[NEGOTIATING] SPACE

Episode #2-

Ida was born into a Bosnian-Muslim and Serbian-Orthodox family in Former Yugoslavia. She lived in Former Yugoslavia until she was eight years old. Months after the war in Bosnia started her family was physically forced out of their homes and they eventually made their way to Canada. Her experiences as a child during the war and genocide in Bosnia and Herzegovina are the main reasons for her interest in race, ethnicity, genocide, violence, and immigration.  In 2011 she co-founded the InTransit Empowerment Project, an organization that uses art to empower immigrants and refugees through workshops and artistic projects.

InTransit Empowerment Project began as an idea for an organization in 2008.  We recognized that there are not enough safe spaces for people who do not fit somewhere within the mainstream and who are forced to hang in the margins, so we wanted to create an organization that would help create those safe spaces through artistic events and different forms of expression. Our mission is:

To provide a safe and nurturing creative environment that encourages the exploration of identities affected by social power structures in order to build bridges across disparate communities.  We aim to create non-violent and productive ways to reflect on our position within our society, cope with the oppressive structures and create solidarity within and between our diverse communities.

I’d like to thank Ida for sharing her story. She played a large part in the creation of this episode and I couldn’t have done it without her. I love how reflective Ida is about her story. I cannot imagine going through something like this at such a young age. When people live through events such as war it stays with them for the rest of their lives. In Ida’s case she was able to turn it into a positive, not only for herself, but for others. 

Visit the Negotiating Space SoundCloud page to leave comments and hear extras from Ida’s interview. 

Source: