Asian Girls in Haslingden

It was a really good day today; we held a day long session at Haslingden Library with a group of girls and young women, creating animations based on a poem written last year by another group from the same library.

Led by Rehmat Gangreker and supported by Shamshad Khan, Arry Nessa and Elisa Sarchi, we watched some of the animations already made for Different Moons and then the girls decided which parts of the poem - A Bengali Girl in Haslingden - they would choose to animate. Lunch was provided for everyone in the early afternoon...

Anne Bullock and Leesa Amin from the Youth Service joined us for the session, and Habiba Shenza dropped by to join us for the lunch. It was great to see so many people enjoying the work being done by the girls. These workshops continue after a holiday break next weekend - with two further sessions before the film will be completed.

Elisa

The Different Moons workshop programme is moving forward - the first series of classes with the Rossendale Valley Islamic Supplementary School have been completed, but classes at St. Mary's Church of England Primary School in Rawtenstall, and with Asian Women at Haslingden Community Link have started this week. On Saturday a new girl's group will also start at Haslingden Library, learning to make animated films. 

Helping Shamshad and Arry with these classes is Elisa Sarchi (in the photo above), who is working with Horse + Bamboo for three months. Elisa is from Pavia, near Milan in northern Italy, and is part of a traineeship programme funded by Paviasviluppo, enabling trainees to work abroad in cultural and creative areas. She is particularly interested in seeing how the arts are used in developing initiatives in a community setting, as with our Different Moons project.