Tag Archives: Tower Hamlets

Intro to Storytelling – BSL workshop

We’re really excited to be teaming up with Sign for All for this workshop led by two amazing storytellers. Here are the details:

Date: Sat 9 October

Time: 10.30am – 12 noon

Location: Online via Zoom

What is it? A fun introduction to storytelling, exploring how we tell stories physically, with words and using BSL. This session will be BSL interpreted & facilitated by professional storyteller Sef Townsend and Deepa Shastri who is a Deaf theatre access consultant, BSL performer and presenter.

How to book: Contact info@signforallcommunity.co.uk to book your place and get the Zoom link.

We need your help

We had to stop everything at the beginning of lockdown, including our fundraising. We applied for emergency funding but didn’t get it. We’re holding fire on our touring show Mobile Incitement. But, with so many people isolated by coronavirus and its knock-on effects, this is absolutely the right time for our storytelling project, East.

The whole East project is about bringing people together, creating links between different communities, and sharing stories and songs. It’s about friendship, sharing and multiculturalism, and the way songs and stories can help us deal with what the world throws at us. It’s not on a huge scale and may not sound grand – it certainly doesn’t seem to appeal much to major funders – but we believe it’s very valuable work. East London is home to an extraordinarily diverse range of people, but many folks don’t really know others outside their own communities, at least not socially. It’s also a place where wealth and poverty, privilege and marginalisation, and indeed tolerance and bigotry, sit side by side. And it’s a place facing many threats and challenges that would benefit from greater solidarity and co-operation. The need to build bridges, share experiences and learn from others is clear. We think that the exchange of stories and songs, and, more importantly, the learning and re-telling of each other’s stories and songs, is a richly rewarding way to address this need.

But, although lockdown is easing, our normal format – bringing people together around a table with food and singing and stories – is still a long way from being viable. So we’ve come up with a plan to move the project online. Some of it is straightforward, such as adding to our online archive so as to make more material available in the absence of live events, but some is more exploratory. We’re not exactly sure how best to reconfigure our gatherings but we have lots of ideas to try, and by the end of this project we’ll be able to take our work forward in new ways that will be valuable even when live events are possible again. “Resilience” is a word that is perhaps overused at the moment, but that’s exactly what this particular stage in the life of East is about.

We’ve launched a crowdfunding appeal to make all this happen. It only seems right for a project so embedded in our communities to be supported by our communities. Please take a look at our video and then click through to our crowdfunding page.

Our promo video for the new online East

If you can give, please do. But whether or not you donate, do please spread the word. It may sound like a cliche, but it really does make a difference!

https://www.crowdfunder.co.uk/eaststorytellingonline

Yesterday, Today, Tomorrow

We’re looking forward to a great event in Tower Hamlets. We were asked to provide some live musical support for A’ Team Arts 40th Anniversary – Yesterday, Today, Tomorrow. And it’s all happening tomorrow afternoon!

A’ Team Arts runs a range of Youth Arts programmes across Tower Hamlets, and we worked with them last year on the Silk River project. This year, as with Silk River, we’re getting our long-term collaborators The Black Smock Band involved. And, also as before, the project involves various sites across the borough.

This time, however, the focus is on estates, a nod to the early days of ‘A’ Team Arts. There’s dance, parkour, puppetry, physical theatre (created by a practitioner from Frantic Assembly) and music, and it’s held together by two themes; one is the described by the title Yesterday, Today, Tomorrow, and the other is the environmental crisis we face.

Come down and join us. We’ll be starting from Shandy Park at 2pm. There’s more info here: http://www.towerhamletsarts.org.uk/?cid=70475.

‪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!

East Storytelling at this year’s Boishakhi Mela

We’re excited to be part of this annual festival: it’s real flagship event in the East London calendar. The “East Three” –  Shamim, Sef and Paul, who’ve been leading our East storytelling project – will be sharing stories and songs in the Family and Arts Zone, doing three 25 min performances between 12 and 6:30.

There’s lots more information on the Mela here. Come along – it’s going to be a great day!

Here’s Shamim, Sef and Paul at another festival, a couple of years ago.

Mobile Incitement in Poplar – it’s tomorrow!

Yes, it’s tomorrow, May 6th at the lovely Poplar Union! For best results (and free entry) come to the tea party first, hang out with the team, and maybe create some new material for the show. But of course you can just come to the show too.

The E5 Roasthouse cafe, which is part of the venue, is great by the way. And naturally there’ll be time for a spot of luncheon between the workshop and the show.

“OK”, you say, “that all sounds lovely but, in this uncertain and ever-changing world, I need facts and detail.” Well, here you go:

More info and booking (no need to book for the tea party)

How to get to the venue (it’s easy)

Facebook event (because nothing is real unless it’s on Facebook, right?)

The E5 Roasthouse (great food and drink and supporting refugees)

Unsure about about what you’re letting yourself in for? Read about how we work with our audiences.

And if you have any more questions, you can of course just ask!