The Southall Story: a cultural history of Britain's 'Little India' since 1979

这个项目是由埃克塞特大学戏剧系、罗汉普顿大学舞蹈系和“Southall Story”组织的创始成员合作完成的。它的目的是研究、记录和传播1979年以来索索尔的文化史。这一天意义重大，因为正是在这一年，索索尔的一系列社区聚集在一起，抵制威胁该镇的种族主义和暴力。随之而来的起义导致了学校教师布莱尔·佩奇的死亡，为了应对这些事件，创建了一系列社会、政治和文化组织和节日，以将社区团结在一起，进行抵抗和庆祝。成立了Southall监测小组、Southall黑人姐妹会和Southall青年运动，与此同时，来自不同社区和背景的艺术家聚集在一起，创造了新的表演艺术形式，导致了创新的表演和艺术表现形式。艺术与社会政治背景之间的这种联系在该镇后来的文化史上非常重要，它对英国乃至更广泛的文化生活做出了贡献。索索尔经常被视为散居海外的社区的典范，在英国境内的移民研究中发挥了极其重要的作用。这个项目旨在通过审视艺术形式来为这个小镇提供一个独特的视角，考察它们相互影响的方式，这是亚洲表演美学的一个关键因素。此外，还将研究表演形式与其从政治和社会事件中出现的关系。通过采访和收集材料，将创造该镇重要的口头和文化历史，这将有益于当地社区，并有助于研究学术界内的侨民和移民。研究小组的学者和实践者的混合将确保广泛的研究和产出形式，这些成果的传播形式将有广泛的受众，包括一次公开研讨会和展览，以及一本合著的书、三篇会议论文、一个网站和一个数字档案馆，导致将向公众提供历史记录。

This project is a collaboration between the Department of Drama at the University of Exeter, the Department of Dance Studies at Roehampton University, and the founding members of 'The Southall Story' organisation. It aims to research, document and disseminate the cultural history of Southall since 1979. This date is significant, as it was in this year that the range of communities within Southall came together to resist racism and violence which were threatening the town. The resultant uprisings led to the death of school-teacher Blair Peach, and in response to these events, a range of social, political and cultural organisations and festivals were created to unite the communities together in resistance and celebration. The Southall Monitoring Group, the Southall Black Sisters, and the Southall Youth Movement were founded, and alongside this, new forms of performing arts were created out of the coming together of artists from different communities and backgrounds, leading to innovative forms of performance and artistic expression. This connection between the arts and the social-political contexts is of great importance in the subsequent cultural history of the town, and its contribution to the wider cultural life of Britain, and beyond. Southall has often been seen as a model of a diaspora community, and has been of immense importance in the study of migration within Britain. This project aims to contribute a unique perspective on the town by looking across the art forms, to examine the ways in which they influence each other, which is a key factor of Asian performance aesthetics. Additionally, the performance forms will be studied in relation to their emergence from political and social events. Through a mixture of interviews and gathering of material, a vital oral and cultural history of the town will be created, which will be of benefit both to the local communities, and to the study of diasporas and migration within academia. The mixture of academics and practitioners on the research team will ensure a wide range of research and forms of outputs, which will have an extensive audience due to the forms of dissemination including a public symposium and exhibition, alongside a co-authored book, three conference papers, a website and a digital archive, leading to a documentation of the history which will be available for public access.