Good morning, everyone, and I have an echo. Good morning, everyone, and a welcome to South Asian regional committees panel on art and political resistance in South Asia. Before I introduce our speakers today I'd like to speak a little bit about our organization. I'm the tough South Asian regional committee or Sark is a student run academic discourse and research group that strives to promote student engagement with social, political, historical and economic affairs of the South Asian subcontinent. Sark hopes to create a space for students of all backgrounds and ideologies and identities to foster informed engagement with nuanced awareness of South Asia. My name is why I'm a kid asthma and I'm a senior originally from Mumbai studying history and economics on our panel today hopes to explore the power of art in articulating the Z looking at both music and visual art and their ability to challenge or fight unjust systems and raise awareness on important political issues across South Asia. We're excited to have three distinguished speakers with us here today, Sophia Karim, Sonayana Vatwan and Timothy Bill, who are all actively involved in art and resistance. Our first speaker for today is Sophia Karim Sophia Karim has practiced architecture for over 20 years her practice combines architecture visual art and activism activism. The incarceration of her uncle photographer and activist Shahidul alum that did the development of her theories on an architecture of disappearance in which she explores architecture as a language of struggle and resistance. She also focuses on human rights across Bangladesh and India, her campaign. She campaigns for the release of political prisoners. She's also the founder of turbine Bob, a joint artist movement against fascism and authoritarianism, and a platform for political art and activism. I'm going to share this with the Jameel price, which for poetry to politics and 2021, and she's also exhibited at galleries and museums including the date, the Victoria and Albert Museum Ruben Museum, right with 659 and CCLM. She's based in, she's currently based in London in the UK. We have Timothy Tim from Myanmar, who is currently based in Bangkok and studying visual design and tool at the School of Architecture and Design. Tim explores the topics of identity queerness and mental health through his work. He's currently working closely with Burmese communities in Bangkok, and Tim's may interest mainly lies and community art. After the Myanmar coup, Tim has been actively speaking up against the retatma regime through his art. The speaker is Sonayana, and she describes herself as an evolving artist who has played drums for an all girls rock band called who's German college, and more recently has been writing composing and singing songs and so solidarity with people struggles for love, hope, freedom and justice. She has also been collaborating and composing composing music with youth from marginalized communities. She has supported marginalized folk in India for making digital spaces and legal rights more equitable and accessible. Sonayana has worked with NGOs and community based organizations in India towards participatory research and community led initiatives for over 12 years on livelihoods land housing water basic services childcare public transport, services and human rights. Throughout her work, the focus has been built on building community knowledge and media, and she's been a strong advocate of the power of art to bring about social change. She's currently working on participatory art based interventions for water health and sanitation in India and is involved in volunteer work with survivors of violence and marginalized folk artists. She also masters degree in political sciences from the center of political studies at JNU in Delhi, and an honors bachelor degree in political science from the University of Delhi. Thank you all for joining us today we're so excited to have you and speak with us today we would like to now ask each of you to present your opening remarks and we'd appreciate it if you keep it around three minutes, and we'd begin with you if you would like to start. Well, I just really wanted to say thank you very much for having me. I was going to give an introduction but you've done that actually so I won't really you know go over who I am or whatever, but I'm just very interested to hear more about the work from our other two speakers, especially so now I think we might have lots of overlaps. Maybe we can collaborate together. Timothy and Sonia if you would like to go next, whoever wants to go next, that would be great. Okay, so I think it is being kind enough to give me some space. And I think you've again shared a lot about what I've been doing. And I think I'm more interested in talking about where we're at. Both in terms of the political context that we as artists are creating music and art in as well as the audience and the people we're making up the people who inspire us to make the art that we do. And then again, I think it's important to kind of, of course, kind of look at what we define as protest art and I think there I would just like to pause with all of you and think of all art as protest in some way or the other. And this comes from, I mean, from the very direct and wonderful examples we have from the farmers protest in India that we've seen recently. The songs coming out of prisons, which again I think Sophia and I should definitely get into. There is music even in protest, even in prisons, and at the same time, in the daily lives of people so there I would like to also kind of share more about our connection with folk music and actually how folk music because it's inspired so much from the culture and the work that people do in their lives, how that is changing and maybe that also is a sign of protest, which we need to tune into more. So, keeping all this in mind, I think it's not just about me being an artist and I think I'm also not just an artist. I also feel that I'm a citizen of this country, which is going through heavy fastest times and how do we find a voice? How do we find a voice for those who don't have a voice in this so called democracy and in that context, how do we understand protest art so I can share more over time but I think these are the thoughts that are ruining my mind and I'd like to talk more about that. Also, thank you for your introduction. I don't think I need much more introduction of all myself. I recently had, well, I recently got the courage to call myself an artist. And it really has been a journey of labeling myself as one. And yeah, today I think I'll be talking more about my own experience working on these works and the effects that it had. These work as unlike my recent artworks and the effect that it had on me, the effect that it had on the effect that I witness on other people, where I lived and where I exhibited my works. Yeah, so I'm, and I'm very curious to hear more about more from the other two artists that we have here. Thank you for having me. Thank you. Now over to Injun for the moderated part of the discussion. Thank you, why so hi everyone, my name is Injun and I'm a junior currently studying community health and policy. Before I begin this moderated part of the panel, I just wanted to acknowledge everything that's going on in Ukraine. And I think this is a very timely panel on political resistance. Since there is just so much going on in the world, including my own home country. I think it's important to stand in solidarity with every movement and to me. This panel is also about building solidarity across different countries in South Asia like we have different artists from different countries. So just to go into the structure of this panel a little bit, we will start with some general questions and then we'll dive into more specific ones that focus on each movement. So without further ado, I would like to begin by asking and I know soon they are not touched on this a little bit but what does protest art mean to each of you and in other words like how would you define art as political resistance. Should I go first or is it. Yeah, please do. Yeah. Okay. Well for me I think political art I suppose is up which not only records the currents, the struggle or what's happening at the moment but actually tries to play an active role in the resistance and engages with the struggle. So, in my case, it's the point at which my work became actually linked with direct action is when I think my work turned into what you might call political art. So, you know, a lot of my work is day to day campaigning and not very, you know, quite unart stuff so mainly working with activists, lawyers, journalists, human rights groups, emails, letters, things like that. And then that kind of feeds into the art, often in quite a subliminal way in my own art. What it means is that my art's quite fluid and unpredictable. So someone will be jailed, and then we begin campaigning for their release, and then art emerges from that. And then something else happens, new crisis, we react to that and then new work emerges. And also, the work is very, very collaborative, much more collaborative than anything I used to do. We work together in a very quick, actually, open and generous way, we're not precious or kind of possessive about art. So, say on Turbinebug, I've worked. It's now been over two years with hundreds of artists. And I find it quite remarkable that not once has a single artist said, I don't like what you did with my work or, yeah, or got jealous or anything like that, which is pretty surprising. You know, art's meant to be about ego. So I think it's because the work is not really about us. It's a means means to an end. But I just wanted to say one thing if I have a bit of time is that I think, to me, there's also another side of it. So one half of my work is very much engaged in direct action. You could call it proselytizing, it's very direct, loud, and our message is very clear. And that's necessary. I mean, every civil rights movement has had that and one must be clear about one's goals. But then the other half of my work is much more ambiguous and quiet and inward. And so my own language of expression is still rooted in architecture, which is what I was trained in. So when I make drawings or make models, I think I'm searching rather than questioning rather than giving answers. Because I think you one has to also be open as an activist to keep reassessing one's views and don't become didactical. These ambiguous spaces of art are interesting and I believe that's activism too. So if you think of say music like the jazz, the blues, or you look at the poems that the prisoners are writing in jail, they're like this they're in these kind of open places. Thanks. I think it was on protest art being collaborative. Because speaking from experience, I think it was in early February, probably a couple of days after the coup happened. There, a Facebook group appeared on Facebook. Sorry, on Facebook. Art for freedom from Myanmar. I think art for art for freedom in Myanmar. And it's it was actually made by a friend of mine. And it's basically a group where all the artists gather, or non artists as well. And people either make requests or artists just would like