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Thabo Mkwananzi: UMFECE

Summer 2026

About Thabo Mkwananzi: UMFECE

Huddersfield-based musician and artist Thabo Mkwananzi will create UMFECE (Cocoon), a new participatory project inspired by the Bantutronic philosophy which looks 500 years into the past to honour ancestral wisdom and 500 years into the future to imagine new possibilities.

The new project UMFECE by Zimbabwe-born Thabo, will transform a tree within the Park into a place for gathering, performance, and cultural exchange, bringing together multigenerational groups of people. UMFECE draws on the long-standing Bantu tradition of meeting beneath trees to share music, food, and ancestral knowledge. Members of the Bantu diaspora across Yorkshire will be invited to take part in conversations, performances, and moments of reflection, fostering meaningful connections. These shared experiences will be documented through photography, sound, and text, forming a living archive of diaspora wisdom.

Thabo first collaborated with YSP in 2023, performing with the interactive artwork Light Organ by Akeelah Bertram, Adam Glatherine and Simon Fletcher.

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