Racial tensions have certainly risen sharply since the City Arts Centre's first World Stories Festival last year. This year, it is loosely tying in with other well-intentioned arts events organised by heads from the Dublin Congress of Trade Unions and the SFX, although communication between the various bodies - and indeed the various African organisations - seems, like Ireland's immigration policy, something of a shambles.

The African Cultural Project, run by Ghanaian Adekunle Gomez, rowed in with a superb gig in Trinity College by the Madagascarian valiha-player, Justin Rakotondrasoa and his trio. The show seemed designed for the enlightened Irish middle-classes: there was only one tall, frosty-haired black man in an audience of over 100.

Then, there was the sunnily titled Hello Friend! May Day event around Liberty Hall, organised by Brian Treacy. Gabriel Ohkenla, director of the PanAfrican Organisation, delivered a speech written by Nelson Mandela for the occasion. Other speakers included Brendan Carr Deputy Lord Mayor of Dublin, and Inez McCormack, president of Irish Congress of Trade Unions. The idea was to call upon the Government to develop a clear immigration policy, but events were overtaken by the news of the smashing up of the African-owned shop on Parnell Street the night before, part of a pattern of incidents in that area.

Inside Liberty Hall itself, there was a stall run by the new multicultural newspaper, Metro Eireann, which bends over backwards to compliment the best efforts of the Minister for Justice and the Garda's new EU-funded internal initiatives (there are now only two coloured gardai in a force of 11,500).

There was an exhibition downstairs, organised by Pat Guerin's Anti-Racism Campaign, including reminders of 19th-century British cartoons of ape-like Irishmen, and British window-signs reading "No Blacks, no Irish, No Dogs" which persisted into the 1970s.

Another sobering display listed 1,021 documented refugee deaths in "Fortress Europe" (dated from 19/3/1998), compiled by a network of non-governmental organisations across Europe (for up-to-date info, go to www.xs4all.ny/ united or email united@antenna.nl). Causes of death are listed as suicide in detention, starvation, suffocation in containers, exposure or drowning, neo-fascist arson attacks, deaths in police custody, etc.

Pat Guerin says: "People don't take these risks unless they're fleeing from some awful situations. There's all this talk of `bogus' asylum-seekers, but even if they're economic migrants, we're talking about desperation here, not like Irish people emigrating with degrees in the 1980s. And while refugees are accepted if they can prove a well-founded fear of persecution, if they are fleeing from floods or famine, they just don't qualify . . . "

Back at the City Arts Centre, some events, such as the World Food Bazaar last Saturday, were cancelled due to lack of interest. However, on Saturday evening, there was a Black Women's Poetry reading; a promotional tour for a poetry collection from the Women's Press, Bittersweet.

Malika Booker, British-born of Caribbean descent, gave a captivating rhythmic reading of her work, like her rapped/whispered intonation of a rape/incest poem, Silence is Golden. And Janet Kofi-Tsekpo, a Ghanaian-English woman intoned a memory poem of early life in Portsmouth, and the ironic conceit of The Last Slave Poem.

Then there was the glinting, hyperliterate, buzzy rapping of Patience Agbabi. From Lagos originally, she was fostered out to an English family, and that identity fracture informs her latest volume, Transformatrix.

A common theme was skin: "the way I wear my skin" is a line from a poem by Janet Kofi Tsekpo, while Patience Agbabi - for a time resident writer in a tattoo parlour in London - delivered a poem entitled Excoriation. It was all good vibes and twinkly eyes, and attracted an audience of about 30 Irish whites.

The notion of fractured identity also runs through the City Arts Centre's current gallery exhibition, Legal Aliens, by Irish-Trinidadian artist, Vanessa Soodeen. The female form predominates in work ranging from batik overpainted with acrylics, to oil paintings and little clay sculptures of female forms. One hilarious little clay plaque depicts a black baby suckling through the nipple of the Kerry peninsulae.

A central part of the show is a video and photography show of six immigrant women resident in Ireland. Two of them didn't wish to be mentioned in print, due to fear of deportation. Blanca Blanco, a Spaniard, is director of DEFY, an anti-racist programme which emerged from, but is independent of, the National Youth Council. Working with children in Youthreach Centres, she is constantly shocked by the racism they express. A friend of hers, a black man from Co Clare and trainee doctor, has told her of recent difficulties with patients who don't want to be treated by him - they think he's an asylum-seeker.

I was deeply affected by meeting Thyma Kapic Braamark, a tall, handsome woman from Bosnia-Herzegovina, and a trained journalist, whose life in Mostar was torn apart by the war in 1992-93. She now works with the charity, Cradle, and regularly returns to Mostar, where her family home is occupied by Croats, since the Civil War which followed the Muslim-Croat resistance to the Serbs. Some of her family members are missing, others scattered from Germany to the USA. Thyma expresses that anguish through a kind of raging defiance of authority.

Natasha Ariff, a Malaysian-Irish woman and single mother, actually looks and sounds pretty Irish to me, with her nut-brown face and freckles. Yet after spending a happy childhood in Malaysia, she was unsettled by boarding at Alexandra College in Dublin, where she was constantly reminded of her difference.

Shalini Sinha, an Indian woman, grew up on the conservative white Christian prairies of west Canada. She did a Masters in Women's Studies at UCD, on the experience of coloured women in Ireland. "Racism isn't just about getting physically attacked or abused on the street," she says. "My experience here would be that, well, people stare at you on the street. Not everyone, but out of 100, three would stare. Not every experience is upsetting, but you can tell the difference between a friendly look and a hardcore, inhuman stare.

"When that's a constant experience, it has an effect, the experience that you don't belong, that you're not normal. Just like other black people here, I have good and bad days and have stayed in their house for days on end."

She is currently doing a PhD on institutional racism, working with Catherine Clancy of the Community Relations Division section of the Garda, the Department of Justice and SIPTU. "It's all very well for organisations to have anti-racism policies, but you have to look at how inequalities and exclusion are maintained. For example, you can have teachers who don't want inequality in their school, yet you might find that very few black kids or Travellers make it to second-level education or achieve very highly."

"People are saying that racism is new in Ireland, since this fresh influx of people. But it's really that racism has never been challenged, and has now become more overt. For example, look how aloof Chinese people or Travellers stay in Irish society - that's because of racism. You become very silent and invisible and under the thumb . . . "

This weekend will be the culmination of the City Arts Centre events with the "Feile Fiesta" on Sunday. There will be a gig rig in front of the Customs House between 3 p.m. and 7 p.m., and Donal Lunny is the only big name confirmed at the time of going to press.

The SFX team is planning a parade of sorts at 5 p.m. from Mountjoy Square to the Customs House. It's part of another no-budget initiative, co-ordinated by Erik van Lennet-Hyland, an American of Dutch-Irish descent and a veteran of multicultural intiatives. He is also organising a multicultural street fair on Sherrard Street on Saturday from 10 a.m. until evening, with art workshops for children. He's talking to organisations such as the African Refugee Network, Interculture and Pavee Point. He has "at least six bands lined up, playing samba, African and other world music. We'll have buskers and jugglers and face-painting, while later on there will be a Latin dance night with lessons from the Argentinean Tango Society."

"A lot of it isn't nailed down yet," he says, "but I'm running into more goodwill than anything else, which leads me to believe that reports of general hostility to other cultures are perhaps overblown. Perhaps the people who are most vociferous are those who feel most threatened. I mean, most of us aren't going to jump up and down and start screaming about tolerance . . . "

World Stories Festival runs until May 21st. Legal Aliens runs until Saturday June 31st. Further information from City Arts Centre, Moss Street, Dublin 2 (01- 6770643)