Putting things in place

We - Shamshad Khan, Habiba Shenza, and myself - are working really hard at the moment to get all of the elements of Different Moons in place now we know that we have the funding for the project. This is exacerbated by the fact I'm going off for holiday tomorrow. Shamshad is urgently setting up workshop groups; Habiba is finishing her first ever animated film; and I'm issuing contracts, designing fliers for workshops; and juggling the budget.

Below is part of the flier I designed today to establish a series of workshops with Asian women at Community Link in Haslingden. We have been helped enormously by Hameeda Mahmood, who runs the holistic health sessions at HCL, and is a natural contact point for many of the Asian women in the community. Hameeda will be supporting Shamshad and Habiba at the sessions - the sessions cover poetry, paper-cutting, and mehndi - and will involve a special finale Baby Boo session for Asian mums, babies and toddlers, as well as recording interviews for the Different Moons archive. 

I've also been in touch today with Maryam Golubeva, the Russian paper-cut artist who we've confirmed will be part of our DM team. Maryam will be helping deliver the workshops too, and her paper-cut work will form an important part of the exhibition planned for November at the Whitaker. One of her beautiful light-box paper-cuts forms part of the flier design above:

Eid Mubarak

Eid Mubarak - all best wishes for a Eid - for tomorrow, when so many of our friends celebrate the end of Ramadan in 2014. 

Wonderful news for Different Moons!

We can announce that we've been awarded a Heritage Lottery Fund grant towards the Different Moons project. A total of almost £70,000 over two years to further the pilot work we've been undertaking since Spring 2013. We're delighted!

With the first deadline being the exhibition, opening on November 15th, at the Whitaker Museum & Gallery in Rawtenstall, we've got a busy three months ahead of us. Today I'm meeting Shamshad Khan (the Project Leader) and Habiba Shenza (Project Artist) - above - to decide on our immediate plans, and meet Maryam Golubeva, who we hope will work with us on the exhibition. 

Graffiti and a cemetery

It's been an eventful few days for the Different Moons project. Our links with the wider Asian community are having an effect and on Sunday we hosted an event at the Boo in Waterfoot organised by Rizwan Iqbal of the amazing Love & Etiquette Foundation. 25 young people joined us and Mohammed Ali (http://www.aerosolarabic.com/mohammed-ali/) ran graffiti workshops, while Saqib Choudhrey and Tom Burford provided Hip-Hop and Beatboxing...

Work by Mohammed Ali in Amsterdam

The fountain and the problem of creating tiles on a small budget (previous post) was still worrying me...then, also on Sunday, I went with Shamshad and Habiba to prize giving at the Rossendale Islamic Supplementary School, where Mazhar Hussain was giving out the prizes.  I discussed this concern with Mazhar and he mentioned that some years ago Rossendale Groundwork had created ceramic tiles for the Muslim section of Holden Cemetery, Helmshore. He though they may have been vandalised, or perhaps just damaged with time.

I decided to check this out as it's close to my home:

The column that must have housed the ceramics

The Muslim section of Holden Cemetery

Despite being close to home I have to say that I had never set foot inside the cemetery before. I once worked as a grave-digger, briefly when I was barely out of my teens, and they always bring back a flood of odd and slightly unsettling memories. I walked around for a while before I found the Muslim section, with its perhaps 25 or 30 gravestones, and the broken column that must have housed the ceramics Mr Hussain talked about. No other sign of them.

Although no nearer a solution for the fountain tiles, I looked more closely at the stones, and a handful mentioned Attock (see blog 30/09/13) as a birthplace. It made me wonder again at what stories were buried in those graves along with their tellers. 

A Ramadan fountain

Ramadan, and things have slowed down a little, such as in visiting people at their homes and recording interviews, but work on the Different Moons project continues nevertheless. Habiba Shenza has been coming along in the afternoons and is working on her animated film, using Mazhar Hussain's story of his voyage by ship to England in the 1950s as its' starting point. 

Another thing that is being worked on is the fountain. We want to create a traditional Islamic fountain as the centrepiece in the installation at the Whitaker Museum and Art Gallery in November. More, we would love to donate the finished fountain to a local mosque, or another suitable organisation, at the end of the exhibition. 

Phil Milston, who as our Technical Director will be leading on this, has created these visualisations. Phil, in another life, worked on fountain design and installation so we're fortunate to have an expert to hand. 

We think they look wonderful - so we now need to find a place willing to give a home to a beautiful, contemplative, Islamic inspired fountain. Any ideas!