post their stuff. I think where people can download for free and usually contains like posters, protest banners and etc etc. And I just thought it was amazing like like, like you said, nobody had no nobody mind that people it was it's a public source. Nobody cared about the other people using their work. And I'm not going to be critical about the quality of the work there of course but then a lot of words were very impactful very powerful communicative pieces. And it was just, it was amazing to see because one. When it first happened in early February, I was mostly at home, just sitting and like feeling bad about what happening I was, I wasn't exactly sure what to do and when it, when it happened, when a lot of people just like, because a lot of people were people I don't know. And I just felt like, oh, I'm not alone in this. And it's, it's the group itself was very powerful and then I saw a lot of pieces that were done by a collaboration with a ton of artists. And it is, it is, it is something that gives you strength I would say I'm not, I'm not going to answer the question and define what protest artists, but I feel like about protest art. Of course I also drew I also painted and also made some design works that were used in protests, and maybe you could call them protest art. But at the same time I was not really thinking, oh I'm going to make a protest art right I was just more like I was talking about what I was feeling, or I was maybe thinking it's and make something to put that feeling onto a canvas. Yeah. Just taking on from what Tim also said, I think it's about not knowing that you're not alone, and also knowing that we are not alone so I think protest art personally comes to me because of the struggles I participate in the struggles I have faced on my own, as well as what we witness and we might be sitting 1000 miles away from like you're saying Ukraine or so close to Myanmar, but we feel very strongly for the people and what they're going through. So I think on one hand, the art that I have witnessed the art that's come out of me is very much connected to the struggles that we learn about and we participate in. But I think the other way to look at protest art, and this is something that I also heard Tim Krishna who's a karnatic vocalist musician in India and he's also very vocal about his political thoughts and what is going on in our country in the world. So he said something very interesting, which is protest art is not just about protesting against the state, but it's also about questioning society it's also about questioning our own cells, and those kind of social norms or, or the kind of seeps into us at some point so given that art is also and and this is something that people always say right that art is a reflection of society. But what kind of society are we talking about who is talking about that society so who are we representing am I representing myself, am I representing somebody else. This is my place to represent somebody else so there what is my role as an artist, can I be more collaborative about the work I'm doing can I include involved more people. So just in terms of sharing a few examples, we can work on community podcasts and community songs and music. There's a little story I'll tell you so there's a group of women who live in a resettlement colony in Delhi. And they wanted to come up with a song to talk about the city and their experience. And what was interesting is when I met them for the first time they wanted to make a hip hop song. And they were like why are only boys doing all the hip hop why can't we also do it so here are about eight, 10 women who've never sung or done hip hop before in their life but they're convinced about doing it and it's because they have something to express. So we got into songwriting and so many experiences that were shared by people came together in a way that everyone could relate to it there were 10 different stories there but when we heard the song ourselves it was really about everyone and any other woman in the city could also relate to it because there were also moments where we questioned are we representing everyone who's missing in our song. So there are those kind of conversations you can have. And really as much as I respect the energy and the time and the dedication that a lot of artists have put into learning those skills of being an artist I think everybody loves music for example everybody has music in them, everybody can hum somewhere or the other so we need to kind of also tap into that sense of connecting with each other through, through art and, and I think that gives us the space to also have conversations which is what my next thought I want to share with you is that protest art, while it is giving you the space to talk to the oppressor, you can't have a direct conversation. In a village where there are upper caste men who are passing mood remarks on women who are not allowing women to fetch water from a well close by. There could be so many reasons where you see caste or religious communalism basically kind of come in and how do you talk to your oppressor there I feel art is really powerful to have that conversation without that direct confrontation and that is not the only thing you're doing you are having those direct confrontation but it gives you a sense of a narrative it gives you a sense of who you are what you're fighting for there's a history to what you're fighting. So it gives you more context and strength to do what you're doing and I think the on the other side it's also these conversations that that give us hope. It's also about not just protesting something but dreaming of how an ideal or a more just world would be for you or your community. So protest could therefore take different forms, it could be in different locations, it can be in someone's home it could be at the doorstep of some government office it could be on the borders of Delhi as we saw during the farmers and again like Punjab has had a history of art, a history of revolutionary poets and singers so there's if you go back in time there was Bulleh Shah who existed when there were no borders that existed to now where you have to cover Graval or the more recent folk artists who are still continuing the folk tradition but what they're saying is changing how spontaneously they came up with songs that was also very powerful to see that like it's not something that you have to it's really about the inspiration and where it comes from so I think there are different forms of protest art and different locations of where it's coming from so we need to tune in as much as possible and also make it more inclusive and participate where people the song is something that people will sing along with if it's catchy or a slogan is something that people will shout with you so how can we make art kind of more participate where it doesn't just become about the singer or how well you're singing but about how much people actually are connecting and participating in it and that I feel is an important role for artists today and as well as our audiences we shouldn't just we can be active audiences too right so how do we kind of have that conversation as artists Yeah, thank you very much for all of that I do think artists are very powerful form of nonviolent resistance movements. But I do kind of now want to jump into more specific questions for each speaker because I just want to give enough space and time for each movement. Thanks for starting off for Sophia. What inspired you to start the turbine back and the Samosa packet movement and how I was just curious how all of this movement just came about and what made, what made it have such a powerful impact on you. Well, so in August 2018, sorry February 2018 I was in Dhaka Bangladesh with, I was with my mom on the street and I was hungry. And I bought a packet of we call it shinghara in Bangla, it's Samosa. You maybe have the same where these packets are made from throw away paper and newspapers. So I noticed that this packet was made from throw away lists of court cases between the state and citizens. And I thought this, you know, in these authoritarian regimes there are now so many thousands of these cases that they're now appearing on these throw away food packets. And actually I was also really entranced in this object as an art object, the shape, the form. And so I held on to it and I kind of felt like me and this thing we're going to go on a journey someday. I didn't know what that would be. And just later my uncle in Dhaka Shohidu Lalum, he's a photographer and activist. He was jailed by the government of Bangladesh, because he reported on student protests. And I was in London back then. And, but we began campaigning. So it turned into this huge campaign. So on the one hand it was local students and activists in Bangladesh and then on the other hand it was us from all over the world. And I remembered that packet. And so I wonder if his court case will ever appear on a packet. And I began making my own packets about the free Shohidu movement with kind of our version of the news. One thing that we did during campaigning for him was that the Cuban performance artist Tanya Bruguera had just been invited to take over the Turbine Hall in Tate Modern. And somehow we contacted her and said we were campaigning and she said, come here and do a protest exhibition for your uncle in the Turbine Hall. And that's like a massive exclusive space that artists don't just get. And so we had these prints photographic prints that he'd done on extra judicial killings in Bangladesh. So we did this big protest for him. We did it twice. So then later, when the India protests were happening sort of end of 2019 beginning of 2020 and Shahinbugh had happened in Delhi, the women led sit in in Delhi. I mean it was huge it was the biggest women's resistance movement of our time and I realized that hardly anyone here in the UK had heard of it. And it was led mainly not only but by Muslim women. And, you know, for all their talk of being kind of ahead in terms of feminism. I didn't see women here standing up, you know they didn't stand up to Trump they didn't stand up to Boris Johnson. And as a model of kind of feminism. It was way ahead of anything I was seeing here. I was working with activists here and then we decided to try and do a protest at Turbine Hall in solidarity with Shahinbugh. And that was why it's called Turbine Bug. And then we thought well what can the protest start be. And I was thinking and thinking because I could see in Bangladesh and also it was also about Bangladesh politics and I could see that Bangladesh India artists were creating all this work. And I suddenly remembered the Samosa packet because I saw an article that food was really important in Shahinbugh. And one of the first things they would ask is have you eaten and food is important in our culture. And so I then thought, I know we could do the protest up on the Samosa packets, get all the artists to send their work. I just print it on my mum's crappy broken printer using old paper from her wardrobes had no money. And then afterwards we can send the packets to Shahinbugh so that they know that what's going on around the world. And that was really how it started Turbine Hall