ISIRKA is an independent Somali cultural production platform and archival practice that creates opportunities for Somali communities to document, interpret, and engage with their cultural histories. Through oral history, music, interviews, writing, multimedia storytelling, community archiving, and public programming, ISIRKA explores how cultural memory is created, carried, and passed between generations and across geographies.
ISIRKA began as a blog documenting Somali culture and diaspora experiences and later expanded into a podcast featuring conversations with Somali artists, cultural producers, and community members. More than 50 recorded episodes now form a growing audio record of Somali cultural life, documenting creative practices, personal histories, migration, identity, music, and belonging. This documentation has increasingly moved from digital spaces into physical ones through public programs such as Somali Soul, where music, conversation, archival materials, and collective participation become ways of experiencing cultural memory together.
The next phase of ISIRKA will deepen both sides of this practice. ISIRKA will continue producing cultural programs, listening experiences, interviews, and multimedia storytelling while developing community-centered archival projects that document oral histories, photographs, recordings, ephemera, and other materials held within Somali communities. These projects will invite community members not simply to be documented, but to participate in interpreting and preserving their own histories.
At the center of ISIRKA is a commitment to narrative agency: the belief that communities should have opportunities to define themselves, tell their own stories, and determine what they want future generations to remember. By bringing documentation, artistic production, and public participation together, ISIRKA aims to create a living cultural record of Somali life while building the foundation for a permanent archive of Somali cultural memory.
Learn More: https://isirka.com