What does Global Solidarity mean to you? In this session, Claire O’Shea, head of Hub Cymru Africa, set the scene before welcoming Barbara Davies-Quy from Size of Wales and George Sikoyo from Mount Elgon Tree Growing Enterprise to share their experiences and best practice in building a movement for global solidarity from Wales. This session was then followed by an unrecorded participative session with summit attendees.

Jane Hutt MS is the Minister for Social Justice in the Welsh Government. A progressive brief that places the Wales and Africa programme as one of justice and equality. In her role, she has centred the programme on gender equality, climate change and responding to COVID-19. The Minister spoke to the summit about Wales role in global social justice.

Moky Makura is the Executive Director of Africa No Filter. Born in Nigeria, she serves on the advisory boards of the Junior Achievement Africa, the Houtbay Partnership and the Desmond and Leah Tutu Legacy Foundation.

The proverb “Until lions learn to write, hunters will tell their stories for them” guides her leadership of Africa No Filter, an organisation shifting perceptions about and within Africa away from simplified and harmful narratives.

In this session, we hear about Moky’s work with Africa No Filter and explore understandings in Reframing the Narrative as we work to challenge harmful stereotypes about Africa, Africans and Aid.

Jean Samuel, opens the second and final day of #GlobalUndod2022 where he discusses the intersection of arts and solidarity, presenting his perspective as a contemporary African artist based in Wales. His talk explored how arts and culture can foster solidarity across Wales and Africa.

How can food create connections between people? In this session from #GlobalUndod2022, we welcomed Carol Adams from Food Adventure, a Welsh company with social objectives aiming to connect communities and help them prosper through food. Their work in Cameroon has helped people gain sustainable livelihoods from food by transforming primary food ingredients into a secondary commodity and therefore reduce food waste, hunger and food poverty.

Disability in Wales and Africa (DWA) host a discussion on their 2021 pilot initiative – Tell Your Story (TYS). Conceived to complement the “development debate”, TYS’s primary focus is about the sharing of ideas, experiences, and expertise across communities, countries, and cultures.

In the DWA context, TYS discusses the lives of deaf and disabled people in both Wales and Africa? bringing them together under an umbrella of Global Solidarity. However:

• How does encouraging people to tell (or share) their stories, develop our understanding of development?
• Particularly when working with socially marginalised groups what is there to be learnt from cross-cultural experiences?
• What might Development and Global Solidarity look like within the context of simply sharing our human experiences?
  

This session has two parts. Firstly, Natasha Nicholls, Interim Head of Arts Wales at British Council, and Jenny Stoves, Development Officer at Arts Council Wales joined us as they introduced the grants available for international solidarity projects in the arts. We ask them how we can develop the project proposals they want to fund. If you are seeking funding for your international arts projects and work, this is the video for you!

In the second half of the session, Eluned Haf, Head of Wales Arts International, and Andrew Ogun, Agent for Change at the Arts Council of Wales will discuss ‘Global responsibility, solidarity and the Arts in Wales: towards an equitable and sustainable way of working internationally in the arts in and from Wales’. This was followed-up by an interactive and unrecorded session which hosted a discussion on re-imagining the arts funding sector’s international work.

In the final session of the 2022 Global Solidarity Summit, we were pleased to welcome NoFit State Circus in Cardiff and Ngoma Nshaya in Rwanda to share their experiences of meeting with their third partner – Circus Zambia – for an intensive week of co-learning and how this has shaped their performances.

In the second half of the session, we welcome JukeBox Collective to share their views on the opportunities and obstacles for arts partnerships between Wales and Ghana and how they work to make cultural cross-pollination possible.