closed down for COVID Shahinbugh shut down for COVID. But we just continued because then they were political prisoners we began campaigning for other protests erupted something kept happening and it's just gone on from there. Thank you very much and adding on to that and maybe Tim can jump in on this as well. Do you kind of see a difference in the way artists use as a tool of political resistance in democratic countries like India maybe and versus more authoritarian states like Myanmar is right now. What are some of the parallels that can be done that can be drawn maybe in terms of like suppression of free speech and expression in both countries. It is a good question. But at the same time, I'm not too proficient in terms of political science and, but I, in order to answer that question the question I want to raise is how much of these countries is actually democratic. And how much of these countries is actually authoritarian. But nevertheless, I think the parallel would be we are talking about, we are raising our voice about being oppressed. And in that sense, it is all the same. I am, I am living in Thailand. So the, you can. The oppression here is, I would say on a, I cannot get too political about the country I'm living in, but you know, the thing is, the artist cannot just sit still and do nothing about seeing people oppressed or you personally being pressed. So in terms of that, you know, it's a voice, it's a form of, it's a form of, it's something that encourages a lot of other people to join in and talk about it as well. Maybe the difference would be, and it's a, this is a big maybe the difference could be in democratic countries. Maybe art might not be something that could get you into trouble. So here, I cannot tell you which and where it happened, but in Bangkok actually three, four months ago, an artist was doing a life painting. It was, it was going live on Facebook. And it was at a gallery. The gallery just happened to be in, in a watch list. And the artist got emotional while painting. And he wrote something that could on the campus, he wrote something that could get him into trouble.  You know, I don't think something like that might not happen. I don't think it's something like that might happen in it. I think something like that might happen in a democratic country, whereas in authoritarian countries. People are not even surprised that it happened. People are not surprised that they showed up and stopped what's happening and like, they did not arrest the artist but they gave him a warning, I think. You know, those kind of news, you don't hear it at all. I heard it from the exhibition manager, the gallery manager, personally, because that kind of news that government would like try to cover it up and not talk about it.  And I think that is the difference. If Sofia or Sunaina want to add on that's also fine. Yeah. Yeah, I would actually agree with Tim because I, as much as we're seeing the same thing happen at moments in our country, but this still apparently a democracy. Just like a small example I would like to share is this song, which is a hip hop song called Azadi which is by Dub Sharma and then divine and a lot of people kind of got involved. It, it was a slogan. It is a slogan which comes with the history of being used in Kashmir. When you talk about self-determination, it's something that also was very popular during the CA NRC protests and also has been used widely by student movements in JNU, for example, where everybody was labeled anti-national. Many of these students and the protesters have and in Kashmir, so many people have been imprisoned. But on the other hand, you see the same song because it's become so popular it's featured in a Bollywood film. Gully Boy, right? And, and the song kind of going into mainstream on one hand makes you very happy. But also what is it doing to the song? What is it doing to the context from where the song comes from is also changing. And on the other hand, the other thing that's coming to my mind again, which is why I think a lot about prisons today because some of our friends and many activists, lawyers and so many union leaders and workers and minorities who are in prisons right now that we don't even know the names of. But there's a song that came out recently as a YouTube video. It's a song on prisoners by Surendra Guttling, who's one of the co-accused and he's right now in the prison in Bombay, who's been charged with terrorists. He's been accused of under this UAP act, which is for the prevention of unlawful activities. So it's basically in a way putting people in that category of terrorists or somebody who's going to cause that kind of harm. And he's written a song about his own experience as a prisoner. He's a lawyer who's also pursuing his rights as a prisoner. So there are those kind of moments where we also feel like we're not in a democracy. But at the same time, like I'm sharing, there are these spaces which we still fight for and find. And again, privilege has a huge part to play in what we can do. So while we are out here, I think it becomes definitely more important to learn from the struggles and the challenges that friends like Tim face in their countries, but also kind of be more conscious of how it's actually happening in our country and not kind of overlooking it. Yeah. Link to those, the song I'm talking about. Please do. Yeah. So I guess I kind of want to talk more talk about the other cool and the magic women and Tim your work within. Since the cool. So I was, I know that you do a lot of work that are more focused on grief and loss, you know, after a traumatic event has occurred. And I was just curious, how did art became a space for people from Myanmar to kind of grief and process all of this loss and trauma that they've been facing for the past year or so. And how does this sort of become political. I think for this I would like to share my screen and show you a bit of, is that right. Yeah. I think I'll just ask some. So there, I was a part of an exhibition in both curating and being as an artist as well. So this was, this is good. This exhibition was. It was held on February 1 2022. I know the posters too much. But and that was our intention because that is how we feel. You know, it's, it looks fun, but at the same time it's so chaotic. And that's how we're trying to process what we have lost. And what we're trying to do to overcome that loss. So this exhibition was called in exile. And it is about people in exile after and because of because of the coup and or for other political reasons prior to the coup as well. And I would like to share a story of Honestly, I was not I did not know what to expect out of that exhibition. I was there the whole time. And there was an old lady. She may be like, maybe she's about 60 70. She was there. She, we also had Burmese food there. So she was eating and then she took her time looking at the exhibition. She was very, and she came down and she couldn't like talk to us at all. She was just like trying to leave as in like, not in a bad way more like she was just, and we were like, Oh my God, what happened and she was crying. And she, she gave us a hug, and she told us that she hasn't had a chance to really process what has happened in the previous year. That is when I realized what we, how we could have, how we could be helping. I have been doing a lot of work, which I will show you in a bit. But I honestly did not know. And did not. I just did not know what to how it could help other people because they were never in public. I just posted them on my social media and that was basically it. So in that exhibition, they were maybe there were seven artists who are all Burmese, who are all Myanmar from Myanmar, and my work is is it's called making home. So what I did was, because I am a Burmese person living in Thailand, trying to make home here. So this word, it means home, and I made, I made this word using the Thai alphabets the Thai elements. So the construction itself is pretty straightforward. And I made it, I made it for a lot of other languages as well. Korean, Chinese, Cambodian, a lot. So, but in the exhibition, what I did do is I installed it as a huge canvas where people can write whatever they want. Concerning with the word home what it means for them what it is for them. And the result was, it was very interesting. A lot of people wrote places, a lot of people wrote people, other people, and some people wrote phrases poems, and a lot of people wrote food. Some people wrote this one says warm steamed rice. And this one says I want to go back. And this one says why did I cry when I left.  But a lot of people actually did not write anything. And this one says I want the warmth back. This one just says me. You know, a lot of people did not wrote did not write anything. But it was an exercise it was a homework for them, right because they were just not thinking about what it is for them. But they were also reading what other people wrote about home and for your context and I've already said this, what this was in Bangkok so everybody is away from home in a sense, at least in a physical sense. And that is how that is what I meant by how people has been how I've been trying to help people grieve at least because they they can, that's when they know that they are not alone in this. They are not. They are they are not alone and this is a conversation to each other. Like you don't even know who wrote which, but it connected. I think that connected to a lot of people. Another word, another word that I have done is this one. This is not quite finished yet but I named this outsider, because that is what I feel like I'm not really in a house. It's, it is a house but you know, whenever I read the news that's what I feel like. It's like you being an outsider to your own house and, and what's happening there. And I think most of you would maybe all of you would agree sometimes like those feelings are really hard to say it out loud.  