A third week

After a week on holiday I went to catch up with Arry Nessa and find out how the Apna programme has been running. The space looked as lovely as ever - laid out in readiness for a Calligraphy workshop this afternoon to be run by Farzana Patel. 

Arry told me that the third week of the Apna programme has continued to be very busy indeed. The Apna Walks programme was understandably weather-dependent, but the sun brought out  a large group of Asian women anxious to walk together and explore the area. Wednesdays Life Skills session had been a big success, and the henna sessions with Habiba Shenza continue to be popular.  Clearly, local interest in the Apna project is still growing, and we've even been able to let a few groups of women use the space to hold their own meetings. 

One of the few worries has been the lack of running water and toilet facilities, but our very helpful landlord, Dr Lal, visited today and met with the Khans, who rent next door's shop (what was the rest of  the Old Natwest Bank!). It looks as if we'll be given a key and so access when necessary to their facilities. 

Calligraphy - and a Pop-Up

Farzana Patel followed up her calligraphy sessions with young people at the Islamic School with two sessions with the Different Moons Women's Group at Haslingden Community Link. The final session was last week, and now all of the Different Moons workshops are over, with the exception of 4 additional sessions being held with Year 6 at St Mary's C of E School in Rawtenstall. 

All of the Women's Sessions have been very popular, and we're now considering a new initiative as part of the Different Moons project - looking for a 'pop-up' base in Haslingden which can be used by groups like these to hold their own meetings and workshop and other training. One of the common complaints from South Asian women in Haslingden is the lack of available spaces where they can easily meet, talk, and learn. There's Community Link, of course, which is very popular, and the local library, but neither are quite right for small informal sessions, and so most of this type of meeting are currently held in the ladies' front rooms. For a variety of reasons this often inconvenient and restrictive, so we are looking at a pilot project for a new communal space, focusing on the needs of the South Asian women, but not excluding the wider community or, possibly, male participants. 

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).