Archive: Can the Arts Drive Social Change? With Idris Elba, Kwame Kwei-Armah and Yassmin Abdel-Magied

Connor Boyle (0:00)

Hello, and welcome to Intelligence Squared. I'm Head of Programming, Connor Boyle. Today, we're revisiting a conversation from 2020, recorded in the wake of global Black Lives Matter protests and the murder of George Floyd. Actor, Idris Elba and playwright Kwame Kwei-Armah joined broadcaster Yassmin Abdel-Magied to discuss the arts, racism, representation, and the responsibility of all of us to drive meaningful change. Six years on, the questions they raised about power, equality, and accountability remain relevant as ever.

Let's go to the episode now.

Yassmin Abdel-Magied (0:34)

Thank you again, Intelligence Squared, for inviting me to chair this session.

So, in the midst of this current moment that we're living in, at the intersection of what one of our guests has called the triple threat of COVID-19, white supremacy, and economic fragility, where does art and culture fit in? Why is it important for the arts to engage with and then fundamentally transform, particularly in the response to the Black Lives Matter movement? The art a society creates tells a story of who we think we are and who we want to be. So, to explore this today, we have two incredible trailblazers from the arts joining us. Firstly, we have Idris Elba. He's an A-list Hollywood star, an actor, writer, and producer, perhaps best known for his starring roles in The Wire and Luther, and for playing Nelson Mandela in the film Mandela, Long Walk to Freedom. He runs his own production company, Green Door Pictures, which champions a diversity of thought. He's been a DJ since his teens, collaborating with artists including Fatboy Slim and Skepta, and has played Coachella. In 2018, People Magazine voted him Sexiest Man Alive, as my mom would say, Masha'Allah, brother.

Kwame Kwei-Armah is also with us today. I'm super excited to also welcome him, Artistic Director of the Youngvik Theatre. And were it not for the pandemic, his production of Hamlet, starring Kush Jumbo and Ruth Nega, would currently be playing there. Before joining the Youngvik, he was the Artistic Director of the Baltimore Center Stage, and his award-winning play Elmina's Kitchen transferred from the National to the Garrick Theatre in 2005 His series of eight short films, Soon Gone, a Windrush Chronicle, was shown on BBC 4 in 2019

So thank you both so much for joining us today. And Kwame, I'm gonna start with you. We've just heard that in the UK, the government has announced the reopening of theaters on July the 4th, but they will not be able to stage live performances, which seems a relatively important thing for a live performance venue. Given, as you've called it, the triple threat of this moment, how are you feeling about where we are right now?

Kwame Kwei-Armah (2:42)

Well, how I'm feeling first of all is that I was waiting for you to tell me, or at least announce, where I was voted the sexiest person in the world.

And that I hope was my household.

But actually, I just got to say, and I would say that in this room, I did a quick check, and I think that you've got like, I don't know, 80,000 followers on Twitter, and Idris has got like 2 million. So I'm like the boy here. I'm just going to let you know that I've got the most to prove in this room. But on a serious note, and a serious note, you know, it's a very hard time. And I think you framed the question really well, that we can open the theaters, and that's just a legal technicality, but we cannot perform. We can't even really have a bar in there just yet until we get the go ahead from Public Health England and the government. I think one of the hardest things about being a gatekeeper, about being an artistic director of an institution, particularly in a place like London, in a multicultural, intellectual, it's a soulful space, London. And our artistic community are soulful and spirited people. And so at this time, while we're amid the triple threat, my theatre would be alive and buzzing with people wanting to put on art, with intellectuals wanting to discuss, with young people wanting to come in and find out how they can contribute using the weapon of choice or their weapon of choice, art. And so it's a really hard time to not know that, not know when I can put my art back on our stages and facilitate that kind of discussion. I'm a hardwired optimist. I believe that we are going to store the energy of this time. And when we can open our doors again, the power that's going to explode on our stages and vibrate through into our audiences, is going to be like nothing that we have ever witnessed before. And that's just not my stage, but across the stages of Great Britain.