vision as architects we like to showcase like from our research stage to what it is right now and then what it could be so we just wanted to envision especially as young architects we were very ambitious like we really want to make a difference and if not us who else would make a difference to our city and not only looking at single building but going further and looking at the whole city or in a few other cities and a few other areas within the city looking at the international airport this is all done like with the student budget student timing so we didn't really have a major you know these images they take quite a lot of time to make but we just did because we were having fun all year like the other night and so in the press recently came across was this is what we found it very challenging so this is something that we came across recently was if you search for Mogadishu on the internet you will see a lot of because of the media or the recent media using Mogadishu this is what you would see and and then if you google Mogadishu you would see the good side of Mogadishu we thought the it goes back when I was starting research I would I'd never googled Mogadishu and it never crossed my mind to google Mogadishu so we found it really really challenging to get into the media so we did like the article of the church and then we got like we sent it to almost 50 journalists to have a look at it none of them got back to us until daily they said hey we are in you know what you guys did it's quite interesting and I think it's worth it's worth it's worth to publish and finally we made it you know it wasn't it was big at the time for us anyway and we finally made it to mainstream media at daily which is showing Somali architecture you know so something that's not destruction something that's not politics it completely different to your everyday Somali news which is the architecture and the rest followed me or other people followed from that the I'll just quickly I want to say so we did an exhibition again part of the raising awareness was quite interesting to be invited to this you know the annual exhibition because a we just wanted to showcase architecture or we just wanted to showcase the the interests of our Somalis and it was an emotional state how this design influenced our emotion and I remember when I first went back to Somalia it really it felt like a warm museum it was really a achievement for us to be it's a bit in these countries and again it was visited by 200 000 the Somalis house and just as part of our campaign the some of these countries had the budget of 250 000 whereas we were using student finance and the fund in money to participate in the exhibition and then we did another exhibition in Manchester this is working up in Mancunis in Manchester artists poets that lived in Manchester again we attracted different audience in Manchester as well showcasing architecture and the a lot of the our audience it's not just Somalians or you know we attract all types we are making architecture completely something that the younger generation would be interested in the background is quite boring it's quite daunting to research but we felt the let's make it interesting and then from that we go another gate which is at UNESCO to participate in Africa week we were looking at the innovation so how can communities technology be repaired of it and this time we're using the PR headsets to showcase the 3d model we have a small space so we have to become creative on how we can showcase everything and at the time so this is Audrey Azuli the director general of UNESCO at the time I generally said we should come to Somalia instead of using the VR you can see in green light and she did that seriously and she did come to Somalia and if you're not aware but UNESCO Somali did not sign UNESCO convention until 2019 before that we were not able to to assign like a city or to assign a single building as heritage but now with the Somali signing the convention we're able to do that and then I was also invited back to Somalia a to showcase what we've been working on now this goes back to the raising awareness because majority of the audience thought what I was showing was a proposal and what I was showing was what the city can be well the video was what the Somali used to be like and a lot of people felt okay that is what we are proposing and to finish off so what's next I'm currently just collecting all of these information that I've been working on turning it into a catalog it's not big enough for a book so I'm currently working on the exhibition a digital exhibition with this group called Space Popular a digitizing everything we have so since majority of our audience are global and exhibiting in one space was not really we were not having the same impact so we felt since the pandemic everything going digital a less thing in the exhibition and that's me I'll just show a quick video of the 15 model and that's me and I'm now passing on to Mohamed Mohamed yeah can you can you and share screen Yusuf thank you hi everyone can you hear me yeah okay great I'm going to share my screen now okay thank you guys I would like to thank Faizana for inviting me to the Hidden History Somali Storytelling webinar series thank you Angelica for the introduction so my project is called Somali Sideways my name is Mohamed I'm the founder I'm going to be talking a little bit about my project how it started and where it's heading a lot of the time I always ask non-Somalis this question which is what's the first thing they think of when they hear about Somalis or Somalia or the Somali region as a whole and one of the things one of the reasons why I asked this question in particular is because I want them to basically give an honest feedback on what they what they what they've perceived and a lot of the time it's it's negative connotations you know like terrorism, famine, piracy and failed state and a lot of those things derive from obviously from what they see online and and and the media as a whole who yeah who haven't really done a good job in showcasing the Somali culture and and the Somali people and this is one of the driving forces as to why I started this whole project this one sideway so one of the things that that started this project was I was at university doing my first degree international politics at Brunel and I read an article in 2014 in early 2014 that Alshabab did the committed suicide attack near the Somali parliament and it was a highly