Tag Archives: Shamim Azad

Announcing the lineup for Ten Years East!

Paul Burgess, Andy Bannister and Michele Chowrimootoo. Image credit: Tasnim Siddiqa Amin

As part of A Season of Bangla Drama, Sunday 19th November 2023, 5:30PM we return to the iconic East London venue Rich Mix, where the East storytelling started in December 2013.

We have an exciting evening of stories and live music for you, and are thrilled to announce the incredible talent that will be taking the stage this Sunday. Farah Naz makes a return to EAST with the story of ‘The Queen of Sheba and Solomon’, we will hear the tale of ‘Rochael the Gossip’ from John Heyderman, Andy Bannister of The Black Smock Band singing ‘The Water is Wide’ and a reimagining of ‘The Sultana’s Dream’ from EAST newcomer Tasnim Siddiqa Amin. We’re also joined by musician and singer Hasan Ahmed and percussionist Michele Chowrimootoo.

Daedalus November Newsletter

Dear friends,

Welcome to our November newsletter.

Image credit: montage by Paul Burgess using photos by Simon Daw and Rehan Jamil

Ten Years East

With A Season of Bangla Drama nearing its halfway point, and our next show, Ten Years East, just over a week away, we’d like to tell you more about the exciting line-up we have brought together for you.

Farah Naz is a poet and Deputy Director of The British Bilingual Poetry Collective. She was part of the original East group, and some of her stories can be seen on our East Archive, as can John Heyderman’s remarkable story of his father’s escape from Nazi Germany: Two Gold Rings. John will be sharing a Jewish story, and Farah will tell a tale from the Muslim tradition.

Our two lead storytellers, both of whom have been at the heart of the East project since the start, will also be performing. Shamim Azad is a highly celebrated writer, poet and storyteller here in East London and in Bangladesh, while Sef Townsend, an internationally acclaimed storyteller, has told stories around the world, from refugee camps to festivals. They will be joined by Tasnim Siddiqa Amin, Daedalus’s assistant director and producer. Tasnim is a theatremaker, critic and artist, and has a script-reading of one of her own plays later today as part of the festival programme: Knotted.

Associate Artist update: Shamim Azad and A Drop of Hope

One of our associate artists, and a lead artist in the East storytelling project, is Shamim Azad. Shamim is an amazing creative force; a bilingual author and poet, and a key figure in UK-Bengali literary culture. A new poem by her is currently on display outside the Francis Crick Institute in London as part of A Drop of Hope. This is a project made in collaboration with Poet in the City, in which twelve poets were invited to write poems that reflect on the vaccination programme and the pandemic, partly in response to the words of people vaccinated at the institute, the volunteers working there and the surrounding communities.

You can find out more here: https://www.crick.ac.uk/whats-on/exhibitions/a-drop-of-hope

East Voices: a preview

Thanks to our generous crowdfunders, we’ve made some great plans for East Voices, the next stage of our ongoing East storytelling project. We’re particularly excited to be partnering with BSK London and Numbi Arts to bring storytelling and story-sharing to an even wider range of people. The big idea behind East Voices is to test and then make available ways of working online, something we’ve never done with East outside of documenting our work on the East Archive. This approach allows us to continue doing our work of using stories to connect people and build bridges between communities, even as the pandemic drags on. That will all get underway soon. Watch this space!

Congratulations Shamim!

Shamim Azad, one of the lead artists in our East storytelling project and a long-term Daedalus collaborator, has been recognised for her work with the local community during Covid, and we’re feeling very proud indeed! Here’s how The National Lottery describes the project:

The exhibition – titled, The National Lottery’s 2020 Portraits of the People – honours 13 of these artistic champions for making a significant difference to lifting people’s spirits this year, using some of the £30m raised by National Lottery players every week for good causes. The digital exhibition can be visited on the websites and social media of: The National Portrait Gallery, London, The National Museum of Wales, Cardiff, The MAC in Belfast, IKON Gallery in Birmingham, Summerhall in Edinburgh, TÅ· Pawb, Wrexham, Ruthin Craft Centre in Ruthin, Wales, The Photographers’ Gallery in London and the British Film Institute (BFI), and the portraits will also be on display at BFI Southbank in London.

Click here or on the screengrab below for the full portrait and article on the National Lottery blog:

Big congratulations, Shamim, from all your Daedalus colleagues!

In the same room!

A couple of weeks ago, Sef, Shamim and Paul had their first planning session and rehearsal since the Spring lockdown. It was great to get started on the work we’ll be doing as a result of our crowdfunding campaign. It was great too be in the same room for the first time in many months…So we’d like, once again, to take this opportunity to thank our donors: thank you!

Once the project is fully underway we’ll be working online. Any further social distancing or lockdown measures won’t then be a problem. In fact, that’s the whole point of this project! But… the second lockdown has kind of caught us before we were quite ready for that. We are persevering, nonetheless, and hope to to share the first story with you soon.

There’s a lot more to look forward to. We’re very excited to be working with theatre-maker and BSL intepreter Laura Goulden. Poet Stephen Watts popped in to discuss a possible collaboration. And we’ll be putting out a call for community members to join us and be coached online in storytelling. So do please watch this space!

‪Tomorrow is Boishakhi Mela 2019! ‬

East 3 (Shamim Azad, Sef Townsend, Paul Burgess) will be sharing stories and songs in the Family Zone as part of our East Storytelling project with BSK. 1pm, 4pm and 5:30pm. Plus there’s so much else happening, of course! Its a huge event, and we know it’s going be a great day!

More info here: www.towerhamlets.gov.uk/mela

Hope to see you there! Weavers Fields in Bethnal Green.

The East 3 return…

Our collaboration with Bangladeshi literature group Bishwo Shahitto Kendro continues. The leaders of our East Storytelling Project will be performing as East 3 at this year’s Boishaki Mela in Weavers Fields, Bethnal Green on Sunday 30 June, and Great Day Out in Victoria Park on 3rd August – details to come.

East 3 are internationally renowned storytellers Shamim Azad and Sef Townsend, supported by musician and theatre-maker Paul Burgess, pictured below at last year’s Mela.

In other news, with several London venues and a Latitude Festival performance behind us, we’re now tour-booking for our gig-theatre/art/protest piece Gerrard Winstanley’s True and Rightous Mobile Incitement Unit. (You can call it Mobile Incitement for short, by the way.) We’re mainly looking 2020 but dates later this year are possible too. Get in touch if you want us!