Our Score: Wayfinder 2020 Behind the Scenes No. 1 — Tuning No. 2 — Ensembling No. 3 — Playing No. 4 — Magic Artist-Composers Supporters
Wayfinder Istanbul 2018 Wayfinder London 2017
shaping social innovation in urgent times
 
 
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Corina Kwami

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Corina is a Renaissance woman whose mission is to bring together the arts and sciences and celebrate innovations on and off stage. On stage as a public speaker, singer or tap dancer, she has performed in countries across the Americas, Europe, Africa and Asia with her own band and as a guest, as a TEDx speaker and in the innovation lab space. Offstage, she holds a doctorate in engineering and is a speaker, strategist and policy advisor on future cities, infrastructure and sustainability. Corina’s work cuts across the arts and sciences, music and dance, recalling the past to inspire future innovation. Her new project, “Jazz for Innovators” aims to facilitate exchanges between these worlds to uncover our human knack for improvisation and cultivate experiences that enable change for a collective purpose. Based in London, she plays with her band Corina Kwami & the Swing Selection and collaborates in the jazz, tap and swing circuit. 

 
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 COMPOSITION

Introduction

What do tap dancing, music and social change have in common?

How can we create environments where dreams are possible?

Artistic-Composers Corina Kwami and Fié Neo talked about learning to listen through songs and tap dancing, about losing the ability to learn together, about what care means during a pandemic.

 
 

What do tap dancing, music and social change have in common? How can we create environments where dreams are possible? Corina Kwami and I talked about learning to listen through songs and tap dancing, about losing the ability to learn together, about what care means during a pandemic.

Jazz for wayfinding: A performance lecture series

The series of ‘performance lectures’ responds to the ‘call’ of themes people were talking about in the Wayfinder global stories.

These responses show the power of stories, shared in community, as a prompt for reflection on past, present and future opportunities to learn. In reading the global stories, I was called back to the core lessons of music and dance that help me to ‘wayfind’ forward.

Featured
Introduction

These responses show the power of stories, shared in community, as a prompt for reflection on past, present and future opportunities to learn.

Call & response and the practice of active listening

This was inspired by the challenge of ‘losing the ability to learn together’ in times of chaos.

Trust

This was prompted by reflections on the ‘lack of physical contact’ mourned during the pandemic.

Common Language

This was prompted by the celebration of ‘rising from the ashes’ that innovation and transformation in a crisis can inspire.

Improvisation

This was prompted by the concept of the ‘care capsule,’ which refer to communities that care for one another and cultivate learning. This lecture hones in on the work of Eddie Brown, taught by Heather Cornell who inspired tap labs all over the world in the wake of the global pandemic.

Phrasing

This was prompted by themes of ‘agility, adaptability and action.’

Diversity of perspectives and impact

About the Performance Lectures

SIX’s initiative to engage artist-composers is wayfinding through the chaos of the present moment offers an opportunity to orient ourselves with an eye to the future and intentionality in the present moment. This current global moment of change (climate, health, human rights) is an invitation to artists to co-create a future that works for everyone and this is only possible if individuals and collectives see their roles and experiences represented within it. 

The late Toni Morrison described artists as ‘bearing witness’ to a collective struggle, crafting a record of our existence and engaging in the hard work to remain authentic. For example, the blues art form bears witness to celebration of life and the promise of freedom, despite a history of pain and subjugation.

"Art takes us and makes us take a journey beyond price, beyond cost, into bearing witness to the world as it is and as it should be. Art invites us to know beauty and to solicit it, summon it, from even the most tragic of circumstances."
Toni Morrison

My vision for the role of the arts in social innovation is to bear witness in the way Toni Morrison describes and transform what we think is possible. For example, jazz as an art form bears witness to the diversity of musical traditions it emerged from and transforms what we think is possible within a tune through improvisation.

Improvisation is the spontaneous creation of music. When a musician improvises, he or she invents music at the moment of performance, building on the existing theme and structure of the music. Jazz generally consists of a combination of composed, arranged and improvised elements though the proportions of one to the other may vary. In collective improvisation, two or more members of a group improvise at the same time. Improvisation, both collective and solo, builds a relationship between the members of the ensemble, helping them to “talk” to one another and express their personalities, hopes and visions for the future.

 In other words, improvisation is what makes jazz the music of possibilities.

THE FINAL SYMPHONY

‘Sounding Together’

 

This 25-minute piece ‘Sounding Together’ from chaos to catharsis, was created by six Artist Composers in response to the stories, pain, hope, and actions from around the world, collected during SIX Wayfinder 2020. Their collaboration spanned four months across time-zones, only ever meeting over Zoom, using a collage of iphone recordings and makeshift studio set ups during lockdown, from Singapore, Poland, Greece, UK and Canada. The piece is a collective inquiry into the question: "What is the shape of social innovation in urgent times and what sounds can help us reimagine our way forward together?".

 

More from Corina Kwami

Check out more at: www.corinakwami.com 

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