organized attack and when I started reading it I said to myself like why is it that a lot of the things are negative when it comes to Somalia and the Somali region and you know and why are most the news coverage on the Somali region about all these negative connotations and there wasn't enough coverage showing Somalis in a positive life so basically I wanted to do something about it in my own time and there was an issue because I didn't know how to go about it you know my skills were I mean I still have these skills you know I like taking photos of people and I wanted to basically use my photography skills and to create some sort of visual storytelling platform online and in the beginning I wanted to use my photography in showcasing Somalis in the artistic way and illustrating their lives on on on a social media platform this is where the idea of Somali standing sideways came about I gathered some of my friends and yeah initially they they kind of thought I was going crazy because they were like why are you going to take photos of of us standing sideways it's a bit weird I don't think people will or will understand the concept and and all of that stuff so yeah it's safe to say that they were very very skeptical about the whole the whole idea and the whole project but nevertheless you know good friends they they they support you even if it is a crazy idea so I gathered some some friends of mine and I started taking photos of them standing sideways and I would ask a few questions about their lives you know what they what they plan to do some of the stories were about civil war you know what was it that was that made you who you are today you know education I would ask them about the educational background or ask them about what their goals and aspirations are whether it's business or entrepreneurship or anything like that so I started sharing it on on an Instagram platform so I created a logo through the help of a friend I set up a page and then I started posting it day by day of all of my friends initially in the beginning but one thing I didn't realize was this project grew out of my control so it's deep there was a lot of Somalis that wanted to get involved from around the world Somalis are in Europe Somalis are in North America Somalis are in Australia Somalis are in Africa as well so the project kind of grew into a global a global platform so this book Somalis sideways photo book in changing perceptions of the Somali all the photos that I've gathered of the Somalis that I've interviewed since 2014 when the project began and then once the project started I basically wanted to basically create some sort of tangible book so that people can take away from it and then once I started getting all these Somalis involved this book idea was in the help of a brother called Mohammed Arten who basically runs a publishing platform called Luft Press and one of the things that was unique was this particular publishing platform focuses on Islamic and Quran sort of studies and Somali history and all of that stuff so for him to do this kind of project was kind of new and I've never published a book in my life so it was kind of a unique journey for both of us so yeah this project this book project and book was published in 2018 and my goal was to basically go around the world initially my plan was to go around the world and do book events and talk about my project to Somalis and non Somalis alike one of the things that was very amazing about this project was I got to interview a lot of Somalis that were world renowned in various fields and one of them was Ilhan Omar she took part in the project in 2015 and she was one of the people who was very supportive of my project and still is to the state so at the time she was running as a state legislator in Minnesota and she was running a campaign so that she could win that win that post which she later won becoming the first Somali American to be a legislator in the United States at the time and later on she basically became a US representative in the November elections and she basically won it and there was a lot of other notable Muslim women that won it as well like Rashida so yeah they not only did Ilhan Omar became the first Somali to do so she became one of the first Muslim women to be elected in the United States House of Representatives there was also a Somali famous singer called Arut Manta who took part in the project as well and also an individual who was part of the project called Haudenlai who passed away in Hamar and sorry in Maya through a deadly an attack basically an explosion so she was one of the people that was involved in the project so this whole project was involved by myself and a few others involved who interviewed Somalis from around the world those that are in the local community and those that are in the national and international communities as a whole so this whole project enabled me to visit a lot of countries I got to network with Somalis my first book event took place in London in July of 2018 and I got to visit more than 20 countries places where I would basically support Somalis and that I've done with Somali sideways one of the notable places that I went to that was unique was I visited China and my book is currently at the Nanjing Library one of the first books to be in the African section of the library and the one of the things that that was unique for them was that they've never they never knew Somalis and their stories and the things that they've done a lot of the time they they heard about the negative connotations that comes with it so my main objective with this whole project and book was I wanted people to change their misconceptions on how the world used the Somali region and how the world used the Somali people a lot of the time my first question that people ask me as well is why is it that that you came up with this idea of people standing sideways and one of the reasons why I did that was because I wanted to draw into this concept that people choose a certain aspect of their lives that they want people to share and that's the side that's visible to to the person to the viewer and the side that's hidden is the side that a certain aspect of life is kept within that no one else knows and that's the side that's not visible so and yeah essentially remains a mystery so this project is objective was to focus on the misconceptions and also the book covers complex and diverse stories such as identity and immigration and also how others deal with