Mehndi day...

Another busy week including Tuesday spent at the South Asian Arts Forum at MMU in Manchester, where I was reminded that 2014 will be the third Asia Triennial Manchester (ATM14), the only Asian Arts festival outside of Asia! So what better year to choose for our first year of Different Moons!

Then today was the final session for Habiba and Shamshad (top photo) at the Rossendale Valley Islamic Supplementary School. It was a session that focused on the young people each translating one of their moon poems into mehndi, henna-painting, and experimenting by painting onto a white circle in the form of a paper plate.

The older of todays' groups got together for a photograph. These sessions have been really encouraging for our project, despite each being only an hour in length.  Tomorrow we do a final check through our application to the Heritage Lottery Fund, and then the bid sails off into the ether, and we all wait...

A busy weekend and an application

While Shamshad and Habiba continue to work at the Rossendale Valley Islamic Supplementary School on Sundays, I spent the weekend writing up the project plan for a major funding bid. A bid that, if successful, will enable us to run the Different Moons project over the next two years. 

Last Friday Shamshad, Esther, and I had a five hour long session working on the details of this bid. Over the weekend I drew the bits and pieces together, and then fleshed out the  writing, leaving Esther the job of adding everything to the application form - and all the sections she will need to write and bring to the bid herself - the budgets, the administrative details and so on. It's a lot of work - and finally it'll be sent off. Then - there will be a three month wait for the result. 

One of the most encouraging things was the statements of support and need that have reached us; short written pieces that we can add to the application to show a wide range of people and groups who support the project. We have had some wonderful comments - from the RVISS itself, from the young people involved in the pilot projects, from the museum, from a local historian....and these have all encouraged us enormously.

The Islamic School

I joined in with the third session of Shamshad and Habiba's classes at Rossendale Islamic Supplementary School this afternoon. The subject used the recordings we made a few weeks ago of Mr Muzzar Hussain, covering a range of subjects but here concentrating on his memories of travelling to and arriving in England in 1958. 

The young people were first asked to uncover his name through a game of 'hangman'. Then they divided in half and each half was shown a different photograph - one I took a few weeks ago of Mr Hussain in his house in Accrington, and the other a photograph from the 1930s of his maternal grandfather on  horseback in India (pre-Partition). They were asked to describe their feelings about the characters in the photos. and were then played a short recording of Mr Hussain reminiscences. Finally they were asked to guess which of the two photographs was of Mr Hussain. 

This discussion and lesson took place in the context of Mr Hussain being described to them as among the very first Asians to settle in Haslingden, and their homework had been to discover who of their own relatives first arrived and settled in England. Shamshad and Habiba took turns in leading the class, and it provoked discussion and interest in the young people about the subject.

I was very impressed by the way the children focused on the subject, and entered into the 'games'. Shamshad has planned the five week course with these young people to develop an awareness of, and pride in, their heritage. What I witnessed today was very encouraging.