Tag Archives: Tower Hamlets

Callout: East Music – a new project

Musicians! You’re invited to East Music: Song and Tune Exchange Session at Poplar Union on Saturday 23rd March, 4PM-6.30PM

Bring your instruments and voices along with songs or tunes from across the world to play, sing and share.

This is a free, friendly and inclusive session for players of all levels of experience – Global Majority* and LGBTQ+ music makers are particularly welcome. The session will be led by East musicians Andy Bannister, Michele Chowrimootoo and Paul Burgess.

This is a new strand of our East Storytelling project, and we hope to extend it to further sessions. All being well, there’ll also be an opportunity to share the results with a live audience later in the year.

Daedalus Theatre announce new partnership with Havering Changing

Date: 16 January 2024

Daedalus Theatre Company has been awarded Creative Community Support by Rainham Change Makers, the local Havering Changing steering group in Rainham, to deliver creative nature workshops in Rainham and Wennington this Spring 2024.

The creative nature workshops are for local adults in Rainham and Wennington with an interest in nature and a curiosity for visual arts. Together, we will work on a collective response to probing questions about nature and local green spaces that will be showcased as a mobile installation. The project will also experiment with sustainable materials and look at ecological ways of thinking. Work with the group, along with the Queens Theatre Hornchurch young company programme, will feed into our next iteration of the DYSBIOSIS project. 

The new work-in-progress project DYSBIOSIS began with an R&D at Queens Theatre Hornchurch in April 2023. Supported by Arts Council England, we delivered an R&D at Queens Theatre Hornchurch in Autumn with a group of exciting creative practitioners such as Zia Álmos Joshua and Havering local Kathryn Webb. The project seeks to explore our relationship with nature in the global north through a queer lens. 

Ten Years East: a huge thank you!

Massive thanks to our wonderfully supportive audience, to Ruksana Begum and all at A Season at Bangla Drama, to Jack Birch, John Anthony and the rest of the Rich Mix Team, to Maeve O’Neill at Rua Arts, to our sponsors and funders, and of course to all our incredible artists.

The show was filmed by Marble Sinew and photographed by A Season of Bangla Drama regular Rehan Jamil. But first, let us share the wonderful reel made by Nabeela Zaman:

Next, the official pics from Rehan:

Here’s the video of the show, filmed and edited by Marble Sinew:

Finally, some photos by Jonathan Chan and Kanatip Soonthornrak, and a picture, again by Rehan, of Shamim and Paul being presented with an award for being part of the 20th year of A Season of Bangla Drama.

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.

Daedalus October Newsletter

Dear friends,

Welcome to our October newsletter.

Ten Years East – tickets now on sale!

Join us for a relaxed evening of compelling stories and unforgettable songs from across the diverse cultures of East London.

Ten Years East is a celebration of love as a language that crosses borders and breaks boundaries, that remembers lost homelands and dreams of new frontiers. After a decade of performances, workshops and gatherings, the East storytelling project now presents an exciting lineup of musicians and storytellers in this family-friendly event.

With material spanning the globe to reflect the rich cultures of our East End, from English folklore to Bengali tales and Jewish songs, you are warmly welcomed to celebrate Ten Years East.

Ten Years East at the SBD Sharing Day

Part of this year’s A Season of Bangla Drama, Ten Years East celebrates a decade of our East storytelling project, with an evening of stories and songs. We have lots more to tell you about it over the next few weeks, but first we want to share a clip from the Season of Bangla Drama sharing day.

One of the great things about this festival is that all the companies involved get together for a day a month or so before the opening night to meet each other and learn about each other’s projects. It’s always a lovely event, and is part of what makes A Season of Bangla Drama such a fundamental part of our local arts community here in East London, and indeed the wider Bangla arts community in the UK. The photo above, by the ever-brilliant Rehan Jamil, is the official group photo.

This year, each company’s intro to the rest of the group was filmed by Seema Khalique and edited into a 30-second mini-film by Marble Sinew. Here’s ours:

If you’d like to come and see the show, it’s at 5:30pm on 19th November at Rich Mix in Bethnal Green. You can find out more and book your tickets here:

Artist Spotlight: Tasnim Siddiqa Amin

Tell us about yourself and your creative practice.

I’m Tasnim, a queer Bangladeshi-British woman from East London and I am a visual artist, theatremaker and writer. I am Assistant Producer/Director for Daedalus Theatre Company. 

What does queer ecology mean to you?

I don’t do very well with long words haha but after spending a week unpacking and consistent Googling I would say queer ecology describes a critical, intersectional and decentralised approach in the way we look at how people, plants, animals and smaller organisms interact with their environment, both locally and globally.

What did you discover about yourself and the way you work during the Dysbiosis R&D week?

I discovered that I really thrive in pressured creative environments bouncing ideas of creatives from different disciplines. It dawned on me that to pursue a project you don’t need to have it all figured out, having an idea is good enough. I never knew I could work with venues this way, the way Paul was doing, to say hey I have an idea and I want to bring along a bunch of people that I’ve never met from different creative disciplines in a rehearsal room at your theatre and see what happens. 

In case you missed it, our latest newsletter…

Welcome to this quick roundup of news from Daedalus Theatre Company.

If you’ve been stuck in London these past few weeks, there’s not been much of a summer. But with September around the corner, we’ve been busy brewing some exciting projects and plans.

Ten Years East at A Season of Bangla Drama – save the date!

We’re really thrilled to announce that East Storytelling Project has been selected for this year’s A Season of Bangla Drama, with an evening of stories and songs from across the diverse cultures of East London. In line with the festival’s theme for 2023, we’ll be exploring love in its many forms. It’s also ten years since we started East, so we have a line-up of tellers and singers from across the decade. We’ll also be performing at the venue where it all began: Rich Mix in Bethnal Green.

Here’s a summary of the festival programme and for now, please save the date! Our show, Ten Years East, is on the evening of 19th November.

Artist Spotlight: Kathryn Webb