Towards Tomorrow, a play by Peshkar Theatre
followed by
Oldham Teahouse Discussion -
Journeys and Fiction: Ways of exploring diaspora experience
With Tajinder Singh Hayer, in partnership with Peshkar Theatre
Coldhurst Community Centre
Rochdale Rd
Oldham
OL1 2HR
The Oldham Teahouse was set up in partnership with Peshkar Theatre and was held in continuation of a performance of Towards Tomorrow, a play based on stories told by first generation migrants from Asia.
The discussion looked at artistic ways of exploring the experience of diaspora, leaving a country and belonging. The actors and writers of the play explained the creative process of writing a fictional play about Asian people coming to live in the UK in the 1970ies based on stories of immigrants. They interviewed a number of people, often family members or family friends, and recorded these interviews. They then came together once a week to listen to the recordings and collaboratively write the play, using improvisation as one of the methods for collective writing. They’ve also archived all the recordings and are hoping to expand this archive in the future.
During this process, they paid attention to creating a good play based on dramatic methods and connecting their artistic ambitions to the stories they had been told without exploiting them.
The discussion evolved around the experience of interviewing and the process of collaborative writing.
Even though the interviews and play were about Asian people coming to live the UK, a lot of experiences and stories have strong similarities with stories from migrants from other than Asian countries to other countries than the UK.
Stockport Art Gallery, 12 July 2008
Is 'Britishness' getting stronger or weaker? What do idealised portrayals of Britishness in fiction, and the establishment of multicultural communities in Britain, mean for Britishness now?
This teahouse took place in the context of the exhibition, Life on Mars, at Stockport Art Gallery. The exhibition looks at the way that Sam, the 2006 television series’ protagonist, ‘experiences a total culture-shock as he grapples with his new reality – a different time and a different place where the values that define who he is are continually challenged’. With this in mind, and with the help of guest speaker Louis Kushnick of The University of Manchester’s Ahmed Iqbal Ullah Race Relations Resourse Centre.
Lou offered a contextualisation of ‘Britishness’ through historical and personal reference. He introduced himself and the Ahmed Iqubal Ullah Race Relations Resource Centre by describing how he came to live in Manchester from America in 1963, and telling us why he now considers himself as British rather than American. Lou explained how, shortly after he had moved to Britain in 1967, a document was produced by the British government which argued that Britain did not have institutional racism. It reasoning included: that we had not had slavery in Britain itself; that there were insufficient black people in Britain for institutional racism to be possible; and that ‘the British’ are law-abiding people. Clearly, there was good reason to doubt these claims and Lou offered the example that there were specific barriers of access to council properties for black people.
Chairperson Kooj Chuhan asked, “So, what myths about Britain were in progress at the time?” Lou referred to Enoch Powell’s Rivers of Blood speech, to which Lou was the first to publicly respond. What this amounted to, Lou suggested, was race-based identity politics. Enoch Powell’s speech referred to ‘them’ and ‘us’, but considered their attitude liberal because they offered to support people who didn’t like national policy by saying that if they wanted to go ‘home’ they would give them money from social security to go. However, as Lou pointed out, people had been invited to Britain following the Second World War when the price of labour had been pushed up for a number of economic factors (including the loss of men in battle).
The subsequent economic situation, where two groups offering labour existed side by side looking for the same jobs, meant that one group could be played off against the other. A similar ‘divide and rule’ methodology was played out outside of Britain. Ex-slaves, now reliant on the land of the plantations to make a living, became the ‘other’ to the existing white labour population. Having said that black people were suitable for enslavement, the implied message was that the poor white working class could define themselves as ‘better than that’, believing themselves to be superior to at least one other social group. It was no coincidence that as the price of cotton fell (placing heightened economic burden on the white labour force) the number of lynches went up. So it could be said that external forces had come into play in the forming of identities.
Kooj asked, “When was this idea of ‘race’ concretised/institutionalised?” Kooj raised the idea that during the 19th century, the British Raj sent out the message of two kinds of Britishness: one for white people and one for slaves.
A member of the public attending the discussion asked, “But what does this have to do with Britishness?” Lou responded that if Gordon Brown says that we should be proud to be British today then we should first address our history of being British.
Lou went on to talk about the notion of Christianity and Britishness, referring back to a point he’d made earlier that it was illegal for a slave to raise their hand to ‘any Christian, white person’. Olaudah Equiano (also know as Gustavus Vassa and the most prominent person of African heritage involved in the British debate for the abolition of the slave trade) asked of slavery, “How can we believe that god would let one race of people have power over another?” The only way that white Christian people could respond to this was to say that black people were not human, and therefore that what applied to them did not apply to black people.
The speaker from the audience asked, again, “But what does it mean to be British today? Is it our shared language, for example? What about people that speak English in America or Pakistan? What about people who live in the UK but do not speak English? Does it matter when we are all part of humanity?” Perhaps, it was suggested, there are a number of different versions of Britishness. Perhaps the definition of Britishness is that it is a concept containing many interpretations.
We went on to discuss, “Is it even important to have a concept of Britishness and who has the right to define what Britishness is?” The point was raised that one person cannot speak for a group of people, even if they feel they are representative of ‘their’ group. This further strengthened the argument that Britishness can perhaps only be defined on an individual or personal basis.
Wigan Teahouse Discussion, 1 July 2008. Rafiki Youth Group and Amnesty International
Wigan Teahouse Discussion, Tuesday 1 July 2008
The Wigan Teahouse Discussion was an event for a group of young people from Rafiki. Rafiki are a group of young people who have come with their parents from different countries to live in the UK. Nine young men aged 13 to 16 and four volunteers attended the session.
The guest speakers for this event were three representatives from Amnesty International Wigan. The discussion was around the theme of ‘Children in Conflict’. This is the title of an exhibition recently on show at the Drumcroon Gallery in Wigan. A group of young people from Rafiki had gone to see the show. The event also aimed to introduce the work of Amnesty International and the Human Rights to the young people.
The three people from Amnesty International set the young people two tasks. The first one was an introduction to the Human Rights. The young people worked in small groups, identifying people in a drawing who were either doing something that was a positive expression of one of the Human Rights, or others who where constricted in exerting a human right. The second task was a role-play exercise in conflict management.
The young men got particularly involved in the role-play discussion. Each small group reported the arguments each of the opponent sides had come up with to defend their point of view, and they also explained the interventions made by the mediator and the solution of the conflict they had come up with.
The young people then asked the Amnesty representatives questions about Amnesty International. They discussed examples of AI activities in China and Burma.
Mehmood, the youth worker who runs Rafiki, said that they would have a follow up session to further discuss human rights.
Most of the young people had never had green tea before, but they were all up to giving it a try. We’d very much like to hear what the young people thought of the discussion. Please contribute to the blog!
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