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. 

Jess's new film

We're still continuing the work of making short animated films based on extracts from our interviews with the first generation of Pakistanis and Bangladeshis to arrive in Rossendale. Anyone visiting the Different Moons exhibition at the end of last year would have seen four such films. The latest is from Jess, our apprentice Jessica Royle. 

Jess is making an ambitious coloured stop-frame animation using part of the interview with Mrs Samina Hussain. In it Samina recalls her surprise at discovering how the local Asian women nearly all stayed in the home, with no social life or interaction outside of their immediate families. She goes on to describe how she set up the first Eid party for women and children, and subsequent women-only events.

Above is a photograph of the rostrum where Jess is filming. It shows her backdrop set to the animation, and the colour-coded tabs for animating the opening of doors in the terraced street. Below is a close-up of some of the cut-out characters she has made and is using in the film...

...below this is a photograph of the animation computer, and it shows the rostrum camera's view of the same image that we see in the top photograph. 

The animated film is made by gradually moving elements such as figures, or chimney smoke, or doors, and then running them together in sequence. It takes 12 such images to make one second of action in the film. Jess expects that her film will be about 4 minutes in length, and she's currently just over half-way through. A four minute film will require 2880 different images to complete it. 

Old world, new life

Early in the week I received a message asking if I would go and see Mr Miah. M. Aslom Miah was one of the first generation of immigrants to settle in Rossendale, and we interviewed him last year for the Different Moons Archive. I first met Aslom when I arrived in Rossendale as a 19-year old student in 1966, and he was working then as a bus conductor on the circular bus from Haslingden to Helmshore. A very dedicated, serious yet sociable man, he went on to own a chain of curry houses, and later - when Horse + Bamboo moved to Rawtenstall in the mid 1980s - it turned out that he was living with his young family just round the corner from us.

Still living in that same house, Mr Miah is now a senior member of the Bangladeshi community in Rawtenstall. He has recently returned from Bangladesh, to visit his family and the village he grew up in - Moishashee, in Sylhet. There he is a major giver and supporter of the High School, and he told me how poor the school is - 600 pupils with just 4 or 5 poorly paid teachers. Aslom is shy about discussing his generosity and support for the school, but he clearly despairs of the current situation. He has a passion to support local village children in their education. Talking about his own life he returns over and over again to the fact that he was the first boy in his village to have a secondary education and to the great advantages it gave him. He clearly wants as many other village children as possible to share his good fortune. 

Mr Miah has now published his book 'Old world, new life' which tells his story. It covers many of the things he told us in our series of interviews, and he has been helped by a friend, Bruce Simpson, to make it into very readable and interesting story. Despite being the story of a personal and unique journey, telling of his Sylheti village background and his decision to seek work in the UK, in many respects it stands as a tribute to many of his generation who made a similar journey and now have families in Lancashire and more widely in the UK.

2015

We're planning the next stage of Different Moons. Shamshad Khan (above) is devising a new series of workshops to take to local schools and other groups. Arry Nessa is finishing the transcriptions of our 2014 interviews with first generation immigrants from Bangladesh and Pakistan and then we'll begin a new round of interviews.

All of this is in preparation for publication of a book of poetry by participants in the project, and a CD of a selection of interviews. This will be completed at the end of 2015, and the final full archive will be placed in local libraries and regional archives. 

In the meantime we've placed a record of the 2014 project on the Horse + Bamboo website. If you want look go to:

http://www.horseandbamboo.org/different-moons-gallery/ 

...to see photos and read more about the workshop and interview programme, and 

http://www.horseandbamboo.org/different-moons-whitaker-exhibition/

...to find out more about the Different Moons exhibition at the Whitaker.

The exhibition has closed

The Different Moons exhibition at the Whitaker Museum & Art Gallery in Rawtenstall has now closed after its 8-week run, after being extended for two weeks longer than planned. 

It's been a very, very successful event; the Whitaker estimate that they had over 5000 people visit during these two months, and the Comments Book is full of glowing feedback from visitors. 

We're already planning the new programme of events, and our core team of artists and teachers are all on board for 2015. So many people have contributed to the success of the project that it's impossible to list everyone here - but we'll single out the Heritage Lottery Fund with a big 'thank you' for their encouragement during the planning of the project, and their faith and generosity in funding us and our work.