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We were delighted to bring our projects Talking About My Generation & Routes to Roots to participants in spring 2023 across 3 Uk cities.
Routes to Roots: A South Asian Heritage Project
Bringing together Heritage, Community and Arts partners, local participants and artist/facilitators ROUTES TO ROOTS will work with South Asian communities in Bradford, Sheffield and Croydon over three years.
We will use a multi-arts approach to capture, archive and preserve authentic stories that reveal the diversity of UK South Asian Heritage and challenge unhelpful assumptions and stereotypes surrounding these communities in the UK.
ROUTES TO ROOTS is inspired by and uses Maya’s new musical in development, Benny and the Greycats, and its themes, as stimulus.
The groups came together to perform at Migration Matters Festival on the 20th June 2023.
More information can be found on our news page – HERE
South Asian Heritage Month Exhibition
Maya Productions celebrated South Asian Heritage Month with an exhibition hosted by WomanZone, sharing the visual art and creative writing of the participants from Routes to Roots and Talking About My Generation. Curated by Aamta-Tul Waheed.
Talking About My Generation London: Led by Rez Kabir and Janet Steel
In partnership with Stanley Arts, Anglo-Indian participants were invited to develop creative skills and share memories of the 60s, journeys of migration, music, and India.
Bradford: Led by Aamta-Tul Waheed and Sharena Lee Satti
In partnership with Kala Sangam and WomenZone Bradford, a South Asian women’s group, creatively explored themes of migration, heritage and identity through visual arts and poetry.
Routes to Roots Sheffield: Led by Ethel Maqeda and Nisha Lall
In partnership with Migration Matters Festival and with support from Forced Entertainment, Roots to Routes worked with female students with Pakistani and Bangladeshi heritage from Handsworth Grange School to explore family, identity and belonging through theatre and dance.
2021
Running alongside Routes to Roots was Talking About My Generation. Working with Over 50s participants to share memories of the 60s, stories of that era, journeys of migration and the music of the time. These stories and reminiscence led to a creative sharing of work. We worked with Ignite Imaginations in order to facilitate the Sheffield based projects.
Both projects were showcased at last year’s Migration Matters Festival in Sheffield and Talking About My Generation was featured online as part of the DISRUPT festival 2021.
Routes to Roots 2021 invited young people to creatively explore themes of migration, cultural identity and family heritage, developing creative and other skills.
Running alongside Routes to Roots was Talking About My Generation. Working with Over 50s participants to share memories of the 60s, stories of that era, journeys of migration and the music of the time. These stories and reminiscence led to a creative sharing of work. We worked with Ignite Imaginations in order to facilitate the Sheffield based projects.
Both projects were showcased at last year’s Migration Matters Festival in Sheffield and Talking About My Generation was featured online as part of the DISRUPT festival 2021.
We were delighted to partner with Ignite Imaginations and Migration Matters Festival to deliver an online arts project for young people in June 2020.
Working with 19 young people in two Sheffield schools and with community groups Chillypep, creative workshops were led by Suzanne Gorman, Sile Siband and Gevi Carter. The young people explored themes of family history, heritage, place, culture, migration – and their own experiences of lockdown- through creative writing. We were delighted that Sile, who participated in the project last year as a young artist, was part of the facilitation team this year.
Routes to Roots is part of Maya’s project, Benny and the Greycats, our new musical in development. The story is inspired by Artistic Director Suzanne Gorman’s family history and tells the story of a group of Anglo-Indian musicals who swap playing in a swing band in India, to embark on a new life in Sheffield in the 1960s.
Routes to Roots invites participants to make a creative response to their own family histories and journey stories.
In 2019 Maya Productions partnered with Theatre Deli and Migration Matters Festival to run our pilot project for 16 – 25-year olds from a Migrant, Black, Asian and Ethnically Diverse Background in Sheffield.
The young artists worked with musician and facilitator Tongesayi Gumbo to explore their family history and creative selves – going on a journey of dance, spoken word, drama.
As part of Migration Matters Festival in June 2019 the group shared a new piece of performance showing “the lives that brought us here and made us who we are.” An insightful, fun, honest and welcoming performance not only captivated and impressed our audience but also got them up out of their seats and joining in!
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