Turning Tables

General information

Turning Tables (TT) is a global non-profit organization that works to give voice to marginalized youth worldwide through music and film production. TT has since 2009 established music and film production facilities called Turntable Labs for marginalized refugee and IDP youth in southeast asia, africa, middle east and europe. Further TT has arranged concerts and provided organizational support to festivals for political dissident rappers in Cairo (2011) and Benghazi (2012) and set up Turntable Labs for street youth and child prostitutes in Cambodia (2012).

In 2013 TT established music and video production facilities for activist musicians in Tunisia and political activists in Yangon, Myanmar. TT further curated a big festival on global artistic activism in Copenhagen and organized ‘L’Angar Festival’ in Tunis December ’13. TT is currently developing a program for young Syrian refugees in Jordan and Lebanon together with Action Aid Denmark and are setting up new Turntable Labs for violent slum youth in Cite Soleil and Bel Air, in Port-au-Prince Haiti.

Turning Tables has been working with the UN entities UNRWA, MINUSTAH, and have current projects with UNFPA, Oxfam, Action Aid, The Danish Foreign Ministry, The Roskilde Festival and a number of local NGO’s in our program countries

The programs and projects under Turning Tables seek to:

1. Provide marginalized youth with a voice by providing means of production for music and film and disseminate their products via social media in order to counter oppression in a non-violent manner;

2. Establish sustainable creative spaces for music and communication that strengthens the participants' self-esteem and strengthen social empowerment in order to prevent conflict and counter marginalization;

3. Maintain a permanent web platform and network where politically and socially marginalized young people can easily interact and express what they want, when they want, in text, audio, and images;

4. Support and organize festivals and concerts focusing on strengthening freedom of expression and artistic freedom.

Turning Tables two main programs are:

1) Establishing sustainable locally driven Turntable Labs with DJ and music production facilities for politically, socially and economically marginalized youth. The Turntable labs are connected through a web platform in Arabic, French and English. The inspiration for this platform comes from Internet radio, but the design of pursue a hybrid between social media and the radio format where the user uploads DJ sets, rap texts and images. Thereby, the website creates a common platform for geographically separated groups of politically and socially marginalized young people wishing to express themselves in a non-violent manner through music and film. This creates communities and communication through inter-regional and global interaction based on shared values and interests. The Turntable Labs strive to break down stereotypes and boundaries by including both resource-weak and resourceful users with a 50/50 gender distribution.

2) Arranging and supporting concert and festival activities focusing on freedom of speech and expression. These activities aim to include instructors and participants from the Turntable Labs to give voice to the social and political grievances of the marginalized youth. The festivals is further meant to promote artistic activism as a vehicle for pushing back oppression with non-violent means and promote regional and global exchange between marginalized young artists.