the normal flow of their everyday lives so if you have any questions feel free to feel free to ask me my main objective is to continue doing this obviously due to the the safety of covid and I always love to collaborate with other organizations artists organizations creative organizations and hopefully to continue that in the future also if you would like to grab coffee of the book feel free to either message me or email me and you can also follow my socials over there on instagram and twitter so yeah thank you very much for for listening thank you thank you very much Mohammed if you could stop sharing the screen and we can call everyone back for the Q&A now yes thank you and okay here we go thank you everybody wow well I'm very sort of it was very interesting presentation all of them I mean so much to talk about and so many issues have been raised and you know I really don't know where to start because they were all fantastic presentations starting from Abira with the historical and the archive which resonates so much to me because I also work on archives and then going into the more contemporary situation of perceptions which you know it ties in so well in this presentation and so yes it's extremely interesting you know very pleased to see all these things taking place and you know we're definitely trying to collaborate with all of you absolutely because this has to expand you know everybody should really take it on board and try to connect with these type of initiatives so I wouldn't I wouldn't speak too long because yes as a lot of chairs I want to take over but there were a lot of comments very positive comments in them in the chat our audience if you have specific questions would you like to put them in the Q&A or if you raise your hand am I you can even I mean we don't have we have like a small audience so I'm happy to people to say the question if they prefer and so you can raise your hand and there's a question in the chat okay so let me pick it and okay sorry and all right yeah so we have a question here from Ida Ajivaianis hello Ida Ida is one of our colleagues that saw us she's actually been chairing some of these seminars so thank you so much Ida for joining us and thank you for your question which I read it out so Ida's question is the thinking of COVID and how it affected Somalis in London did you get to document a hidden side that we didn't see in the news we saw Uber drivers and bus drivers hit but was that all and so yes very interesting question about yes the contemporary situation how Somali were affected and so possibly Mohammed or Yusuf who wants to take it I think the question was to me because yeah I said Somalis I do yes no problem so yeah that's a good question I think with the with the whole COVID situation it actually hasn't crossed my mind to do a project of how like COVID affected Somalis I've seen a lot of a lot of Somali organizations in the UK put on how COVID affected the Somali community but I think it would be a really good good idea into basically showcasing the stories of how what they went through the struggles they went through with COVID and yeah that's something I have working on a new project and that could be a project that I could I could focus on yeah anybody wants to add any comment? I mean there was a big pivot towards digital initiatives I think museums that weren't as digitally engaged had to think about how to engage audiences with their collections and in that sense when we're talking about I guess hidden histories there was work around kind of creating better access I think what it revealed for me anyway was I think that we were aware of inequality but I think it was just exacerbated because digital inclusion although there were issues around digital inclusion around digital literacy and so kind of some organizations were able to pivot and to be able to support kind of Somali individuals but I think some activities completely ceased and they haven't continued and so but I think particularly because my project is interested in the use of digital in some ways it also with other audiences it helped to kind of accelerate because I know there was a project that was happening in Camden with I think a Camden Heritage Centre based in Kentish town and they did a project where the British Library actually they held listening sessions and a lot of people were able to participate with that so I know things like that had supported but I don't I think for some people I think it may think more hidden during the Covid experience and so yeah I think and sometimes it highlights what is available already to kind of make available to the public in terms of like digital collections but yeah so I don't know I found that a lot of work stopped. Okay thank you. I have a question for Abira. Abira was because I'm very interested in how you're looking at the archives and how you know in the UK yes this idea that the archives it's about sort of documenting the British experience. Many times I hear this sentence and that's always track record because to me the archives are actually the experience of so many different people and as you said the big problem is how do you bring out the voices that are completely hidden and they are you know sort of being hidden by this idea of the the one missionary or the one colonial debt collected and therefore owns the but actually inside the collection there is a lot more to unpack and I'm interested in this idea of how do we go back to the archives and and take out the voices and as you you know you said just I would like to hear a little bit more about your views on that and how we can bring you know youth organization of diaspora organization and bring them to the archive and then revisit the rewrite, reinterpret the archive that we have. That's my PhD research right there. I would say I necessarily have the answer. I think for me the archive yeah historically well I mean we think about my a lot of my research has been interested in like what have been the what is the purpose of archiving in what we understand in terms of the west of museums and I guess as soon as we understand it was part of the story of subjugating people in across the east and the global south and so when these structures were about power and about the state and about perpetuating perpetuating that excuse me then it becomes difficult then to see the archive as something that we can turn to something that is that we can refer to in terms of understanding our culture and our