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Artist Spotlight: Karim Nagi and “Arabiqa”

December 31, 2020 By Cindy Sherwood

With all the challenges Arts for Learning has faced in the past year, there’s one very positive side effect—thanks to virtual programming, our roster has expanded to include vibrant and culturally diverse artists who live in other parts of the United States. We’re especially excited about Chicago-based artist Karim Nagi joining our team. Karim is an Arab musician, dancer, and folklorist whose program “Arabiqa” is now available for booking.

As a native of Egypt, Karim immigrated to the United States when he was eleven years old, along with his mother and father. The family settled in Boston, where Karim attended public school and where few students knew much about his home country, culture, or Muslim religion. Karim eventually became a professional performing artist. Since 1999, he has led the Sharq Arabic Music Ensemble, a group dedicated to preserving and presenting traditional Arabic vocal and instrumental music.

After the terrorist attacks of 9/11, a school invited Karim to make a presentation about Arab culture to students who “only had the frightening impressions from the news.” With close to 500 presentations since that time, he’s refined his performance into a dynamic and informational exploration of Arabic culture. The program blends music, dance, language, and traditional costumes. Karim demonstrates the traditional percussion and string instruments he plays and shows different dance styles he learned growing up in Egypt, as well as folk dances from Lebanon, Syria, Morocco, and other Arab countries.

In addition to exposing students to new art forms, Karim has a more personal motive for his performances.

“If everyone relies on the news or some type of media portal to get their information about another person, they’re only going to have stereotypes and simplistic renderings and one-sided reports. When people are learning about other cultures, it’s very important that they interact with people from those cultures,” Karim says. “I believe it’s important that they learn about my culture specifically because it’s so central in news and world politics, but I’m more interested in the process of people becoming tolerant and receptive of diversity so I think it’s important for them to interact with actual people from each segment of society.”

In the twenty years he’s been performing in schools and performing and leading workshops for adults, Karim has seen a positive shift in perception.

“People are more aware that the arts have a role in sharing culture and creating dialogue between people. I think before people thought of the arts as just entertainment. But these days people really give it the credit that it deserves.”

When schools shut down across the country last spring, Karim had an advantage over many performing artists because he was already experienced working with video and audio. With his virtual presentations, he adjusts to the needs of an individual school, with both live and recorded performances available. But whatever the format of his performances, he’s committed to make them interactive.

“I still need to engage with each student behind the screen and make them feel that they need to participate. That’s the important thing, rather than just performing in a block for forty-five minutes and students having to watch. This is true in real-life, in-person performances as well. With digital, I have to make sure I still keep it engaging and in a way that students participate.”

So how does Karim know that he’s making a difference through his school presentations? Earlier in his career, the words of a student from Virginia made a big impression.

One of the fourth graders came up to me and said they wanted to be Arab when they grew up. This fueled me a lot. I’m helping people become less afraid of something that’s foreign or something that’s perceived as anti-American by some people. I was expressing my culture and a young child saw it as something that they would like to emulate. Even if they didn’t understand the difference between ethnicity and career at the time, it still meant that they weren’t afraid of it, that they could relate to it.”

Interested in Karim doing a virtual presentation at your school, library, or community center? Contact Aisha Noel at 757-961-3737 or email us at programs@Arts4LearningVA.org for more information. We may have funding available to help offset the cost of Karim’s performance!

Filed Under: Artist Spotlight Tagged With: 757 arts, 757 nonprofit, Arabic culture, arts integration, arts programs, arts-in-education, digital programming, folklore, Karim Nagi, performing artist, virtual learning

New Stories from a Favorite A4L Storyteller

November 10, 2020 By Cindy Sherwood

She’s back, and we couldn’t be happier. After a three-year tour in England, Arts for Learning storyteller Sarah Osburn Brady returned to Virginia in August, her art and her connections to the storytelling community deepened by the experience.

Sarah and her family—daughters who are now eleven and eight and a pediatrician-husband whose transfer to Royal Air Force Lakenheath prompted the move to England—are now living in McLean, Virginia, forever changed by their time in the U.K. Sarah calls her three years there “a gift,” with highlights including being part of the Cambridge Storytellers group and “being able to travel and walk the landscape of so many stories, both historical and traditional, as well as literary stories.”

She believes her storytelling has changed, thanks to new insight she discovered while living abroad.

I think sometimes whenever we grow and change as people, it allows us to bring new things to our art form, and there’s something definitely that will make growth and change happen whenever you move to another country.”

Sarah first explored joining Young Audiences/Arts for Learning more than a decade ago while working as a professor of theater and communications at Hampton University. After the birth of her first child, she joined the roster, partnering with another acclaimed A4L storyteller, Sheila Arnold, with programs on the civil rights movement and two “women of freedom,” Harriet Tubman and Ellen Craft. Sarah also developed solo programs including Poetry and Jabberwockies, which celebrates the rhythm and rhyme of language through classic poems and nonsense words.

As both a performing artist and teaching artist, Sarah’s storytelling isn’t easy to characterize.

“I’m not a storyteller who tells just one type of stories. I tell historical, literary, and traditional stories, along with a smattering of personal stories and tall tales. I find that I do a lot of those different things. My style varies according to the story I’m telling, according to the needs of the program, according to the audience, all of those pieces.”

When she’s developing new programs, Sarah says there are some stories “that won’t let you go, that sit bubbling with you and then punch you in the shoulder until you let them out. Then there are other stories that, because we’re working artists, we get handed.” One of the stories she got “handed” in England was on Thomas Paine, the writer of Common Sense, after she was asked to create a special program about him for a festival. She wasn’t excited about it until she dug into months of research and discovered she found him “fascinating.”

Sarah tells stories related to Thomas Paine as part of a festival in Thetford, England.

“I often tell my husband that almost any subject, if you find the right way in, you can find that it’s fascinating,” Sarah says. “The first time I performed that program, there was a woman who came up to me and said, ‘I thought this was going to be boring, but you made it interesting.’ And that is part of my goal as a storyteller—to take whatever subject I’m telling stories about, whatever program I’m doing, and invite people in, even if they don’t think they’re going to be interested. It’s amazing to me how storytelling can help people be interested in ideas and clarify subjects that people thought they weren’t interested in or thought were confusing or thought were extra complex.”

Sarah previews a new choose-your-own adventure storytelling program on Zoom.

Being back at Arts for Learning in the middle of a pandemic means Sarah is developing programs that can work virtually. A new program, “More Than True: Folk and Fairy Tales with Character,” features a choose-your-own adventure approach that allows students to interact with her live and help decide character and plot details.

Sarah is also developing a new program focused on the stories of women who resisted tyranny during the world wars. We’ll share details soon!

Moving back to the United States during a pandemic hasn’t necessarily been easy for Sarah and her family, but she says there are good parts along with the difficult parts.

“One of the beautiful things is that Zoom and other platforms are allowing for there to be a comfort with and an ease of communication at a distance. So in some ways, it’s almost like we haven’t really moved because there’s regular contact with people in the UK and with the storytelling community there, so there are lots of good things.”

We’d call it 100 percent good for Arts for Learning to have Sarah back with us. Contact us at programs@Arts4LearningVA.org if you’re interested in booking one of Sarah’s programs, which you can explore by clicking here.  All are available in a virtual format.

Filed Under: Artist Spotlight, Arts Integration, ArtsEd, Virtual Learning, Virtual programming Tagged With: 757 arts, 757 nonprofit, performing artist, Sarah Osburn Brady, storyteller, storytelling, teaching artist, virtual learning, virtual programming

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Main Office
Arts for Learning
420 North Center Drive
Suite 239
Norfolk, Virginia 23502

Phone: 757-466-7555

Main Office

Arts for Learning
420 North Center Drive
Suite 239
Norfolk, Virginia 23502
Phone:
757-466-7555

RAISE Up in Hampton City Schools

“As a teaching artist, when we meet a kid, they’re a whole entire person. They have experiences and not all those experiences are pleasant, so coming to the classroom with that mindset and knowing that they carry baggage with them as do we… it’s about approaching them with compassion but also recognizing that they’re more […]

Join the A4L Mailing List!

Sign up to receive the latest news on arts integration from Arts for Learning! Thank you for supporting arts-in-education.

Select list(s) to subscribe to


By submitting this form, you are consenting to receive marketing emails from: Arts for Learning Virginia. You can revoke your consent to receive emails at any time by using the SafeUnsubscribe® link, found at the bottom of every email. Emails are serviced by Constant Contact
At Arts for Learning Virginia, we’re proud to be part of the Virginia Commission for the Arts’ Passport Program. While Passport holders typically receive free admission and 50% off classes at participating organizations, all our programming is always free—no discount needed. To learn more about our public events, check out our calendar of events page here.

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