Morgan with two

By Jasminee Sahoye

It started off as a small community show for women of colour to express themselves through artistic expressions of their life experiences, today When Sisters Speak has grown to such an extent that it attracted a sold out show for its 12^thyear at the upscale, St Lawrence Centre for the Arts last weekend.

This is by no small feat for organiser and founder of the show, Dwayne Morgan, who had no idea that the show would have grown to what is dubbed the largest of its kind in North America. On the line up of artists were two women from the US and four born-and-bred Canadians. Morgan is humbled that his hard work, no sponsors and personal financial investment into the event are paying off so much so that the show is has travelled to the nation’s capital for the past two years.

He believes that a show of this nature is necessary because women of colour are seldom given the opportunity in the mainstream to speak about their life and experiences. “When you create this platform, even if it’s a platform of people just complaining about stuff but it’s very thought out and articulated and it could be about love or heartbreak, politics or racism, creating that kind of an open space it is very necessary especially when as a society we’re moving more and more into this technological world that is the void of human interacting. So when you can go back to the basics where somebody is just speaking to an audience I think that is very powerful because it reminds us of how powerful our words are and how powerful communication is.”

“It has really been good over the years just to see how many people show up, interested in hearing what their women have to say and it’s also good to see that there are so many strong artists out there who have something to say and a perspective to share. For me the work is finding who those artistes are and putting people on the stage who complement each other to help the show to have a nice flow to it. Over the years, I have seen more women stepped out there to begin telling their stories and that’s the major change,” Morgan told The Camera.