And I think that's when art comes in. And it helps you, even, even if you don't know what what you're feeling, it helps you feel something, I think. Yeah, so that's that that is how I have been processing and how I've been trying to use art as a tool for for people. Did I answer your question. Yeah, thank you so much for that. I think that's a very powerful movement that you did. But I just had one more question for Sunayana and then maybe we can jump into questions from the audience. So I know that you talked a lot about community artwork that you have done by collaborating with youth from marginalized communities and making digital spaces more accessible. I'm curious to know more about your this work that you do and how, like you like, like I like I asked him like how this work becomes political and in other words like, do you think community art could be categorized as political art. Thanks for sharing your thoughts to Tim. So, I'm just thinking of sharing a few thoughts with all of you and I think. So one is the community project that I spoke to you off and then we did a similar kind of project on how to actually create community podcast in which we also used that as a forum to come out with our own. So this is a very tick kind of expression of what is going on in our communities. And this was also happening during the time of COVID. So again, the digital is all over us and while we are having these experiences in our real lives how do we kind of leverage these digital spaces how do we make sure that everybody can use these tools. And that's what happened during COVID we were seeing a lot of artists kind of do live telecasts and live concerts from home but like you realize a lot of folk artists who are disconnected from the digital spaces and digital world needed to kind of have a voice. So there you do the support work you need to do using your privilege. If you have, if you recognize that you have privilege. And there you kind of step back and you don't have to necessarily be the artist or someone who's kind of guiding that entire process. So the roles you can play can also enable art and its expression in a different way. And I think community art is political in its own way because every community has a context has a history has a language, which is also communicating, which is also communicating more with your own people. And I think that's what we need more we need more conversations and as polarized as our countries are becoming I think it becomes a way to kind of open up spaces to have conversation like I was sharing earlier to even have those conversations with the oppressor whether it's in our social context or in the political context. So, yes, community art is political. But also how much people participate in it how much people can relate with it so even as an outsider if you're collaborating with communities and artists, how do you kind of make it really speak to the people. So therefore I choose, I mean, I love listening to music in all languages, but I choose to sing in Hindi, Punjabi or do because one is that is where I come from. It's also to share the history of my ancestors, we've also affected by the partition and all the politics that came with it. Do I want to be separated from that history? No, I still feel a connect so much of my culture connects to the culture in Pakistan. And actually a lot of people have been also reaching out and listening to my music from Pakistan because of the language. So, you have to also kind of, I guess, see it in a political way rather than making it necessarily political and just to kind of share an example from the work that I've been doing recently so the songs that I've been making are also coming from a very political experience, very personal experience where you're literally watching a friend being arrested and taken away. And I haven't seen that friend in the last two years, again charged with horrendous UAPAs in our country. And on the other hand, you kind of don't want it to be just your experience. You want to talk to people about it in a language that again people connect with. So this idea of bringing art together in a way that if I'm singing a song today and tomorrow somebody else is humming that song and maybe not even seeing it for the reasons that I am writing the song. So I, the first song I wrote is a love song. And, you know, all artists start with a love song. So I was like, let me start with a love song. But it's actually about separation. It's actually about waiting for justice waiting to be reunited with your loved one who's in prison. And there are some slight references to an emergency like situation where there is no way to really talk about things openly, or you don't know when the mullah kath is going to happen and mullah kath means your legal meetings. So there is a way to kind of also have these conversations with people where people also wrote back me had police officials also follow me since I wrote that song and that was actually one of the best moments for me because I was like, Hey, I can have a conversation with you. Usually, otherwise, you know, we're always standing on opposite sides. But if someone working in the police department is connecting to a song is at least willing to listen to a song and have a conversation. I think that for me was really like, maybe I should keep doing this because otherwise we all get boxed. And I think we need to really think out of the box. Break out of these boxes. So yeah, make making art more participatory working with whatever you have around yourself, the sounds, for example, the rhythms that we use so how do you teach something like a simple rhythm that you need to have that keeps that connects you right. So the work that I was doing with the women in Khadir in Madanpur Khadir the resettlement colony we So we did this exercise where everybody I asked everyone to just explain how because everybody, especially women are forced to do a lot of domestic chores. So I'm like, Okay, I guess every one of us here washes clothes at some point or the other what sound do we make. And everybody had a different rhythm which was great so everybody has a unique sound, a unique kind of rhythm to their daily lives. But if we had to come together to settle at one rhythm and then that kind of led to us kind of arriving at a beat that we could go with and work on the song. So there's that and then, again, coming back to the farmers protest where we've seen songs, which are very, which are folk songs, and it's so much about agriculture, it's so much about labor, it's so much about the strife, the struggle, the hardships. And at the same time you also have hip hop artists and like the more contemporary artists who've done hip hop numbers which have also spoken to the youth who may not necessarily be tuned into folk music all the time so point being that I think we also have to be. If we're really making political art if you want it to be having a conversation we need to also think of who we're reaching out to, and who we're trying to have that conversation with is it the state. Is it our own people. Is it a larger community is it somebody who is who we can see Solidarity is with also and we need to connect more so yeah. Thank you very much and on that note, like thank you very much to all our wonderful panelists. I think this has been such a great discussion but with respect of time I think there's something like four minutes left. I'd like to begin the audience Q&A session which will be moderated by while over to you while thank you. Thank you everyone for your discussion it was really great. I'm just going to read out some questions that have been posed by the audience. So the first question that we have is from Priya and it's directed to Sophia. She says can you tell us more about an architecture of disappearance and sort of just linking that I think all of you have touched upon art as a language of like struggling resistance so if anyone wants to put in there and put like elaborate on that also after that that would be great. I'll try and do it quickly because we have four minutes. Basically the moment that my uncle was jailed. I was very busy campaigning during the day and at night I suddenly began to process things in terms of architecture. And I started to construct the spaces that I imagined he was in in my mind. And I think it's because I was trying to build them so that I could enter them and be with him. He was alone I knew he'd been tortured. He was in remand under interrogation. And so that was really the point at which I began it expressing the work I do now through the language that I ultimately know which is architecture which that's the language I was trained in. I'm not a musician. I'm not a poet. And so I really have no choice but to use that but it was interesting to me because I think, although there's a tradition of other art forms, a strong tradition being used as the art of descent. So we've talked about song poetry visual art architecture hasn't really been used as a form of descent as such. But I think it's one of the most profound languages that one could use. And I think there's something there's an inherent connection between architecture and human suffering and the human condition. And just to finish, I mean it's a really long thing to explain but I guess, you know, people like to look at things. So just quickly. Oh, I think I need to share screen. I'll really quickly show you a series of models I made. If I do share screen, and these models were based on my uncle's memories of jail. And I built them using my imagination and his memories. Can you see them. Yes we can. That's it. Yeah. Thank you that was really great to see. I think we've run out of time. We have someone from the audience, saying that they would love to see more examples of all of your works and support all of your lesson as artists so I think we could send out like links or details later on regarding everyone's work. Lastly, something that we wanted to mention was that where plant Sark as a student organization is planning to have a fundraiser and the next couple of weeks to raise funds for the Tobinbark project and also for me and my in general, so we will be putting out information about that coming on Monday onwards and we would love it if everyone could contribute to this because these are as you can see really great causes and the work that's being done for is really incredible. Thank you so much Sophia Tim and Sonayana for coming and joining us today. This was a really great panel and we all learned so much from it. And it was great to have you all here. Thank you. Thank you very much. Thank you. Thank you for having me. Thank you. Thank you so much and just sharing some links for people to listen to some music maybe after this conversation to connect and stay connected to what's happening in the world. Sonayana, can we stay connected now or you have to go or if we can do it separately if that's easier. Yep, I think we can connect one on one because this is the university link and then maybe we can have an open conversation and Tim feel free to join us. So quickly to give you a comment. I really love what you're doing. Both of you. I love the idea of picking up a random object and, you know, making something out of it as well. I read a book called objects, and it is exactly what is what it's doing. Thank you for Sonayana. I recently read under comments, and my favorite quote from that book is turning the noise into music. And I feel like that's exactly what you're doing with community art and that's amazing. Likewise Tim, big respect. And just before we leave, I think the other thing that's now coming to my mind is collective memories like we've shared this conversation and I think we've created a memory but and the disappearances we're talking about so as much as that is being erased or forced out of our memories we need to kind of maybe use art to also create that history and remember and not forget basically to acknowledge all the struggles and what everybody is going through so collective memory is great and art can help. All right, thank you. Thank you so much. I think we should end this panel now. We would love to stay in touch with all of you and if you could send us your links and of your work and your pages, your websites we could share with the Tufts community as well. So, and then I put on, yeah, we plan on doing a fundraiser because I do think funding is a good act of solidarity for all the movements. Thank you so much for coming. Thank you very much for having us.


