Global Events In Chicago This Weekend: Desert Blues, Supporting Refugees Locally
By WBEZ Staff
Global Events In Chicago This Weekend: Desert Blues, Supporting Refugees Locally
By WBEZ Staff“Global citizen” Nari Safavi joins WBEZ’s Worldview every Friday to help you plan an international weekend in Chicago.
This week, Safavi recommended Northwestern University’s #WithRefugees, a concert with Ali Farka Touré Band and Terakaft, and a culinary event that seeks to bridge cultures through food.
Festival: #WithRefugees
Billed as a day of “arts, awareness and activism,” Northwestern University’s one-day #WithRefugees Festival hopes to explore how to use art and the humanities to address the refugee crisis’ spillover into local neighborhoods.
Iranian filmmaker Emadeddin Tayefeh will screen part of his film Public Enemies at the event. Tayefeh was completing a graduate degree at Tehran South University when he was expelled from Iran for anti-government activism. He sought asylum in New York in 2016 and is now Northwestern University’s School of Communication/Mellon refugee artist-in-residence.
Tayefeh and Northwestern University’s Galya Ben-Arieh Ruffer spoke about the festival on Worldview. Ruffer is the founding director of the Center for Forced Migration Studies at the Buffett Institute for Global Studies at Northwestern University.
The event will feature artists’ exhibits, workshops, film screenings and free Persian food. It will be hosted at Northwestern University’s Kresge Hall on Saturday at 2:30 p.m.
Music: Ali Farka Touré Band and Terakaft
The Festival in the Desert from Timbuktu comes to Chicago for a concert featuring the desert blues, a musical form that is now banned in Mali.
The Ali Farka Touré Band and Terakaft concert takes place at the Old Town School of Folk Music on Friday at 8.00 p.m. WBEZ is a media sponsor of the event.
Food: Global Culinary Activism
What better way to learn about different cultures than through food? Safavi is a co-presenter at the second part of the Global Culinary Activism Series alongside Lemaster Family Kitchen’s Sean Lemaster. WBEZ’s Alexandra Salomon will be the MC.
Join them next Friday (May 19, 2017) at 6:30 p.m. at 1056 W. Belmont.
Hit play above to hear more helping refugees locally and the other events around Chicago.