Man or Rabbit?

When I met with Jerry Smith and Sally Martin to discuss a funding application we're making for Different Moons, Sally reminded me that when she grew up in Sri Lanka, it was a Rabbit or Hare in the Moon that children saw, rather than a Man in the Moon, as is common in Europe. Sally immediately identified this as the reason for the name of our project - i.e. Different Moons. 

Actually I had several inspirations for that name, and the Rabbit/Man in the Moon is only one. I'm not sure how widespread this difference is. Sally felt it was to do with seeing the moon from a different angle but, again, I'm not completely sure if that is the case. Either way it's a fascinating phenomena, and a quick look at Wikipedia tells me that the Hare in the Moon is also a pagan idea, as hares are believed to gaze at the moon in Spring (presumably between their bouts of boxing and other crazy behaviour). The other well-known story is a Buddhist story of a selfless hare as a previous incarnation of the Buddha - you can find it here. 

As nearly all of the south Asian heritage population locally are Muslims, not Buddhists, I'm not certain exactly who or what they see when they look up in our sky and, on the rare occasion the clouds have parted, see the Moon. I must find out...

moon room, fountain room

We're beginning the serious business of fundraising for Different Moons. There's now a programme of 80 workshops being planned with local organisations and groups, and involving both local and national artists working with all ages across the Asian heritage community in Rossendale. 

These workshops will focus on people's stories - stories of families, memories of Asia, and of the first generation who arrived in England. The poet Shamshad Khan will lead these workshops over a period of two years starting in April 2014. The first phase of Different Moons will culminate in a celebration of the south Asian community with an exhibition at the Whitaker, in Rawtenstall, plus a special festival of events. 

The exhibition will take place in the upstairs galleries, featuring a Moon Room and a Fountain Room. The second phase will be the creation of a book, website and CD of the collected stories, and many will be made into films and animations. This will be the focus of our work in 2015 and into 2016.

A Way of Life

In between working on other Horse + Bamboo projects I'm continuing the research and planning for Different Moons. Local historian John Simpson suggested I look for a a booklet published in 1981 called 'A Way of Life: The Muslim Community in Hyndburn and Rossendale', written by Jackie Smallridge.

Copies in Rawtenstall and Haslingden Libraries seem to have gone missing, but I finally tracked a copy down in Accrington Library - where John Simpson works. The booklet, typed and cheaply produced, turned out to be not so much a history as a source of information for outsiders about the local south Asian community, including the languages, traditions, etiquette and other customs. It inevitably contained a lot of information about Islam which I found valuable and sympathetic. All in all a useful guide, if now slightly out of date.

A Festival!

Planning for Different Moons has now started in earnest after meeting with Shamshad Khan (above) and confirmation from the Whitaker (below) that they would be delighted to host an exhibition starting in October 2014. 

With a substantial programme of community workshops in the run up to the exhibition and with a good number of related events taking place during the exhibition, we've decided that  it makes sense to think of the whole thing as a Festival. The Different Moons Festival!

So my research into the history of the community continues. Shamshad and I will soon be meeting with interested individuals and groups, planning workshops and other creative activities; finally the inevitable budgeting has begun with the intention of making funding applications to support the programme. 

A year away...

Haslingden, late 1950s, photograph courtesy of RM Nostalgic Railways. The period when the first of the immigrants from Pakistan and Bangladesh were beginning to arrive in Rossendale to work in the cotton textile mills that were short of a labour force, especially for the unpopular shifts - usually the night-work. 

If you were trying to find this scene today you would be stuck. The station was closed in 1964, the railway disappeared and its route is now the A56 Haslingden By-Pass, opened in the early 1980s. The chimneys have been demolished too.

We also have agreed with the Whitaker (Rossendale's Museum & Art Gallery) to work towards an exhibition in exactly a year's time celebrating the history of the South Asian Community in Rossendale. We've also started planning the next stage of Different Moons, and soon expect to begin working on new projects within Haslingden.   

Attock

I had a meeting at the home of Muzammil Quraishi and Yasmine Choudry on Sunday and, along with the reading I've been doing over the past few weeks, I now have a far clearer idea how to develop this project. Muz and Yasmine gave me a very succinct over-view of the history of the Islamic community in Rossendale. Muz has studied and written about this and I'm very grateful for him loaning me his book which deals, alongside much else, with this history. 

Many of the immigrants to the Haslingden area were from the Chach region north of the modern day town of Attock in the Punjab, Northern Pakistan. Campbellpore (at the bottom of the map) is the old Raj colonial name for Attock. It's north-west of Islamabad. 

Another area from which people emigrated to Rossendale was around the city of Mirpur, in Kashmir, south-east of Islamabad. Here, development of dam projects drove many agricultural workers from their lands just as there was a demand for labour (especially for the dirty, night-shift work) in the textile mills of Lancashire and Yorkshire, and in the early 1970s these things coincided to direct male emigrants from this area to places like Haslingden. 
(Map copyright YASIR Amin Hazrovi)

The Islamic Supplementary School

A few weeks ago I was invited to a meeting of the Islamic Supplementary School in Haslingden, and was impressed by the families and their children who had created this group in a short space of time to enhance their learning and teachings from the Koran. I was made very welcome, and talked with some of the leaders at the school about 'Different Moons' and how we could use their knowledge in helping put together an exhibition about the history of the south Asian community in Haslingden and the Rossendale Valley. 

Another useful link came through talking with Professor John Hyatt who lives in Haslingden and is the Director of MIRIAD, the Manchester Institute for Research and Innovation in Art and Design. John was once a Trustee at Horse + Bamboo, and I often bump into him at art events locally. I know he, and MIRIAD, have strong links with Asian artists, and I asked him about textile artists who might be able to feed into Different Moons in the way that the poet Shamshad Khan has with her writing. John put me in touch with Alnoor Mitha who told me that in 2014 the Asia Triennial will be taking place in Manchester and the region. One of the artists involved will be Nadim Chaudry, from Nottingham and with Punjabi roots, whose stunning work can be seen on his website at http://kashifnadimchaudry.com/portfolio/ . I'm looking into whether we can in any way involve Nadim with Different Moons.