'Southall and Beyond' - An Exhibition and Festival of British Asian Culture in Delhi, and community engagement workshops in Bangkok

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The project is aimed at creating significant and innovative engagement and impact activities with new international audiences, following-on from the activities and outputs of the AHRC-funded project 'The Southall Story: a cultural history of Britain's "Little India"'. The project is to tour the 'Southall Story' exhibition to the India International Centre (IIC) in Delhi, in November 2013. Additionally, to curate an international festival: 'Southall and Beyond: A Festival of British Asian Culture' at the IIC, of which the exhibition is a part. The Festival will include a special festival of British Asian films; a concert featuring musicians from the UK and India performing together, including a new piece commissioned especially for the event by Kuljit Bhamra; and a series of workshops. The exhibition will additionally include daily 'Southall Stories' events, where community and school groups will have direct engagement and interaction with the three consultants from the 'Southall Story' project, who will guide them around the exhibition and tell them stories about Southall and its culture. There will be a high-profile opening event to the Festival with 80 invited guests, including government officials and the British High Commissioner. Partner organisations working on the project are the India International Centre; the British Council office in India; and the Asian Arts Agency in the UK. In addition to these activities in Delhi, the project's PI and the three consultants for the 'Southall Story' have been invited by Chulalongkorn University in Bangkok to undertake a series of community engagement workshops with diasporic Indian communities in Bangkok. The workshops will begin to assist the communities to create an oral history project using the 'Southall Story' project as a model, empowering the communities to reflect on and communicate their own history.These activities will benefit a great number of user groups, and will ensure longevity of the project. Further tours of the exhibition and events from the Festival are currently being planned with the partner organisations.