Mr Miah

The past couple of weeks have involved two separate visits to record the story of Mr Aslom Miah. Mr Miah was born in Bangladesh and has lived in Rawtenstall, in the same house, for 51 years.

Mr Miah has been writing a book about his life. How he arrived in England in 1963 speaking no English at all; how he found work in the local mills; then on the buses; between these  jobs he built up a chain of restaurants throughout the area. His story include how he quickly realised that he must learn English, and how with the help and support of friends and acquaintances, English-language classes were organised in Rawtenstall. Mr Miah went on to act as an interpreter for the Home Office, and the Crown Court. Now, still very active and alert, he wants to pass on his story to a younger generation. 

I visited Aslom Miah first with my colleagues Habiba Shenza (above), and later with Shamshad Khan. In total we made over 3 hours of recordings of Mr Miah talking about his life. Because of the work on the book recently, his memories are particularly fresh and vivid - and a wonderful gift to the Different Moons project. 

In fact I knew Aslom Miah in the 1980s, when Horse + Bamboo had a workshop in Foundry Street in Rawtenstall, which is just round the corner from the Miah family. His young children used to come to play in our workshop, and one of the delights of these recent interviews was meeting his daughters Aysha, and Amina, once again. It was lovely to hear their memories of those days - of our horses, making clay models, and the characters they met in the theatre workshop. 

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.

A second animated film

We've started on the second of the planned animated films. The story, once more, is taken from the recorded interview with Mr Mazhar Hussain; its a short section in which he talks about his sea journey from Pakistan to England.

Habiba Shenza is creating the animation, and she has already edited the sound recording into the two-minute section she wants to animate. Habiba is a mehndi artist, and is using henna forms as the inspiration for the visual style of the film. Today we created some short test sections to try different approaches to stop-frame animation. Tomorrow the serious animating starts!

Planning and training...

The Different Moons project is waiting to find out if we'll get a Heritage Lottery grant to support its development. This will mean an exhibition at The Whitaker in November this year, as well as the creation of an archive of interviews, artefacts and writings relating to the history of the South Asian communities in Rossendale - something which is currently lacking. The main work at the moment is planning and training, hopefully in readiness to move ahead later in the summer. 

In the meantime we've been helped that Habiba Shenza Rahman from Rising Bridge, who has taken a key part in our pilot projects, has been able to take a 5 week placement at Horse + Bamboo from her Education Degree in Leeds.  She is working on an animated film inspired by the recordings we made of Mr Mazhar Hussain during our pilot project, as well as taking part in the Puppet School we're running for two weeks during her placement period (above). Up to now Habiba has been helping and supporting Shamshad Khan on her creative writing work with the Islamic Supplementary School. Her local contacts have been helpful in making new contacts with people in the South Asian community, and in addition Habiba is also a talented mehndi (henna) artist.

One contact I made recently was very far from being a new one...Mr Lal Miah was our neighbour when Horse + Bamboo were based in Rawtenstall, and I often used to talk with him. His young daughter used to play in our workshop. We lost touch when the company moved to Waterfoot, so I was delighted to meet him again. Miah is from a Bengali background, and it's great that we can extend our pilot contacts who, so far, have been from a Pakistani background, Urdu and Pashto speakers. 

Another thing I discovered is that Lal Miah has just finished writing a book about his life - a labour of love which documents his years in England. He arrived more than 60 years ago speaking absolutely no English, and writes of the struggles of an immigrant making his way in a strange country. Miah's story will be a very different one from Mr Hussain's, who was an educated English-speaking student when he arrived, so the two tales will provide a fascinating contrast with one another...

Our first animated film!

Finally - we've managed to post a link to the first film to emerge from the Different Moons animation studio! I spent the morning with Habiba setting up a Different Moons YouTube Channel where we'll be posting our films as they are created.

Click on the link above to watch our animated film based around Mr Hussain's recollection of a story from his childhood in India...

(Or click here if your tablet doesn't use flash)

The Djinn Story

We've put together the first Different Moons short animated film - 'The Djinn Story' - which is a story told by Mr Mazhar Hussain during our recording of his memories and reminiscences. 

It's an important moment as it also happens to be the final stage of our pilot programme - which has been the trial run for how we hope that various important aspects the Different Moons project will unfold. 

We interviewed Mr Hussain and recorded well over 90 minutes of conversation with him in English and Urdu. These have been transcribed into 20-odd pages of A4, and eventually will form part of a local history archive for libraries, museums and other resources. 

Above and below are stills from the film, in which Mr Hussain remembers the stories that were told to him as a young boy by his grandmother in India (this was pre-Partition). This particular story is about a djinn (a genie) who first appears to his great-grandfather as a snake, but then re-appears as a boy who attends the local mosque to learn the Qur'an - and gets up to all sorts of mischief in the process.  

Eventually this, and the other animations that will emerge from the Different Moons project, will be made available for all to see on a special Different Moons YouTube Channel. 

Mehndi day...

Another busy week including Tuesday spent at the South Asian Arts Forum at MMU in Manchester, where I was reminded that 2014 will be the third Asia Triennial Manchester (ATM14), the only Asian Arts festival outside of Asia! So what better year to choose for our first year of Different Moons!

Then today was the final session for Habiba and Shamshad (top photo) at the Rossendale Valley Islamic Supplementary School. It was a session that focused on the young people each translating one of their moon poems into mehndi, henna-painting, and experimenting by painting onto a white circle in the form of a paper plate.

The older of todays' groups got together for a photograph. These sessions have been really encouraging for our project, despite each being only an hour in length.  Tomorrow we do a final check through our application to the Heritage Lottery Fund, and then the bid sails off into the ether, and we all wait...