A Festival!

Planning for Different Moons has now started in earnest after meeting with Shamshad Khan (above) and confirmation from the Whitaker (below) that they would be delighted to host an exhibition starting in October 2014. 

With a substantial programme of community workshops in the run up to the exhibition and with a good number of related events taking place during the exhibition, we've decided that  it makes sense to think of the whole thing as a Festival. The Different Moons Festival!

So my research into the history of the community continues. Shamshad and I will soon be meeting with interested individuals and groups, planning workshops and other creative activities; finally the inevitable budgeting has begun with the intention of making funding applications to support the programme. 

A year away...

Haslingden, late 1950s, photograph courtesy of RM Nostalgic Railways. The period when the first of the immigrants from Pakistan and Bangladesh were beginning to arrive in Rossendale to work in the cotton textile mills that were short of a labour force, especially for the unpopular shifts - usually the night-work. 

If you were trying to find this scene today you would be stuck. The station was closed in 1964, the railway disappeared and its route is now the A56 Haslingden By-Pass, opened in the early 1980s. The chimneys have been demolished too.

We also have agreed with the Whitaker (Rossendale's Museum & Art Gallery) to work towards an exhibition in exactly a year's time celebrating the history of the South Asian Community in Rossendale. We've also started planning the next stage of Different Moons, and soon expect to begin working on new projects within Haslingden.