About Talking About It
This is a program of I Am Somebody! Visit http://www.iamsomebody.co.za to find out more about the work we do with storytelling, mentorship and exchange.
Talking About It is a space by and for white people, in partnership with people of all backgrounds, to tell their stories with the aim of owning and transforming oppression from within. It creates spaces to explore the many stories, including the privileges and challenges, of being white in the 21st century.
Through this program I am telling my story and making a space to own all of the parts of myself, including my role in oppression. I am sharing it with people who want to hear it, and creating spaces where more people can begin to transform their silences by “Talking About It”.
Conversations
Through sharing her own story, and openly discussing personal challenges, Nicole will create room for talking about difficult questions with people who also want to explore their own relationship to whiteness and people from any culture who do reconciliation work. These will include simple conversations, workshops and inter-group dialogues ranging in their formality, but the goal will simply be to start talking. Nicole will share some of these conversations, and her own process publicly, on the radio and the internet, to generate conversations and so transform this often silent issue.
Exhibitions
The culmination of the conversations and workshops will be two permanent exhibits, one in South Africa and one in America. These interactive exhibits, created by Nicole and partners of Talking About It, will aim to create permanent spaces for people to address oppression from within.
About Nicole
Nicole, age 24, is a storyteller. Born in Pretoria, Nicole moved to America at the age of 11. At 22 she moved back to live out her vision in South Africa. She now resides in Cape Town. In 2010 Nicole co-founded a youth organization called I Am Somebody! with poet Toni Stuart. I Am Somebody! uses storytelling to do mentorship and integration work with 18 to 25 year olds, across communities in Cape Town.
Nicole began working with stories when she was 14 years old, founding a non-profit project of the Marion Institute called Kukummi. It aimed to share life stories of Africans to respond to the assumptions she encountered attending school in America. As part of “A Telling Collective Initiative”, a Kukummi project, Nicole travelled (June – Dec 2007) to South Africa and Zanzibar with co-directing Katelin Wilton. They developed a unique methodology with bodymapping and trained more than 400 community workers in this technique. Further, they initiated two support groups for HIV positive youth and their mothers in Zanzibar, which expanded to 7 after their departure. Most recently, from January 2010 through October 2010, she set up and directed the Testimony Project of Ikamva Labantu, supporting grandmothers in telling their life stories. Nicole directed Malika Ndlovu’s “Turning and Returning” storytelling performance in January 2010. She co-performed with American artist Chelsea Gregory in 2009, exploring racism through her storytelling piece about her family’s Afrikaans history. Nicole studied at Hampshire College in America, completing a self-designed degree in storytelling as a tool for healing with BA Honours qualification.
With I Am Somebody! Nicole aims to create a South Africa without fear. She believes that storytelling can open people to having faith in themselves, and so become active participants in creating lives of happiness. As a white, Afrikaans South African, she wants to use her own story of privilege to help other privileged South Africans move beyond their fears and own their stories so that the relationships between people can heal.
Photograph: Taken by Michele le Roux, the everlasting flowers were chosen as the header for this blog because they grow out of the parts of the plant that have died.
Talking About It 