The Women's Forum

Three screenshots from Jessica Royle's animation 'The Women's Forum'. The subject is taken from an interview with Samina Raffat Hussain, in which Samina reminisces on her early days in Haslingden. 

This is the fifth animation in the Different Moons series that are based and inspired by interviews with some of the early South Asian immigrants to Rossendale. The two minute film took Jessica two months to make.

By the end of 2015 we hope to have between 15 and 20 animated films which will be available through a special YouTube channel. 

The second week - a Calligraphy Moon.

Today we held the second session of 2015 at Rossendale Valley Islamic School - developing the introduction to calligraphy that Farzana was leading last week. Today the group learned to write their own names in Arabic calligraphy, and then write the words DIFFERENT MOONS, again in Arabic, but in the form of a crescent moon:

Farzana and Shamshad with their one of their two groups of RVISS students. Photo by Elisa Sarchi.

There's now a two week break at the Haslingden Community Link centre. It closes for Easter and then Shamshad and Farzana will continue these classes, as well as begin a series of workshops with South Asian women. 

Calligraphy workshops start

The refurbishment work at the Boo is squeezing us all into smaller and smaller areas of the building, as the workmen spread into the other rooms and theatre spaces. It's impressive how fast they are working, but it's having a few repercussions on the Different Moons project. Jessica Royle stayed late on Friday to complete her animation work as the Animation Room gets taken over next week as a door needs to be cut into one of its walls. Jessica will complete the editing in the meeting room which, along with the office and the upstairs toilets, is the only room untouched by the building work!

But fortunately the work outside starts this week, and today Shamshad began the second year of workshops with new sessions at the Rossendale Valley Islamic Supplementary School at Haslingden Community Link. This season we're introducing calligraphy as a way of extending the poetry and mehndi work of last year. The calligraphy is being led by Farzana Patel (above).

The Pakistani House

I just had to add this comment and the accompanying image that appeared in Bryan Yorke's Blog (mentioned in my previous post):

"Saw your "My Memories of Haslingden's Early Asian Settler's" this morning and was thrilled to see the house on Lower Lane, which I remember well.  We lived in the row behind (the part of Hud Rake which you can see in your second picture of the house), so I often passed it.  The house became beautiful and exotic looking when they moved in. Yes I agree, around 1958-1959.  I did a sketch of it at the time, then this painting.  This was from when they first came to live here. Was your photo, where the house looks whitewashed, from before or after? Very interesting article." Heather Holden.

Our thanks to Heather and to Bryan Yorke for permission to copy this and Heather's fine painting.

More memories

photo courtesy Bryan Yorke

An interesting development for the Different Moons project has been discovering a blog in which local people are writing about their own memories of the first Asian people to visit and settle in Haslingden. I was pointed towards the Haslingden Old and New blogspot by the author, Bryan Yorke; the blog itself can be visited by clicking here.

Bryan remembers a small group of friendly Pakistani men appearing when he was a boy and asking about property in Lower Lane (above), close to Station Road off Blackburn Road. They had a scrap of paper with a number of addresses written on it, listing property that was for sale. Several Asian families have reminisced to me about the 'old days' and the friendly, mixed, community in the Station Road area where locals and the Asian community lived side by side and celebrated events together.

There are also reminiscences about Asian men settling in to property on Blackburn Road, and the first halal grocery opening in that area. One woman remembers 'Anna Mia', who clearly is Mr. Aslom Miah, and readers of this blog will know that Mr Miah has been one of the people we have interviewed and who has recently written his own book about his experience of moving from Bangladesh to Rossendale.