So, in this particular session, we're diving into an interview that looks at the music industry and if there are money in it, so we're going to look at the business aspect of it as well. So, in the studio I'm joined by Damon Shunet, I'm so sure this space is not new to all of you, a couple of you I guess, from the Shunet Forever. Yes. Teri Bhutana. Thank you so much for having me, I'm excited to be here as Auntie Sana. Yes, so shout out to the people back at home. Yes, my wife and my babies, Raina and Raina, who are one by the way. Yes, I've been a father for… Following on YouTube. Ah, it's by the grace of God. Okay. Na ilay numetumiasa, numetukoktuan biyapa, yundi yulitumi amstadi kupatia grace. Gadi yon by the grace. Grace confirm, your wife. We thank God for your media. Uh-huh, so the reason why we're here, Damon, it's because of your music. Mm-hmm. So tell us, when did you start doing music? Well, I started music when I was pretty young. Well, I started, every artist started music when they were in Trimari school, I believe. Like, that's what I want to think. And then you're trying to find yourself and discover yourself. But I actually recorded my first mixtape or recording. I did an album of 21 songs, nilihit konyumbe tupeke. When I was in high school, that was, yeah, a while back. And then after that, I went back to school and then I went back to school and got a job like that. And then now in 2019 is when I decided to, like, now do a major comeback. I learned that I was in a CD. Yeah, yeah, yeah. Produced by Kuchurinda Naio.  Yeah, in those days. Yeah, imagine. And it was interesting to look at, like it's very interesting to look at my journey and how I've evolved and how I've grown. Yeah. So what particular point did you decide that you're going to get into this? Like, because I believe there's that particular time whereby you're doing it for passion. And there's that particular by like, you know what, I'm investing in this and I'm looking forward to get my returns, absolutely. Yeah, it's actually very interesting because you know music like any other business is there has to be, you know, returns on investment or something like that. But I want to say this, that the way our industry is set up as a Kenyan artist, especially even as a gospel artist, in Kenya, first of all, like we have not been taught how to appreciate music as an art and as a product. So what we were taught is when I got into the music industry, this is how it used to work. You want to perform.  And that platform is helping you, not us. Exposure. Yeah, so someone else would charge at the gate, but I would be so happy to get an opportunity to perform at a government in five, five minutes, I'm at two minutes. You feel like you've already achieved because... You're there for the passion. You have to understand. You love what you do. That's now the trick because they know you have a passion for it. And then there's someone else who looks at it and says, I can be able to capitalize on this because they don't have the knowledge. You know, knowledge is very key. And that's why the Bible says that my people perish because of lack of knowledge. So looking back at our industry and the way it has been is that you, as an artist, you're being helped. You go for an interview, we are helping you.  And so the way our industry was set up, it was set up against the Kenyan artist. So what they did was they would play international music so that if you want to get on that platform, they say, we already have Chris Brown, we already have these other people, so we don't need you, you need us. So why don't you pay us so that we can play your music? And that is how the industry has been. Number two, the number one source of revenue for all artists globally is royalties. Like when an international artist releases their music, they know that the biggest, where they're getting the biggest share of their money is from royalties. Now look at our Kenyan... But our story is different. Yeah, look at our Kenyan industry. How do you collect 200 million and then you say you used 80% of that money as a running budget for the office and then you pay artists with 20% like it doesn't make sense. And I feel it's the problem that we have as a nation. You know the corruption issue, so it creeps in. So we have royalties at the top and then after royalties you have now things like concerts. Now in abroad how they do it is an artist would come up with their own concert. People pay for tickets and that's what they call tours. So as an artist they have an album, I want to go on a tour. So I am not involving any other than the party, it is me who is running it. So I'm investing in the concert, this is the product. The product is the entertainment me. Is it the same scenario situation back here? You cannot create your own event, concert. Now that is where we are headed and that's where I'm headed and that is the direction that I took. But I just wanted to paint first of all the scenario that we are in as artists. So we have to wait for a certain promoter to plan a show and then you go and join in a show. You get that's how your fans will get to see you because we are afraid of investing in it because we are afraid that we are not going to get returns because from the very beginning we were placed in this position of fear that you are not making money out of your music, your product is not good enough, your product is not so good.  Very true, very true. So now I feel like the direction that I have chosen to go and I believe I am doing this because of the next generation because you see now I am a father now. I think I have to rub it in on your face as I am a father now. With amazing actually twins. Yeah twins, rain and rain now. Okay so let's look at it.  Now being in a position to just shift that mindset and being in a position where you are looking at it as a business and you will be like I am going to start off a concert and I am spearheading the whole thing and also invading other guests which is quite interesting. Yeah I am very interested. So how does the music business work just in details? In general how it works is what I was telling you before. So there are two models to an artist. There is an artist who is under a label who is being managed and there is an independent artist who decides I don't need any other person to come into my art and my music I am going to do it by myself. Now there are advantages and disadvantages to each and every side. Now this is how I will break it down. So you have an artist this is how the business works. The product is the artist, the brand. The music. You get the music, the videos how you present yourself your form of entertainment. The artist is the brand. He is the product that we are trying to sell. Like this is the conversation that we had with my management team. Damon is a brand that we are pushing all of us. So my management team we are three of us. So we said this is the brand that we are pushing. Including myself I am pushing that product because it is a product we are trying to sell. So how do you translate that product into income? So I did an album called growing very recently and I decided that you know what I am not going to do it like everyone else has done it before because I've done music before like there is so much I've done music I've put them on all these platforms that people advertise you put it on this so that people can get it as the ring back tone but what they don't tell you in fine print is that in the contract you would find that they have written they take 70% you take 70% and then you take they take 30% but what they don't tell you is you are taking 70% out of like the company that is providing the platform takes 70% of the majority share like if your music is the product your music sells a million shillings the mother company that provides the platform will take 700,000 so you are dividing you are taking 70% of 300,000 which you are dividing with another party which is in the middle so what I decided is I want to eliminate that parties from my music so I am not going to put it on any other platform I am not going to give it to anybody else I am going to sell it I am going to sell the music directly so what I did is the album is out it's on my platform my own website I have the link so if you want the album send me 1000 shillings and I will send you the link and can you believe that within the first month after the album was released they had made 200,000 shillings when was this? yeah it was recently was it September I think last year? yeah September last year during COVID 2020 yeah all right that brings another question yes is this a perception that which I think a part of it is quite true during this time of COVID-19 someone will be thinking am I going to spend like a thousand and just probably buy an album or go for a virtual concert or am I just going to think about you know basic needs my food on the table yeah so what would you say on that this is what I would say that you know we are human beings we are social we are social beings that is how we are created to be and just as as I want to believe that the same way you need food for your stomach is the same way you need music for your soul like that is how I look at it like how would we be without music like so now how do you position yourself in this current time to be able to meet the needs that this person's soul needs because that is how you have to look at it so that people can see because it's value that is needed during COVID-19 people are depressed so now we need to make music that uplifts their spirit that becomes a product that you can sell during COVID-19 so virtual concerts they are legit they can actually have they can actually happen and that is what we are trying to do right now so yeah we are doing a virtual concert called growing pains because growing up is hard to do to be honest like it's hard and then the platform is called show for me the album will be streaming live on a platform called show for me and we are charging $5 per ticket so you can just pay $5 and then you you can pay using your card using M-Pesa for wherever you will be you can be able to stream and watch the concert now the concert is not just a music concert because I am a minister as well so you know your soul is going to be fed your spirit is going to be fed and then you're going to be uplifted so during COVID-19 is when you need this concert so you are marketing yourself we will be like you are going to get