The Aawaz in Accrington

The Different Moons team is delighted that our friends at the Aawaz Project in Accrington, Hyndburn are beginning to host arts workshops (under the name Hum Arts Project) led by Shamshad Khan. The project is being supported by the Arts Council, Super Slow Way, and Horse + Bamboo, and partly inspired by our work in Haslingden. 

The group are planning to organise an exhibition of their work in the coming months. Shamshad has already led creative writing sessions, and Maryam Golubeva has run a number of paper-cutting workshops. We eventually hope that a group from the Hum Project will come and visit our Apna Centre in Haslingden.  

More information can be had from the Aawaz, 225 Blackburn Rd, Accrington BB5 0AL. Tel: 01254 398176. Website: www.aawaz.org.uk 

Getting ready - for the Apna 2016 and our book launch.

While we're waiting for the completion of the Apna refurbishment there's still much to do. On Friday we visited Maryam Golubeva to return some of her gold paper cuts that we're had since the Apna closed. Sad to see these go back home, but it's always a pleasure to visit Maryam's house in Lancaster and see her work (photos).

Meanwhile we're putting the final touches to the Different Moons book, which will soon be at the printers and which we'll be launching at Haslingden Library on Saturday March 12th. The cover features one of Maryam's paper-cuts:

This 100-page, hard-back book contains 58 poems and writings by women, young people and children from Haslingden. It's illustrated and also has an essay on the history and background of the local South Asian community, plus some short essays about the Different Moons project. Everyone who has been involved with Different Moons will receive a free copy at the book launch.  

An unexpected legacy

Yesterday was very special - all the more so because it was all unexpected. 

Arry Nessa, who originally came to the Different Moons project as a volunteer, is now an important member of our team. Last week Arry went with Maryam Golubeva, the paper-cut artist who has made such a contribution to the Different Moons exhibition, to an exhibition of calligraphy at Old Trafford in Manchester, to celebrate Omani National Day. Calligraphy has a lot in common with Maryam's paper-cutting, and in our exhibition we bring together the two things - in fact three, because we combine it with poetry.

At the Manchester exhibition Arry and Maryam met calligrapher Hst Al-Awaidi. Awaidi is from Muscat in Oman and is an aeronautical engineer, but he studied in Liverpool and established the Liverpool Arabic Calligraphy Association. He is a master calligrapher and Arry asked him to visit the Different Moons exhibition before he returns home to Oman, and yesterday Awaidi did just that. 

But what was unexpected was that Awaidi brought along the original of a recent piece of work. The photograph above hardly gives credit to the detail and subtlety of the calligraphy that took 4 months work. The text consists of verses from the Quran, and the whole, both in design and content, explores and describes Awaidi's inner struggles. 

After visiting the exhibition he offered to donate the piece and asked me where I would suggest it was placed - somewhere that people could see and enjoy it. I suggested the Whitaker itself as the obvious place, because both the Different Moons team and the museum have been wondering how we could leave a legacy after the exhibition, which has been so popular with the South Asian communities in Rossendale. 

Awaidi was very keen on the idea and within minutes signed over the piece to an initial 10 month loan to the Whitaker. It's now at the Whitaker, and we hope that it encourages visitors to visit even once the exhibition closes.

The Bazaar

After the Different Moons exhibition being open for best part of a week, we're preparing for the Bazaar on Saturday (22nd), again at the Whitaker in Rawtenstall. 

Look out for Asian crafts, and henna-painting, live music, bookstalls, saree stalls and Asian food. We'll also have, later in the day, live music from Chris Davies and Olivia Moore. There will be a free taxi/bus service from Haslingden Community Link to The Whitaker each hour on the half-hour.

It's been such a successful first week that you should meet the great team of people who have made it happen:

Above, from the left, is Shamshad Khan - the Project leader, Maryam Golubeva who is responsible for the wonderful paper-cuts and the Moon Book and who helped Shamshad on some of the many workshops she organised and lead in Haslingden; then there's Arry Nessa who came along initially as a volunteer but is now an indispensable member of the team organising the Different Moons Festival of activities.

Above there's another key member of the group - Habiba Shenza, the Project Support Artist, and she's standing next to her beautiful panel made up of mehndi, or henna, images. Habiba has also been great link with the community in Haslingden. I'm on her left - Bob Frith, the Artistic Director of the project.

Finally here's Phil Milston who has been responsible for making the Fountain, and supporting me in the technical work that's central to the project. Of course we're the most visible part of the team, but there's a whole group - mainly at Horse + Bamboo - who  are supporting us too, as well as the team at the Whitaker offering us their help for the exhibition. 

The Moon and Glass Bangle

I've been extremely impressed by the process of preparing to include a poem in a paper-cut  art work being created by Maryam Golubeva for the Different Moons exhibition. 

We've taken part of a poem written by Samina Raffat Hussain. Six couplets from a poem called 'Moon and Glass Bangle'. As Shamshad Khan describes it "it is about how a woman is not like the moon but is able to be held/grasped, strong and delicate like glass bangles". 

Samina is a local woman, a broadcaster and writer, and she is one of the people we have interviewed and recorded for the Different Moons archive. Maryam only requires a short piece for her paper cut, hence the decision to select just a small part of a longer poem. 

The selected section was then translated into Urdu by Shakil Salam. One of his versions is shown above. To me it looks very beautiful. This script lends itself to paper-cutting, like Arabic, and far more than English would do. 

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:

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. 

Islamic Geometric Design

Habiba and I spent the day at Northlight Studio in Hebden Bridge taking part in the Islamic Geometric Design workshop led by Eric Broug. Eric is the author of a Thames & Hudson book with the same title as our workshop session, and it was an excellent introduction to the subject. Enjoyable and informative, Eric gave us an overview, and then followed up with practical sessions is which we all created several versions of Islamic designs. 

Although our individual designs were exciting and sometimes slightly challenging to create, using simple tools like rulers and compasses, perhaps the most fascinating feature of the workshop was to see how the individual designs were transformed when 'tessellated', or placed together in tiled combinations, revealing new shapes and forms in the larger design. 

One of the other people on the workshop was Maryam Golubeva, a UK based Moscow born and raised artist with Turkish ancestry. Maryam works in the medium of papercutting and has a particular passion for Islamic art. Seeing photographs of her paper cuts made me feel that this may be the way to introduce some of the design work we're beginning to see emerge in our Different Moons project.