heritage. So the archive in itself is a thing that also needs to be studied not just the content and how it was organized the idea of categorization as I've mentioned the the the archiving process both the kind of the physical catalogs in what was written you know I guess these these these disciplines were designed to be able to make them scientific and so like a lot of my research was lost in that process and I think people and and their stories and so for me the object or the archive doesn't become something that's just about understanding it doesn't become a way to classify people it's I guess I want to use the object in the archive as a way of being able to examine and use it as a tool to be able to examine that history that entanglement with colonialism with empire with commerce with people's stories and to be able to explore that that hybridity through things like storytelling I meant I referenced Sadie Hartman in her book Venus in two acts she uses something she calls critical fabulation which is a type of storytelling to try to imagine what the people were what their lives were and and and so part of that then for me is working with this my diaspora really to understand what what these objects mean to them what stories what poetry what other history can we draw from these objects and and how to use that as a way of being able to talk about wider issues as well it's not just about creating more opportunities to document and collect and again fix that that history as it was done before but also thinking about and I guess Muhammad was mentioning this idea about why and also use of wider issues around identity around reconstruction around repair around kind of the inequality that we're facing so that using that as a mechanism to do that so I find storytelling all because of kind of morality being integral to Somali culture I'm interested in things like poetry as a way of being able to draw meaning from these objects and these archives and I think working with young people the thing that we found was that for them they may not necessarily have a lot of well they they feel like they don't I mean they may have stories sorry if you hear kids screaming you may hear stories about Somalia but it's often from your parents and so part of some of the workshops we were thinking about was creating that knowledge exchange because perhaps in Somalia like those interactions that have enabled you to understand where you were being in the place is a completely significant part of helping you to have that meaning so part of it was also allowing people just to be together because actually there aren't many community spaces where people can meet where people can talk where people can exchange people are kind of isolated physically and and so we were thinking about using digital you know WhatsApp was also something that we were interested in as well as a tool because that's how at the moment people share information through voice notes through messages also looking at social media as well I guess also thinking about using digital platforms that people are comfortable using as well so I guess part of our work is acknowledging the history that is in museums and but also thinking about other ways of being able to connect that knowledge with what exists outside of museums both in people's memories in in movement and yeah and finding ways of being able to connect people to that but I don't I don't know what fully the answer to that question is I'm still trying to think about but I think storytelling can play a big part and just being with each other I think is important as well yes thank you so much thank you definitely answer my question and it's an open question in the sense yes it's a it's a it's a big question it's about finding ways and I think you you do have an idea of how to find new ways of understanding this idea of history museum even the idea of the museum what is the museum how can we change this vision that we had that static for so long anyway I have my colleagues with the raised hand so there was Ludy Ludy you had your hand raised for a while I don't know if you want to come in or yeah and then it was Farzana also so Ludy first I don't know if my my question would need a long time to answer but I was just going to ask you Sir Fifty if he had any stories that he could share from people who have seen his work and remember how how the city used to be before when they were experiencing that literally it brings back memories for them and things like that yeah usually very very small during exhibitions people will usually come to talk about the the timing of the issue before the war so some of these people have never come back in and I've recently been getting contacted by a lot of ex-Italian soldiers that were in Somalia the soldiers or just the Italian family that used to live in Moffisha I don't even speak Italian but they would usually contact me email me and just use google translator to talk about my experience but yeah a lot of people do contact tell me the story a lot of people they used to do like road trips around Somalia from the north all the way to south I think back in the 16th the security guard who was at the London Design Biennale he's family used to live in Tanzania I think and then when the what's his name the dictator, the Amin or something yeah yeah so when there was a lot of fights during that time I think a lot of the Indians were being kicked out of their houses businesses and this guy he was British but he had to leave Tanzania and he was either go to Kenya, the East Africa Kenya, Uganda or Somalia and at the time Kenya was also going through a really interesting period so his option was to go to Somalia and you know he said he was so welcomed with our family and this guy is a really very random guy at the museum he was a security looking after our exhibition another guy I think he was Christian and looking at the church they used to come there with their family a Sunday service and the Amin, a Sunday service they used to go to the Mogadishah church they had a lot of images but yeah I do at least once or twice a month I do get people sharing this story about Somalia usually and a lot of them have a lot of images of what the city used to look like before the war and then you will never ever ever think that there was a British or American family that lived there in Mogadishah and yeah it's just very very fascinating especially the Italians because some of them used to send me images of the airport when