value for your money buy the tickets I'm telling you yeah you have to get value for your money and that's how I've done my music like if you listen to my music it is not conventional gospel music that everyone else is making my music is not music that you would okay some of them you would hear them on radio but some of them are not songs to be played on radio they're just songs that can minister to you that can talk to you you know yeah so how much have you invested in your music music audio production video since not even when you started let's look at the album just the album hey the album what it's a lot it's a lot it would be somewhere between half a million and a million shillings but what I want to say is that I am grateful because at this particular time I can be able to see that there is a return on the investment that I made and I wish other artists could replicate the model that I'm using because it is a model that eliminates fear stop being afraid what is that model tell us what is that model the model is just eliminating fear first of all model says that we have not given you the spirit of timidity again to fear sorry I'm preaching on you issue but of soundness and over sound mind you get what I'm saying so what what what I did is I have a product this is the album you want it you pay for it it is not free because for a very long time artists have been begging people to listen to their music so I release a song then I come to your WhatsApp and ask you please can you go and watch and support me please can you go and watch and it's free so because of that people have devalued Kenyan content and Kenyan music so what I decided is I'm going to put value on my music because I know what I've invested in it and I know what I put in it in terms of art so if you want my music pay for it when I did my concert I did a concert during covid by the way and the tickets are going for 2000 shillings and the concert was sold out but I was willing to risk investing in that concert because everyone was being paid everyone was under payroll because it is it is my product so if I make a profit out of it I make a profit if I make a loss I make a loss because that is what business is you have a product you have people a market that needs that product so how do you make this market pay for the product so that you can get your share all right I would like you to speak to us about the perception because we have so many talented young people out here and when you think about getting into music they want to get into you know all hands through which is okay 100% but also they have to be realistic to the aspect that it's a form of investment like any other business you have to invest so do you have any other source of income or source of a living whereby you retrieve that to just invest here and how important is it not to just was that enough not to rely on music 100% ah definitely that's a very very good question and it's very important for people to know how the reality looks like when I was in high school I used to think yo if I release a tape he use the times he will go get a CD if I get a CD with 10 songs and then it plays on radio I'll be going for concert for 5000 shillings if I get four concerts in one month that is 20,000 shillings so if I get 20,000 I can do a video if I do a video I'll be played on tv if I'm played on tv I will my value will go up so I'll charge 10,000 for a concert nothing was just playing in your head yeah in your head you know that's that's how poor people make think about man you think that you know what I'm going to get that 10,000 if I get two shows per week that is 20,000 20,000 20,000 in a month that is 80,000 shillings why should I even be in school koi sa wupi wu me piga nini ya luku misigepia ya yem baku me lipa director baku me lipa kila then you get on the ground and you realize that it doesn't work like that quite different like it costs money to invest in a brand that people will recognize because first of all like there is a lot of money that goes that is not seen like you cannot account for it money that you pay your stylist you pay your directors you pay your management team you pay so you have to when you get into music this is what I would tell you because our industry currently does not have the capacity to be able to feed an upcoming artist 100% first of all diversify get a second source of income in my case I am doing construction so I sell paving blocks you know cabro those paving blocks if you want cabro come to me yeah paving blocks you know that is what I sell so now I'm in a position where when I'm doing my concert I'm not doing it from a point of begging I'm doing it from a point of I have overflow so I can be able to pay for the concert if I make a a plus out of it well and good so I think everyone else should be able to do that I'm a lawyer as well so many things I'm sold I'm laughing because we are not missing an opportunity to sell us so I'm hoping I can be a lawyer and do construction yeah if you want cabro come to me I am your cabro person color cabro paving block everything is everything everything everything so how important is it for someone who wants to get in the music scene or even someone is already in the music scene to stop looking at them themselves as just like a one person one person movement and just have an entire team the same way as an organization would actually go for I mean it talks about marketing promotion you know looking at the finance aspect of it how important is that it's very very important because first of all you have to understand that you're not self sufficient you're not all knowing you're not God and as people we need people and by the way most artists are talented as musicians but you have a voice you don't have you don't have good writing skills so you need a writer you need a person to manage your time to manage how you're doing things you need another person to you know like there's a lot that goes into coming up with a product and I think the mentality that someone should have is look at your music as a whole company as a business because that is what it is and then you get a team behind you that believes in the vision that you have and you work with it but I would discourage people from the mentality of getting signed because most young people are falling into that trap of may want to get signed so now you go and you are signed they give you a million shillings and they tell you we are signing you for a million shillings you get excited because you've never seen that kind of money so now I have one million shillings but what they don't tell you is they've given you that one million shillings as a down payment like they have to make their money back so your music how you make your music how you perform wherever you will go they will have to make their money back do you feel like also sorry for cutting you short do you feel that when you're in the same situation whereby they have to make their money back do you feel like they will put on pressure on you to release a hit song release the next one just for them to just gain their money back and how does that affect the artist probably because of a lot of issues about mental health depression because you want another hit song because I thank God because they think I'm the best person to talk about this because I'm a lawyer as well so I understand how contract flow so in contract when they tell you that you're signing under them is you're signing a contract I don't know if you've had this notion of people saying that you sold your soul it's actually when you sign a contract there are clauses that say you're signing away your rights as an artist so you as an artist you're being managed by those people so they will pick what songs you're going to sing they will decide when those songs are coming out they will decide how the video is going to look like whether you like it or you don't you're a product to them they are the people who are managing you so that is what they talk about so you find that the song that you wanted to put out is not what they are putting out because under the contract they choose the song to put out you find that the way they brand you in the media or on social media is not how you would want to be branded but you signed a contract and they have to make their money back so you have to pay for everything that for that money that you were given you will have to pay for it yeah so I think that depression in how people are getting lost it's because you had this vision in this picture of how your music and then you trusted it to the wrong people so you gave other people to tell you how your music was going to be now when that dream is not realized of course you get frustrated because you have a big name and this is the problem with the Kenyan industry you have artists who have who have big names but they don't have anything I'm telling you I can tell you artists who you think are celebrities and they made it but when you when you go to out of 500 yatakula someone doesn't have because there are these that parties that are taking all the money these copyright societies that are taking all the money so now the artist has a big name but has not have an income so how does that person remain sane you're going to you you're going to lose your mind and I feel like it's high time the government actually looks into this like properly so that you make sure that as an artist you you get that but if the system doesn't work for you follow me let's go around the system let's just build our own system so to build your system yeah a couple of platforms that you used to you know put out your music and also sell your work your product so for now just go to my instagram it's damon.kenya all my information is there damon.kenya that is where I'm selling the album from that is where you will get the tickets for the concert here everything that you need from me you will get it on instagram damon.kenya okay so and let's look at how can people find you on social media and if they want to keep this conversation going and if they you know also the event don't forget the event yes so the concert will be streaming on this friday this friday the 16th of is it imprio the 16th of it will be streaming they will be streaming this friday at exactly 8 pm at night so all you need to do is go to my instagram damon.kenya there is a link on my bio to show for me where you can be able to buy the tickets thank you so much all right thank you very much damon for creating time to be with us so make sure you say hi to grace I will and also we are waiting for the next nini the next video will be coming out on our youtube channel this coming week so guys make sure you follow up with damon across all the social media handles to get you updated on what he he is up to when he comes to mataspatining his music I try to pay for channel as you can find us across all our social media handles you have come to the end of the show make sure you create time next Tuesday 7 till 10 am at michela shire so you can find me across all my social at underscore mutete that's where you can find faith across all our social media handles until next Tuesday enjoy the rest of your day and take care and be safe


