Tag Archives: East

East Stories…

On April 2nd we’re doing a couple of storytelling workshops for kids and we’ve been preparing them alongside our work on the East Archive. Big, big thanks to Rich Mix for giving us the space to work as part of their ongoing generous support for East. (As you probably know, East is our community storytelling project and it’s a partnership with Bishwo Shaitto Kendro, or BSK.)

As you’ll see, rehearsals have been very boring, sedate and serious affairs and we’ve not been having any fun at all!

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We’re just putting the finishing touches to the publicity material (mainly checking we have the right logos), though if you’re feeling impatient the key info is that they take place at The Brady Centre, Whitechapel on 2nd April (chose between morning and afternoon), they’re aimed at 6-9 year-olds and they’re free. And fun! You can book here.

Oh and we filmed a load more stuff for the archive. The whole thing will go public later next month…

East Archive: progress report

We’re now well into the process of recording our stories and songs from the East project for our online video archive. Today we had a look at all the videos we have so far. Bangla, Jewish and Somali songs, folk tales from Bangladesh and Korea, personal stories from the UK, Bangladesh and Sweden…With plenty more still to come. It’s extremely rewarding to see our work being documented and we’re looking forward to sharing it with the world.

One of the highlights of this process was a get-together a couple of weeks ago, where we shared food, stories and songs. Several pieces from that session will be in the archive. Here are some photos from the event taken by members of the group.

The East storytelling project is a co-production between Bishwo Shahitto Kendro (BSK) and Daedalus Theatre Company. It’s managed by Daedalus and funded by Arts Council England and crowdfunding, with in kind support from Rich Mix and Tower Hamlets Arts & Events.

Going Beyond East

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Left to right: Farah Naz, Shamim Azad, Paul Burgess and Sef Townend. Photo credit: Indigo

East‘s behind-the-scenes organisational team met at Rich Mix to plan the next stages of the project. What started as a simple, short-term community storytelling project (led by Daedalus and Bishwo Shahitto Kendro, and supported by Rich Mix, the Arts Council and Apples and Snakes) has grown. With further support from the Arts Council plus some crowd-funding, we’re now making an online archive of our stories (and some songs) and working out how to support our storytelling group’s desire to do something longer-term, while also dealing with several offshoots of the project, including our work on radical history (which will probably now be treated as a separate project) and possible work with local schools and community centres. Oh and the events we’re planning as an offshoot of A Season of Bangla Drama. They’ll be in April. Watch this space…

All of which explains why the meeting was about three and a half hours long. We got through a lot of tea, but were very restrained and shared just one piece of cake between us.

We’ve become a charity, and that means…

You know where this is going.

It’s taken ages. The Charity Commission. HMRC. Many, many forms to fill in. Lots of help from the awesome ITC. But we got there.

Now, probably, most people looking at this site are penniless artists. We don’t expect those people to give anything, of course (unless they really, really want to). But there may be people in a position to help. Why? We have to apply for funding for each project. It’s a lot of work and sometimes we’re successful, sometimes we’re not. Either way, project-by-project funding only goes so far. We don’t only want to exist when we’re doing a specific project. We’ve got the ongoing projects like the Radical Performance Reading Group and the East storytellers, and there’s all the research and development that needs to happen before we’re ready to start writing funding applications…

So if you can throw some pennies our way (or even throw some pennies our way on a monthly basis) here’s an attractive purple button to take you to our fund-raising page…

Thank you!

East social

Members of the East storytelling group got together for an informal gathering yesterday, to catch up on on news, share food, discuss our plans for the future and – inevitably – tell some stories. (To those members who couldn’t make it – you were missed and we look forward to seeing you next time!) We’re currently between formal projects and waiting for the results of a funding application, but thanks to BSK, our main partner for East, we could meet in a local community space to keep the momentum going. All being well we have a creative few months ahead, including making a video archive of the stories we’ve told so far. Fingers crossed for funding. More information to follow as it happens…

Oh and it’s never too late for new people to get involved! Drop us a line.

Here are some photos.

East on TV – again!

Various people involved in A Season of Bangla Drama were on ATN Bangla TV channel last night, to be interviewed about their shows. Sef and Paul were there to talk about East. And on Wednesday evening, Shamim and Paul will be on Betar Bangla radio. Massive thanks to the A Season of Bangla Drama team for giving us these opportunities.

For more info about East, including how to book tickets, please see our project page.

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Bangla Drama, shared

One of the great privileges of being part of A Season of Bangla Drama is meeting the other people involved. There’s an amazing community of performance-makers here in Tower Hamlets, and this festival really illustrates how Bangladeshi culture in the borough can become a catalyst for something truly diverse and cross-cultural. Our project is a perfect example: a collaboration between Daedalus and Bisho Shahitto Kendro.

Here are some photos (credit: Ziaur Rahman Saklen) of members of our East storytelling group with other participants at the SOBD sharing event last weekend.

You can see us perform at Queen Mary, University of London, on 7th November, 7:30pm. More details are here or you can just go ahead and book tickets online here.
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