17.4–27.5.2023 Stoa Cultural Centre and other public spaces around (Eastern) Helsinki, to be announced later, free admission. 

Welcome to join the collective IHME Helsinki 2023 Commission! Chicago Boys – While We Were Singing, They Were Dreaming invites everyone of all cultural backgrounds, ages, and educations to share their stories, play music and sing together, according to their abilities.

At the core of Chicago Boys are the people who form an amateur band and discussion group. We are looking for professional and amateur musicians, and non-musicians, of different ethnic backgrounds and ages, to join the band. Band members share a desire to meet new people and to think about what is happening in the world. For example, how are neoliberalism and the environmental crisis affecting our everyday lives, and how are they reflected in our experiences of popular music? The band will meet for rehearsals twice a week for six weeks in April-May: its own rehearsals at Stoa on Mondays or Wednesdays (the band decides on this in the first meeting on 17 April 2023) and open rehearsals on Saturdays in public spaces around Helsinki to be decided later. The spaces have in common that their fate is threatened in some way – mostly due to the pursuit of financial benefits.

Anyone can come to the open rehearsals on Saturdays (22.4, 29.4, 6.5, 13.5, 20.5 and 27.5). You can come just to listen the stories and the band practising or bring your own instrument and play with the band, or you can tell your own story on the themes of the project. The band will decide during the project on the venues for the open rehearsals. The last one will take place in the theatre at Stoa Cultural Centre on Saturday, 27 May 2023 – this will be the work’s finale, and you are warmly welcome!

Do you want to join in?

If you want to join the band and discussion group for Chicago Boys – contact chicagoboys@ihmehelsinki.fi by Friday 14 April 2023 (note: ability to play an instrument is not a prerequisite for joining the group and the group’s own rehearsals will be at Stoa on Monday or Wednesday evenings).

If you want to join in the open rehearsals – follow updates on the Stoa and ihmehelsinki.fi websites, this even page and IHME Helsinki’s social media channels, and come to the venues with or without your instrument! 

Get more information by subscribing to the IHME Helsinki newsletter here: https://www.ihmehelsinki.fi/tilaa-uutiskirje/

The event will be updated throughout the spring so changes to event information and schedule are possible and highly likely.

Our partners are Cultural Centre Stoa and the library of Itäkeskus.

Kurdish artist and musician Hiwa K’s Chicago Boys – While We Were Singing, They Were Dreaming project began in London in 2010 and has since been performed in: Gdansk, Poland (2010) and Nottingham, England; and has toured the Netherlands (2011); Sofia, Bulgaria, and Delme, France (2013); Amman, Jordan (2014); Bergen, Norway (2019); and Nida Art Colony, Lithuania (2020).

Image: Hiwa K, Chicago Boys 2011, courtesy of the artist and KOW Berlin.