Increased regulatory scrutiny? Bring it on, say the crypto billionaires. Mike Novogratz and the Winklevye are not bothered by more regulation. In fact, they welcome it. Both parties want to weed out and deter bad actors in the crypto space. No one likes a bad actor. Here is your overview of the week. The Department of Justice has opened a criminal probe into whether traders are manipulating the price of crypto currencies. Federal prosecutors are working with the CFTC, a financial regulator that oversees derivatives tied to Bitcoin. The investigation is focused on the illegal practices that often affect prices, such as spoofing or wash trades. Spoofing is where a trader submits multiple orders, then cancels them once prices go up or down as appropriate. Wash trades involve cheaters trading with themselves to create false demand, thus encouraging others to invest. Crypto exchanges are beginning to realize that if they want to go mainstream, they have to act. Gemini, run by the Winklevye, hired Nasdaq last month to oversee surveillance of crypto on their exchange. They have also urged trading platforms to work together to form a group that would self-regulate for the entire industry. Bitcoin slumped to a six-week low, falling below 7.5K for the first time since April. That's a 20% drop since its main peak. Adding to Bitcoin's woes, the exchange OKX suspended with draws and fiat trading to rectify an error that was producing inaccurate account balances. Tom Lee predicted a rally. With the increased regulatory scrutiny, what we have is quite the opposite. And now for your Tom Lee of the week with Tom Lee. Tom Lee is fast becoming the anti-buffet. Whereas Buffett talks fud, Tom Nostradamus Lee prefers to make wild predictions that often don't work out. So as miserable as it feels holding Bitcoin at 8,000, the move from 8,000 to 25,000 will happen in a handful of days. A handful of days may not sound like very much until you consider the fact that, unlike Trump, Tom Lee has massive hands. We celebrated Bitcoin pizza day this week. Eight years ago, on May 22nd, 2010, a programmer paid for two pizzas of Bitcoin. This was the first time Bitcoin was used to buy goods, a historic moment. The moment is immortalized online in a bitcointalk.org forum, where programmer Lazlo Hanyetz confirmed that he'd bought two pizzas for 10,000 BTC from Papa John's Pizza in America. Hanyetz had asked users in the forum to deliver two pizzas for 10,000 BTC. Eventually, a teenager named Jeremy Sturdivant, nicknamed Jericho, accepted the Bitcoin and sent Hanyetz two pizzas from Papa John's, and the rest, as they say, is history. At the time, one Bitcoin was worth a fraction of a cent, meaning Hanyetz's 10,000 BTC were worth $41. Today, the original Bitcoin pizzas would cost you around $80 million. Hanyetz, a brave pioneer, paved the way and inspired others. Because of him, services like Pizza for Coins, eGifter, and even some restaurants accept various cryptocurrencies to buy the Italian delicacy. Hanyetz made headlines again in February by reliving his glory days and buying two pizzas using the Lightning Network. Here, you can see Lazlo's family enjoying the Bitcoin Lightning pizzas. Bitcoin relies on heroic early adopters like Hanyetz.  No two-for-one deal is worth $40 million. Allegedly. The Ethereum co-founder posted a tweet with a screenshot apparently from a Google recruiter asking if Google made sense for him right now. Buterin quickly deleted the tweet. He had also included a poll asking if you should take the job. The answer was a resounding no, in case you were wondering. Google could do with his help at the moment. They are currently working on two separate blockchain projects, a tamper-proof auditing system and a cloud operations platform. As the saying goes, there are 6 million ways to die. Choose one. Google realizes it only has two. Vitalik can destroy them from the inside or continue destroying them from the outside. Earlier this year, crypto was deemed halal under Sharia law. Now, a London mosque is the first in the world to accept Bitcoin donations. The mosque in Hackney, London, hopes to raise at least $13,000 in cryptocurrency donations over Ramadan. Muslims are asked to donate 2.5% of their wealth during the 30-day festival as part of Zakat, almsgiving. We are trying to appeal to a wider audience with the new money, so the chairman of the Board of Trustees. It's big in the Islamic world, and we have set up a platform for wealthier Muslims outside our community to support and donate to our mosque. A blockchain expert who helps advise the mosque on setting up the Bitcoin wallet is hopeful for the scheme to be a success. If Muslims can make up a quarter of the world's population, hold just 1% of Bitcoins, or $1.3 billion, then $35 million in Zakat contributions is due. Ramadan Mubarak! It means Happy Ramadan to all our Muslim Cointelegraph fans. Privacy-focused cryptocurrency, Verge, has been hacked. Again. The previous hack happened in April. 250,000 Verge were stolen then. This time, 35 million Verge coins were stolen in a matter of hours. Verge tweeted that their mining pools were under a DDOS attack on May 21, noting that they were working to resolve it. At the time of writing, the hack was equal to around $1.4 million. Verge's Twitter account was also compromised in March, with hackers tweeting about a fraudulent giveaway of Verge coins. Critics of the cryptocurrency don't believe developers are doing enough to prevent hacks. Not all doom and gloom, though. Last month, Verge announced a partnership with Pornhub. If Verge continues having, ahem, performance issues, investors might move onto a coin that doesn't find it so hard to stay up. In the market. Thanks for watching! Like for one high-five from Tom Lee's massive hands. Like, subscribe, and hodl for two.


Hi everybody, I'm Miha Sifri. I am the president and co-founder of Civic Hall, coming to you from my home office just north of New York City, and sadly not there, which is Cédric Fjordor, which is this wonderful place on the eastern side of Iceland that I was hoping we somehow would be able to be at, but still good to be with you. Yeah, and so I'm Matt Stembeck. I'm a senior researcher at Civic Hall, and together we curate the Civic Tech Field Guide, which catalogs the tools and resources and activities to better inform our sector. It's a living repository, so we currently have over 3,700 categorized entries of Civic Tech projects. There's another 400 or so in the pipeline, and we also have a calendar of upcoming events, fellowships, grants, and we benefit from working with over a dozen volunteer page curators, and we welcome new ones, so people representing their city or country or topic, and we also use the database of the Civic Tech Field Guide to conduct research, to better understand impact in our field, and you can find the guide at civictech.guide. There's a little screenshot from the map. So we launched the Civic Tech Field Guide actually at TicTech in 2016, where a lot of people helped add contributions to what was then just a very simple, open Google spreadsheet, and it has continued to benefit from hundreds of user submissions. At last year's TicTech, working with Alia Baccia and Sruti Modakirti, we presented our timeline of the field's development from 1994 to 2018, to help illuminate the larger trends for more than 2,000 launches over that timeframe. That's just a shot of what it looks like before you play with it, you can get into it at civictech.guide slash timeline. And at TicTech 2018, we gave a presentation on the Civic Tech Graveyard, profiling projects that once had significant funding and usage, but are no longer around, to help learn what's worked and what hasn't. So the graveyard research has helped us discover, for example, that a large amount of early money in a Civic Tech project isn't always the blessing it might seem. You can visit the Civic Tech Graveyard at civictech.guide slash graveyard. So this year we decided to focus on organizations that have managed to survive and even thrive in the difficult field of civic engagement, social change, and the digital transformation of democracy. And of the thousands of Civic Tech organizations and projects around the world, only a small fraction of them have lasted over 10 years so and are still around. So building off of our previous timeline research, we worked with Dibilina Mukherjee to slice our data and we found about 70 core Civic Tech groups that made it this long without shutting down or getting acquired. And that naturally leads to the following question, which is how did we define core Civic Tech? And we decided to center organizations that focus on enhancing how people engage with government or how they engage in organizing themselves to achieve civic goals. And that means we left out adjacent entities such as long running political consulting vendors that do digital strategy like Blue State Digital and big crowdfunding platforms that don't center civic needs like Indiegogo and GoFundMe. So we then started about understanding how they've done it, how they lasted. Earlier this year, Civic Hall brought together 14 of these Civic Tech founders and executive directors for a half day deep dive to discuss their longevity in the field. And then less than a month ago, we conducted a detailed survey of executive directors and founders of the organizations that have been active for at least the past 10 years. And of the 70 organizations, we were able to secure 22 responses. Now while we were doing that research, the world around was changing in a way that could define us for years to come. The coronavirus pandemic when global and all of our lives are different now. We're adapting as well. And we've just launched