Tag Archives: Tower Hamlets

The East Archive has arrived!

 

East-Archive-logo-idea

It’s here. We had a lovely launch event at Rich Mix last night (photos to follow) and the East Archive, featuring videos of stories and songs from our East storytelling project, is now live. You can find it at www.eastarchive.com.

It’s all very new, so please let us know if you spot any teething problems.

It’s an ongoing project too, so if you have any stories that are linked to East London, and you’re interested in sharing them, drop us a line.

We’re pretty excited about it all! Big thanks to the Arts Council, Rich Mix, Tower Hamlets, Apples and Snakes, and our generous crowd-funders. And congratulations to all our contributors!

east-archive-screengrab-comp

 

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.

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.

554551_304312803104896_9176797213168259184_n

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.
1523390_10204833847514088_3814319090497416036_o 1534914_10204833855994300_7671905429760944957_o 1941531_10204833856314308_8565538904450567928_o 1965626_10204833868514613_7421248538473462557_o

East on TV

Sdaed-topic-logo-easthamim Azad, the poet and storyteller who is one of the professional artists supporting our East storytelling project, will be talking about East‘s participation in the Tower Hamlets Season Of Bangla Drama, along with representatives from other participating groups. It’ll be on Channel One Europe at 7.30pm this evening. Tune in!

And here’s a blog post about SBD from Queen Mary, University of London, which will be the venue for East.