What do UCU students know about Black history and culture and what do they gain from learning about it? Cultural production that engages Afro-diasporic histories builds cross-cultural interaction and understanding. In this project, CEL funding was used to connect UCU students with communities and creatives who have lived experience of racialization in Dutch society, and who draw on Black cultural practices in their work. CEL funding was used to develop community-engaged learning activities and co-create spoken word, music and video essays with/featuring UU community partners.

Background

The project originated with the course’s content – Afro-diasporic cultural production which is a socially engaged, deeply community oriented process. From the outset the project team wanted to have students doing, making, engaging physically, as well as learning about the history or media production aspects. The course started in an effort to broaden the curriculum at UCU and bring new dimensions to student’s learning. CEL was a logical continuation of the emphasis on understanding through doing as well as reading/learning. Ultimately the goal was to connect students more with the histories, experiences, and courageous cultural creation of marginalized and racialized groups in contemporary Utrecht as well as around the Black Atlantic in the past. Equally importantly, to bring those who create and honor Black and Afro-diasporic culture in contemporary Dutch society in contact and connection with (students at) the University, building trust, respect, and deeper knowledge and engagement.

Project description

This project brought scholarly and community practice and expertise together through shared cultural production and knowledge exchange. Students, teachers and guests learned about the history and techniques of Black cultural production together with community partners.

During the course, community experts and creators were invited the classrooms and, in turn, students were brought into community spaces of cultural production such as House of Hip Hop Utrecht. The engagement was two-way and reciprocal and didn’t end with the course.

The partners and guest speakers in this course were:

• Spoken word workshop with poet, writer, journalist Zaire Krieger which also inspired one of the scholarly video essays produced by the students at the end of the semester. You can watch it here
• Guest lecture by Kristof West, filmmaker/DJ/UCU alum from Trinidad and Tobago on AfroCaribbean heritage and music
• Guest lecture by ethnomusicologist, musician, and composer Olupemi Oludare (Assistant Professor of Black History, University of Amsterdam) on Black music, its Nigerian roots and re-circulation open to the whole UCU/UU community.
• Guest lecture by Dastan Abdali on Dutch Hip hop, artist-scholar methodology and integration of academic knowledge with community knowledge.
• Several workshops on practice and meaning, and socially inclusive power of hip hop and community potluck with members of the House of Hip Hop Utrecht
• A potluck evening, film screening and post-screening discussion in cooperation with the African and Caribbean Heritage Network which was open-to-the-public.

Results

Many students continued to interact with the community partners after January 2025. One student for example was guided by guest speaker filmmaker and UCU alum Kristof West to take part in the highly competitive Soho House Mentorship Program for young creatives from lower socioeconomic and underrepresented backgrounds which she is currently concluding. The workshops in collaboration with Hip Hop House Utrecht were similarly impactful and various cooperation between UCU students and UCU student committees and the Hip Hop House are now under way. One of the scholarly video essays produced in the course and screened at our pot-luck event in December 2024 which was co-organized with the UU African Caribbean Heritage Network (ACHN), “Mopping the Ballroom”, is now part of the “Intersectional Exhibition” program on May 31, organized by UGlobe – UU’s Centre for Global Challenges – and ACHN.

Other students recently collaborated with guest lecturer ethnomusicologist, musician and composer Olupemi Oludare (UvA) in djembe and East-African-music-making sessions. Dr. Oludare has proposed to join his (funded) collaborative music workshop at the Voorkamer, a multicultural creative space in Utrecht, in the 2025 version of the course.

In April 2025 one of the students sent an enthusiastic email, entitled: “Legacy of a course”. It reads:

“I told [Olupemi Oludari] how much I enjoyed his guest lecture last semester, and he expressed his gratitude to Rachel for inviting him. We talked a bit and shared some laughs. He even exchanged contact information with a friend of mine, in order to possibly organise a music event at UCU!
I wanted to share this experience with you to show you how the ‘legacy’ of the black cultural production course lives on.”

The goals of this project were to broaden students knowledge and bring them into connection with communities engaged in cultural production from/of the African diaspora. This was accomplished and the students expressed, both in person and in their journals and course evaluations, how eye-opening (and ear-opening) this had been. Also a number of the partners House of Hip Hop Utrecht and dr. Oludare, expressed how rewarding an engagement this was, in addition to seeing ACHN take up the students’ work and feature it in their own exhibition. Which is great.

Lecturers and community partners are still in contact and planning new activities for this coming year, with strong relationships.

However, the project team still sees the relationships as somewhat one-way, and worry about the inability to continue them, given the one-off nature of the funding, and the inequity of the team, as salaried professionals, asking creatives to work with them when they cannot be financially compensated. The team is actively developing ways to tackle this, and the collaborations with Dr. Oludare, Kristof West, and ACHN illustrate how it can best work. Nevertheless it is a work in progress and it is known relationships and sustainable community engagement take time and trust. The project team would appreciate being in dialogue/working with CEL on this and would like to offer their experience as well as learning from that of others.

Reflections: lessons learned

• Time needed to arrange events with community partners – a regular lecture is much less time-consuming, to be frank. The team dealt with this by each taking the community partners they were closest to, and doing follow-up with them individually, but supporting each other where needed. Because the trust relationship is personal, it is hard to offload this to a student assistant.
• Arranging payment – again, this administrative work adds to the lecturer’s workload although it is very deeply appreciated. The team dealt with this by RG doing some of the writing and fundraising, and NK doing more of the form-filling and reimbursement request.
• The development of grading and ‘success’ criteria. This is a challenge but the team loved thinking through the pedagogical benefits, devising grading schemes, identifying the skills we were developing, and working together as inspired and inspiring co-teachers on this.