a coronavirus response page on the Civic Tech field guide. We're curating new funding opportunities, projects you can adapt or get involved in and online events like this one that the Civic Tech community can join from anywhere. You can visit that at civictech.guide slash coronavirus. One of the things that we're aiming to do here is to be selective and focus attention on efforts that are genuinely meeting a need as opposed to literally cataloging every new idea out there. It's a paradox of moments like this that suddenly thousands of well-intentioned techies wanna help, but all too often they reinvent the wheel and draw resources and attention away from the most effective projects and organizations. So we're happy with our original longevity research and we're gonna share the findings with you today. But we're also now living in a world where Civic Hall has closed its physical space in New York. Whole countries are in lockdown. We couldn't go to Iceland today. So we decided to refocus this presentation on what we're learning about how to last in Civic Tech to adjust this new reality. And we'll still be publishing the full findings on Civic Hall's blog, Civic Kissed. So we are in a period of great uncertainty where the economic foundations of many organizations may be battered or disappear entirely and where the need for Civic Tech solutions may shift and even expand radically. This could be an extinction level event for nonprofits. According to John McIntosh of SeaChange, writing on CNN.com just a few days ago, he says his research quote suggests that less than half of nonprofits, and this is the United States, have one month of operating reserves and less than six months of cash to keep them running. Without outside help, the trajectory of demise for many nonprofits is clear. The executive directors and boards delay taking tough restructuring actions. The organizations have to stiff their vendors, then furlough or layoff staff. The founders stop paying themselves. And finally, they shut down when the bank account is dry and payroll can't be made. Yikes. So let's get into the findings. First, just to revisit our universe, who did we talk to? Well, to help advise us, we got in touch with as many of the founders and current executive directors of long-lasting Civic Tech organizations as possible. We are certain to be missing great organizations from this list. Today, it reminded us that Cicero belongs on this list as well, so we'd love to talk with you. The median year of founding of our survey respondents was 2005. And to repeat, there was 22 founders and executive directors replying to our survey and 14 who participated in our in-person deep dive. There was some overlap between these two groups because we allowed survey participants to maintain anonymity. We estimate that in all, we got information from a little more than 30 leaders. And of the organizations represented, about 70% were nonprofits and 30% for-profits and B-Corps. They span the gamut in terms of employee headcount, one proxy for size. And they had a variety of income sources. Some mentioned multiple sources, but the primary income for slightly more than half was user fees and foundation support. So, how have these organizations managed to last 10 years or more? Of all the lessons learned, the most commonly and passionately cited factors were these three. First, the tenacity of founders and their teams. Second, having a strong product or service offering that really resonates with a clear market. And third, strong relationships with well-aligned founders, funders, excuse me. So, on that first one, tenacity, or as one of our post-it authors put it, the white-knuckled tenacity of our founders. There's a lot inside that idea. It includes smart management, the ability to pivot, the courage to make tough financial decisions when necessary. Our survey results showed this clearly, but inside the workshop conversation that we did when people were face-to-face, what was also clear was not just the tenacity of the founders, it's also the resilience of their teams. Great talent and a strong community culture are also key variables in the success of these organizations in the face of adversity. In other words, founders, don't try and get through this by yourselves. Yeah, so basically everyone we spoke to has experienced moments of saying, thinking this might be it, we might be over. So, leaders of organizations that we might all agree are the success stories of our field have had weeks and even months where they felt like failures. Even among the largest organizations we talked to, one with over 200 full-time employees being willing and able to make tough decisions during economic downturns was key. So, nearly 80% of our group has had to shut down programs due to a serious funding crisis. Over 60% have had to furlough staff at some point and just over a half have had to consider closing entirely. So, these are the facts from the organizations that have made it over 10 years. So, clearly life is not easy as a civic tech innovator and the majority of the founders we spoke to and surveyed had periods where they were unable to pay their own salary and were dependent on others for their living. And we believe this finding has clear implications for founder diversity in civic tech. A second key lesson that came up and again was the critical importance of strong product market fit and finding your audience niche. We'd argue that this is even more important now in the midst of what is certain to be a challenging time. Half of the organizations in our survey sample reported that they've had to pivot or significantly change their core offering sometime in their journey. So, nailing that product market fit, pawning your offering to the audience that needs it might well require change in our parts. If the true need out there today is X and you've been offering Y and Z, you need to reimagine how you're going to help solve for X. It's understandable if you want to hide inside right now with so much trauma and uncertainty in play but there's a lot of work to do and we should be careful not to reinvent the wheel but to ask and listen carefully to what people and organizations most need help with. Last and not least, the majority of our respondents noted the importance of strong relationships with enlightened funders, both in the survey responses and in our deep dive workshop and in person we were also able to learn more about the many challenges that come in working with funders. If you look at that, go back a step, Matt. If you look at this, this is the brain mapping exercise that we did and on the left in the green are the various categories where people were describing different factors in their success. On the right in the yellow are the factors that are sources of challenge. That very one large clump to the right is funders. So on the plus side, long running civic tech organizations say they have strong relationships with their funders. Among our survey respondents, over 83% feel their funders' priorities and time horizons match their own organizations. Of course, the correlation is not causation. Another key ingredient to success that came out in the conversations were what kinds of relationships matter. Having funders who are willing to take risks or at least tolerate a level of risk. Many of our respondents also talked about the fact that they have diversified sources of income, not having all of their eggs in one funding basket as vital to their success. In terms of challenges, those yellow post it's on the right. Even successful civic tech founders report that fundraising can be a bear. Mentioning problems like lacking connections to funders, needing to deal with some funders' emphasis on whatever the new thing is at the moment and their tendency to reward the busiest projects as opposed to the most useful or impactful. The ever present challenges that come with restricted funding instead of general operating support. And in some cases, the lack of understanding of the nonprofit sector on the part of some funders. On that front, COVID-19 is definitely shaking up some parts of philanthropy. We're seeing statements from hundreds of large and small foundations promising now to be more flexible as they help their grantees and programs to survive the current crisis. For years, grantees have been asking foundations to provide more general operating support as well as greater flexibility in achieving their program goals. And it now looks like coronavirus is spurring many of them to change their processes accordingly. It's far too soon to say if this will be enough, but it certainly welcome news. So as we were preparing for this talk for you today, we want to honor and acknowledge the hard place many of us are in right now, especially those of you leading organizations that others depend on. So right now, many of the long running civic tech organizations we spoke to are dealing as best they can with the crisis. A quick scan we did shows some groups are focused on hunkering down and figuring out how to take care of their staffs while starting to dip their toes into providing their services virtually, which is understandable. Some who are in the business of providing software platforms for civic organizing like the ones we've seen today have already made their tools free for governments, agencies and NGOs providing essential services and emergency responses. And some civic tech veterans are already organizing efforts to figure out how to augment government capacity with tech workers, while others are already at work figuring out how the US might have to move to a national vote by mail election this year. We're also seeing some of the transparency watchdog groups shifting their monitoring efforts to try and ferret out corruption or other problems that may arise as governments start to inject billions and trillions of dollars into relief programs. We're also seeing some massive virtual hackathons and local civic tech and mutual aid groups figuring out how they can help local neighborhoods take care of people most in need. It's gonna be easier for some groups to pivot than others and really none of us knows fully what lies ahead. We hope our presentation on what has helped civic groups last in the past may give you some guidance or orientation on where we go next. And as we mentioned earlier, we'll share this research in full on Civicist, Civic Hall's blog and news site. Thank you and we look forward to the discussion.