A fabulous event at University of Northampton today - thanks to Judith, Jackie and all participants. The seventh Making the Connections event focused on issues of narrative, storytelling and identity with a focus on the postcolonial, and was well attended by academics, activists and artists from Northampton and the wider East Midlands. The Avenue campus at Northampton provided a suitably art-full environment to explore these isses
After introductions and words from those working in Northamptonshire with ethnic minority communities, Rea Dennis gave a storytelling/performance that dealt with some key issues of origins/belonging and journeys of self-discovery. from Northampton to Greece to Australia and back, Rea showed how telling tales can help people come to terms with experiences of loss, separaton and anxiety, and provide a space for exploring questions of identity
Workshops focusing on objects and stories of movement and migration bought some of the therapeutic value of storytelling into sharper relief, while a film present by Doug Smith on Northampton's Irish populations shoed how oral histories can be used as a resource for education: at the same time, the film raised questions about who was being represented, and how.
The day finished with a conversation with Guyanese novelist, academic and poet David Dabydeen, who spoke about his move from social realist accounts of migration and identit to more magic realist tropes, inspired in part by Guyanese tribal beliefs. Dismissing the search for an authentic home, he nonetheless spoke about his movements between, and imagingings of, his Guyanese, Indian and Coventrian homes. He particular reflected on his own family's experience: "my parents, and other people's parents, would have seen England not quite as an Utopia, or an El Dorado in reverse, but certainly as a place where jobs were plentiful and the people hospitable, and wealth within your grasp. I think there was the belief that if you went to England and worked, you could become wealthy, whereas in fact when they came, they were not welcome as they expected to be...I felt a…sense of displacement, and lived with the reality that …there was always the threat of violence" (from http://www.humboldt.edu/~me2/engl240b/student_projects/dabydeen/dabydeenbio.htm).An inspiring, provocative and entertaining day!
