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).

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: