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...

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...

Memories and Mehndi

Esther and I met up with Shamshad Khan last week to discuss how we will carry out the next phase of Different Moons. We agreed to continue developing the project together, with Shamshad leading on working with local Asian heritage groups to uncover individual stories, particularly from the period of emigrations to Lancashire, of memories of the journey from the homeland and of first impressions of Rossendale.  We felt it would be useful if she could accompany me to meetings with some of these groups - the existing youth groups, the Islamic Supplementary School, and the women/s sewing group, for example.

One of the young artists - Habiba Shenza - who I met during phase one of the project came to the Boo this weekend, and provided Mehndi, henna painting, for our visitors (see above). The whole period the building was packed with visitors, and Habiba, who came along with her sisters and cousin, was busy for the whole afternoon.