Episode 1: Wordsmiths and Artists – Omopé Carter Daboiku and Alinah Azadeh

For this first episode of Covid Conversations, we are joined by two wordsmiths and artists - Omopé Daboiku who lives in Dayton Ohio and Alinah Azadeh from Lewes in the southeast of England.

Omopé Carter Daboiku grew up rural southern Ohio. Her work focuses on the intersectionality of place, identity and belonging, and the experience of growing up a “mixed-race, colored child” of Nigerian heritage on the Appalachian landscape. Alinah Azadeh is a UK-based writer, artist, performer and social activist of British-Iranian heritage.

Both Alinah and Omopé are storytellers and textile artists for whom the concept of connection to land and the way in which that forms identity is an important theme. They are also – to use Omopé’s phrase – “history keepers”. In addition, both guests teach and facilitate the creativity of others.

To find out more about Omopé Carter Daboiku, please visit artslearning.ohioartscouncil.org/directory/name/omope-carter-daboiku. To find out more about Alinah Azadeh, please visit www.alinahazadeh.com.

Covid Conversations: Life in a Time of Corona is a 12-part podcast series from the Ohio State University’s (OSU) Center for Folklore Studies

Each  Covid Conversations episode features two individuals – one from Ohio and one from a different part of the world – who share a distinct arts- and/or humanities-related professional or personal identity. Over the course of their conversation, they discuss and compare how their parallel involvements in the arts and humanities have informed their experience of life during the Coronavirus pandemic in their respective homes.  To find out more about the OSU Center for Folklore Studies, where the full recordings of each Covid Conversation will be archived along with contextual information about each episode, please visit cfs.osu.edu.

The series is funded by an OSU Global Arts and Humanities Discovery Theme grant. Its 12 episodes will be published between September 2020 and August 2021. It is produced and presented by radio producer and folklorist Rachel Hopkin.

To find out more about Rachel Hopkin, please visit www.rachelhopkin.com.

Conversation recorded on Monday August 31st, 2020. Mastered by Paul Kotheimer at OSU. Music from https://pixabay.com/music