Darkspark

Using pop culture to promote intercultural understanding

In 2016, County residents Melissa Larkin and D’Ari Lisle were navigating through as pop music career as the band Villas. Yet despite their success, they felt as if something was missing. “As we would accomplish goals, our sense of fulfillment wasn’t growing along the same arc. We felt that music was a very powerful and you can do things with it that are beyond the pursuit of personal or material gain, so we thought ‘What can we do with our talent, our equipment and our network to benefit the community?’” says Lisle. The answer came somewhat serendipitously. They were invited to run a one-week workshop at the Quinte Mohawk School in Tyendinaga. Following this, they received a grant for a month-long project in the same school where they challenged the Grade Eight class to write, record and release an album on colonialism and its impact on their community. “The students were initially shocked and overwhelmed. ‘No one will listen to this’ was their response,” says Lisle. “But by the end of the month not only had they created an EP, but they had collaborated with Juno-award winning artists that they loved, raised money for Missing and Murdered Indigenous Women, and had brought their community together around this thing.” On the final day, the students issued a challenge to Lisle and Larkin: take this project to other communities across Canada. This led to the founding of Darkspark and the creation of the Four Directions project.

(L-R): D’Ari Lisle and Melissa Larkin speak about Darkspark and the Four Directions project at the opening of the Downie- Wenjack Legacy Room at Books & Company in June 2017.

Working within communities, Darkspark melds pop culture with intergenerational and intercultural learning to tackle challenging social issues and enact change. The Four Directions initiative is among a number of ongoing projects, and the school in Sophiasburgh was the first non-Indigenous schools to take part. A presentation by those students at the opening of the Downie-Wenjack Legacy Room at Books & Company started a chain of events that saw Darkspark invited to a two-week expedition to the Arctic along with 200 youth, artists, scientists and Indigenous leaders, with a goal of recording songs by the youth on board. This work was recognized by former US President Barack Obama as well as the UN, and Darkspark was awarded an Intercultural Innovation Award from the United Nations Alliance of Civilizations in 2019. The Four Directions initiative has been taken to communities across Canada, and has now broadened to international scope. “So many of the issues we face as a society, especially things that disproportionately impact certain groups and communities, have their roots in how the world order was set up,” says Lisle. “Whether we’re looking at poverty or women’s rights or gender equality, if you look at it through a colonial lens of how the world was set up, it can really help people understand how we got here and help create a ripple of change.” One Darkspark project looked at the problem of gun violence in the US, and how victims from different social groups are not treated in the same way. This project brought together a survivor from the Parkland, Florida shooting—which occurred four years ago this week—and the survivor of a shooting in Chicago, and compared their experience. Lisle says that Darkspark’s projects have had a lasting impact on the participants and their communities. There have been real-time feedback in the classrooms, and the organization regularly gets emails from people about the change it has engendered in their family. “When you create a moment where a kid has to confront a challenging situation and navigate it with a group of people and get past their personal obstacles, they move from being kids in a classroom to becoming leaders and seeing how their impact can change a community. If you can create an experience for a young person early in their life where they understand the power of their voice, that can change someone’s path.”

Darkspark’s latest project is called VERSIONS and it takes a look at discrimination on a global scale. The key components follow the same methodology of combining the talents and energy of youth with music. “Music touches your heart, and once you can speak to somebody’s emotion, then you can engage. We are working with music and popular culture—which is one of the great forces that still binds us together—and we are working with youth. Our young people are something we can all throw our support around,” says Lisle. “So we bring those two forces together in a world where everything else seems to be in turmoil or divisive. Those two forces working together—youth and music—can actually make people shut up and listen, and feel and emote and evolve.” This project aims to unite youth leaders, recording artists and cultural innovators to challenge prejudice and racism through creative expression, mentorship and community action. Part of the funding for this project comes from a donation by Parsons Brewing, for which Lisle and Larkin are very grateful. “They have been supporting us for a few years. They are very community-focused and are big fans of culture. But it’s more than the money— they are using their platform and their venue in a very thoughtful way,” says Lisle. The project will offer Fellowships to 30 BIPOC (Black, Indigenous and People of Colour) youth, age 16 to 24, in a oneyear virtual program where they will build their leadership skills and create and release music that inspires social change. The name of the project, VERSIONS, is derived from the Jamaican tradition of “versioning”, where people would tell their stories in dance halls over a background of instrumental music from popular songs. Lisle says the dance hall tradition has a connection to the days of slavery in Jamaica— when plantation owners would allow slaves an hour of “freedom” on Saturday nights, where they could dance—and a modern connection to the streets of America and hip-hop music. “You have these people that were removed from their countries in colonial times and, having to maintain their culture, have created this thing which spurred an art form and left a trail to explore Black resilience and the diaspora experience,” says Lisle. Fellows in the VERSIONS project will be given a number of “beats”, or musical rhythms, and will create their own music over the beats, hearkening back to the days of dub music and dance halls. They will be mentored by professionals in various fields, and will be provided with tools such as recording equipment and software. For more information about the VERSIONS project, please visit theversionsproject.org.

D’Ari Lisle and Melissa Larkin have also been producing music as Villas. Their new single Up Against will be coming out on February 22—02-22-22—and is the first of a series of releases this year. All the music was created after-hours in hotel rooms or on airplanes while travelling the world on various social impact projects.