they were in during their service like two to three years in a nation it goes as far as Pakistan I think people from Pakistan yeah I do get a lot of stories from people that's great to know the kind of impact that your work is having on people bringing back memories and things yeah like in the whole country not many people have documented but these people you know who used to go there like my city the city that I actually grew up in Barra is all the way south not that many pictures are available online so this interest like they're not even interested in architecture they're just interested in sharing their stories and they will send us and I think the one of the again another ex-US soldier he tied and he had like a whole like I don't know how many I carry on images he said I'll be more than happy to edit these images because he had it for so many years and nobody was interested in it and then he came he came across an article on I think it was Forbes a Forbes a journal and they're like oh again Forbes is completely different the audience it's like oh I looked at your article and I think it's quite interesting for you to take these images from us there are some images of the inside of the parliament you know during the when there was a lot of parliament going on back then a lot of these images there's no interior pictures so yeah there's a lot of them and okay I'm just a bit conscious of the time we got a few minutes few minutes left but yeah if I could get in then I'm trying to get in because I've got my son running in and out as well that's fine we don't mind I actually had two questions I wanted to say thank you so much it was so inspiring and I'm so so happy that you all could talk today um Yusuf I wanted to ask the images that you're documenting and storing now would these be available to share openly with libraries is this something that we could add to our digital library collection or is I mean is that something like I was also checking about copyright and things like that hey in terms actually I'll just speak on copyrights before 1980s I think or 90s Somali didn't have any copyrights in any images so I didn't know that's quite interesting so a lot of images in Somali before the war there was no copyrights issue so if you do you find any images you can use it anyway however there is a the the Rome school of architecture think they they have a lot of archival images there we we do want to like collect architectural images because if you look at the data it's just it's it's huge to so we want to filter out all the architecture and place it in our website to have like a place where if you search for architecture of Somalia you can just come in to you know our website we do find challenging because there's a huge cultural challenges which is why architecture why Somali architecture a why archival images so we are trying to bridge between the elders and the new generation which is this is history we need to you know a place a huge importance in this so for us to have like archival place or we need a lot of resources we need a lot of what do you call it money to to fund all this so there's that challenge as well so everything that we do is based on exhibition every exhibition we raise money to do just the exhibition and we never have like a research where I was speaking to my tutor just recently and he said you need to collaborate with like a institution to make sure you archive all these architecture absolutely yeah okay thank you I just had one other question it was to Mohammed I wanted to ask quickly if you could just tell it are you working on anything new do you have any other new ideas for more publications anything in the pipeline yeah yeah I mean I do I do have a project that I'm working on it's because this book was published in 2018 and the project started in 2014 my plan is to hopefully interview the same people as I did before again to see how their lives have developed since then yeah so you know I'm sure things have developed with a lot of them so yeah to interview with them again to see where their lives have gone and if they're still doing the same thing that they said that they were set to do or have they moved into a different career path or a different pathway in life so yeah that's something I'm working on yeah it's really inspiring for I think the young young Somali people as well really thank you thank you thank you very much everyone I mean there could be so much more to talk about and but I think this is the start of a conversation hopefully with us and your project is so fascinating and and so you know we really will be thinking about you know how to take these forwards and and possibly you know bring other events or other ways in which also for you think about SOAS possibly an institution if you need one to support you we're here and we are you know we really want to support initiative like yours and I think you know we are really trying to kind of push those boundaries as I was saying at the start and so if any I mean I don't know if you want to have a final comment before we close the event today and as we said the event is recorded it's going to be available on our YouTube channel the SOAS YouTube channel within the next few days and we will share the link with all of you and you know let's keep sharing and keep talking keep communicating about these very important issues I think Ludi maybe you want to say a comment or Ahmad you want to say something before we close I just want to say that oh Yusuf has just replied and so has a beer about someone someone in the chat wants to keep in touch with all you guys so Mohamed if you put your contact details in there at all um someone would love to get in contact with you about your work um other than that I don't have anything really to add except thank you for coming and sharing sharing the work with us it's been yeah thank you so much thanks for inviting us yeah I really appreciate it you're welcome thank you thank you so okay thank you everybody so we close the event and thank you so much for coming some of the attendees have already left probably we had to dash off but we did have a quite a quite a big audience earlier and as I said we will keep pushing this the recording because what we do is we do share we still share it with our network and for those that couldn't couldn't attend it okay so anyway thank you so much for from all of us from on behalf of SOAS as well and please stay in touch and you know thank you again to everybody