Kay Rufai takes photos of smiling teenagers.
The artist, poet, photographer and facilitator wants theatres to host his exhibition of portraits - and use it to kickstart a dialogue.
Hello, and welcome to The Crush Bar, a weekly newsletter about theatre written by me, Fergus Morgan.
Each issue features an interview with an exciting, emerging theatremaker - and gives them a chance to be explicit about where they want to go and what help they need to get there. Maybe you, reader, can give it to them, or put them in touch with someone who can.
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In 2019, artist, poet, photographer and facilitator Kay Rufai travelled around the globe researching happiness.
He went to Denmark, Sweden, Norway, Iceland, Finland, and Bhutan – places that regularly appear at the top of lists of the world’s happiest countries.
“For a long time, Bhutan’s borders were closed to anyone, and even now there is a daily charge of $250 for any foreigner in the country,” says Rufai. “It’s an incredible place, though. It was the first country in the world to measure its progress by Gross National Happiness, not Gross Domestic Product. It’s ethnographically fascinating.”
Rufai’s research trip was part of an ongoing project also exploring a public health approach to youth violence in London. Supported by the Wellcome Trust, the Paul Hamlyn Foundation and Arts Council England, S.M.I.L.E-ing Boys (the acronym stands for Send Me Inspiring Loving Energy), involved Rufai developing a series of workshops for teenagers, aimed at encouraging them to engage creatively with their own mental health.
“In 2017, there was a noticeable spike in violence affecting young people, especially Black boys in council estates in London,” Rufai explains of the project’s origins. “The media rhetoric was all about criminalisation and policing and carceral solutions – but violence is a symptom of ill mental health, and a lack of artistic opportunities. I wanted to run a project that addressed that instead.”
Rufai distilled his research into eight creative sessions, each focusing on a different “pillar” of happiness, then delivered them to a group of 30 boys identified by their schoolteachers as being “particularly disengaged.” Then, in the eighth session, Kai arranged a celebration dinner for participants – “I order them all Nando’s,” he laughs – and photographed them smiling.
The project was a success, and now includes hundreds of boys from twenty different schools in ten different boroughs – with plans for further expansion. It resulted in a podcast, and an album, and an exhibition of Rufai’s photos, which has been seen at London City Hall, Brixton Market, and the OXO Tower, as well as at Battersea Arts Centre and the New Diorama Theatre, where it accompanied the four-week run of Nouveau Riche’s show For Black Boys Who Have Considered Suicide When The Hue Gets Too Heavy.
“The workshop element of the project is about giving these young boys the tools to navigate the realities they face,” says Rufai. “The exhibition, though, the public-facing element, speaks to the political impetus behind the project. It is a rejection of the dehumanisation and criminalisation of these boys in the way the media represents them.”
“As a human being, I work continually on being as non-judgemental and open-minded as possible…”
Rufai is a sparkling interviewee and a snappy dresser – our phone conversation was interrupted several times by passers-by complimenting him on his bright pink outfit. He was born in 1983 in East London, into a “very traditional Nigerian household”. He moved to Nigeria when he was three, then to California when he was eight, then back to Nigeria in his twenties, then back to the UK to study biomedical engineering at Queen Mary University.
It was there that he started “dabbling” in the arts, realised that was his true passion, and dropped out to pursue a career as a musician. He achieved “a medium level of success” before deciding that music, like biomedical engineering, was not for him.
“I realised that what I really enjoyed was connecting with people, particularly with young people, and coaching them and supporting them to express themselves creatively,” he says. “That realisation sowed a seed in my soul, and I’ve been looking for ways to do that ever since.”
That was in 2008. Rufai spent the next few years working with youth organisations, quickly “rising up the ranks of management”, but discovering that every promotion took him further away from the work he enjoyed. “I was in charge of million-pound budgets,” he remembers. “But it definitely wasn’t bringing joy and passion to my soul.” Rufai left, rebranded himself – he uses the moniker “Universoul Artist” – and resolved to pursue work that actually put him in the room with the people he wanted to help.
At some point, he says, a friend gave him a camera and taught him how to use it. His first major photography project, T.R.I.B.E (another acronym, standing for Testing Realities Invariably Binding Everyone), involved travelling to remote regions of Southern Ethiopia to document the lives of tribes living there. His second, S.M.I.L.E, involved photographing smiling strangers and asking them what made them happy. S.M.I.L.E-ing Boys was an off-shoot of that.
Today, Rufai juggles overseeing the expansion of S.M.I.L.E-ing Boys with consultancy work – he was recently artist-in-residence with West Midlands Police as part of Coventry’s year as UK City of Culture – and with the development of his own practice as an artist, poet, photographer and facilitator.
“As a human being, I work continually on being as non-judgemental and open-minded as possible,” he says. “I never want to know what crimes someone I’m working with has committed, or what their teacher has said about them. Preconceptions and prejudices cause a lot of damage, and get in the way of people connecting with each other, and that’s what my practice is about.”
What do you want to do?
Theatre has historically been one of the least representative forms of art. There is a very small, confined set of roles which Black men have traditionally been allowed to play.
I would like to see more authentic representations, more nuanced explorations of Black identity on stage. People like Ryan Calais Cameron, Tobi Kyeremateng, and Jasmine Lee-Jones are doing that. Their work, like my photography, changes perceptions, and it needs supporting. Supporting, and not policing.
What support do you need to get there?
I want arts centres, including theatres, to get in contact about hosting the S.M.I.L.E-ing Boys exhibition. There are indoor and outdoor installations, and they work together. Young people who don’t necessarily think a theatre space is for them see the photos outside and feel welcomed inside.
I don’t just want theatres to host the exhibition and think their job stops there, though. I want them to see it as the beginning of a dialogue with their community, as the spark for some activities and workshops and engagement. I want them to reach out to S.M.I.L.E-ing Boys projects in their local borough and get involved.
How can people find out more about you?
There is a lot of information, photos and films on my website, and on Twitter and Instagram. That’s where people should look for announcements about where the exhibition is going to be installed next. We have some exciting locations lined up.
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Fergus Morgan