Banza Yves
Marketing Technology Consultant and Volunteer for the Shared Studios Portal

The Jüdische Kulturbund Project usually writes a story about each of our participating artists after we have interviewed them. But this time, we wanted to share with you a virtual video experience we had with Banza Yves, a marketing technology consultant and volunteer for the Shared Studios Portal in Kigali, Rwanda.

Banza met with members of The Jüdische Kulturbund team and the University of Maryland projection design department inside the Shared Spaces Portal located outside the Clarice Performing Arts Center in College Park, Maryland.  This portal is a video conferencing studio fabricated inside a converted cargo space.  The studio provided immediate two-way access and full body-length projection between our location and Banza in Rwanda.  It was exciting for all of us to feel like we were virtually transported, in real time and halfway around the world, meeting with Banza in Rwanda.

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We enjoyed our introduction to and conversation with Banza to learn from him the issues of oppression in Rwanda and what life is like there since the 1994 genocide; explore connections he saw between the Jewish Kulturbund artists in Nazi Germany and artists in Rwanda; and talk with him about the healing power of music and art and the benefits of sharing our project with people in Rwanda.  And thanks to this experience with Banza in the Shard Studios container, we met Patrick Kirhura and started our education programs‘ workshop initiative, Connecting Classrooms, using Skype to connect kids from Root Foundation and in Sweden to explore issues of oppression and response through music and art.

Please view our experience talking with Banza in the Shared Studios Portal, below.