Yemeni Roots, Salford Lives

This collection contains material created as part of the development and delivery of the Yemeni Roots Salford Lives project. Key within the collection are the nineteen life-stories contained in 15 recorded audio interviews with members of the Greater Manchester Ymeni community. Other material in the collection includes:
Papers of the Beacon project which was undertaken to assess and prove the need for the Yemeni Roots Salford Lives project,
Research undertaken for the project and for the Exhibition,
Papers relating to the Women's art project which ran alongside the main Yemeni Roots Salford Lives project,
Material produced to advertise (flyers) or collected at Project events (photographs),
Project outputs which includes a copy of the final teaching pack and exhibition pannels,
Material relating to the Young Person's Project which was a spin off from the main Yemeni Roots Salford Lives project,
Project evaluation report,
Material relating to the projects legacy (conference paper and photographs).

GB3228.39/1 Beacon / Pilot Project
GB3228.39/2 Project Research
GB3228.39/3 Oral Histories
GB3228.39/4 Women's Art Project
GB3228.39/5 Research for Exhibition
GB3228.39/6 Project Events
GB3228.39/7 Project Outputs
GB3228.39/8 Young Person's Project
GB3228.39/9 Project Evaluation
GB3228.39/10 Project Legacy
GB3228.39/11 Miscellaneous

Mohammad Siddique Seddon, 'The Last of the Lascars, Yemeni Muslims in Britain, 1836-2012', (Kube Publishing Limited, 2014) AIURRRC ref HI.1.04/SED

Richard Ivor Lawless, 'From Ta'izz to Tyneside: an Arab community in the North-east of England during the early twentieth century, (University of Exeter Press, 1995) AIURRRC ref HI.1.01/LAW

Ahmed Iqbal Ullah Education Trust internal documents relating to the project (Beacon pilot project papers, HLF application supporting documents, steering committee minutes 2010-2012 etc) can be found at GB3228.22/8/1-4

Books found in the Ahmed Iqbal Ullah Race Relations Library collection based in Manchester Central Library:

Gamiel Yafai and Abdulaem Alshamery, 'Yemen proud : past and present', (Gilgamesh Publishing, 2013) AIURRRC Ref: HI.1.04/YAF

Dr Mohammad Seddon, 'Arab communities in Manchester 1839-2012 a brief history', (2012), AIURRRC MAN/HI.3/SED

Youssef Nabil and Tina Gharavi, 'Last of the dictionary men, stories from the South Shields', (Gilgamesh Publishing, 2013), AIURRRC HI.1.04/NAB

Sonia Audhali, 'Little Yemen', (Birmingham 2013) AIURRRC ref HI.1.04/AUD

Fred Halliday, 'Britain's first Muslims portrait of an Arab Community, (I. B. Tauris and Co, London, 2010), AIURRRC HI.1.04/HAL

24 hours notice is required to view this collection. Material will then be accessible through Manchester Central Library Search Room, Manchester Central Library, St. Peters Square, Manchester, M2 5PD. To access this collection please contact: rrarchive@manchester.ac.uk

Yemeni Roots, Salford Lives was designed to capture the history of the Yemeni community in Eccles, through research into local archive documents, the collection of oral history interviews, and an arts reminiscence project. It was established following a chance encounter, when Yusuf Bagail (former Development Worker at the Manchester Yemeni Community Association) requested help from Jacqueline Ould (the then Education Coordinator at the Ahmed Iqbal Ullah Education Trust), to mount a display for Black History Month. Together they secured ?Beacon? funding to gather evidence of need for a larger Heritage Lottery bid.

On the basis of the ?Beacon? funded project a bid was put into the Heritage Lottery Fund (HLF). The HLF granted the Yemeni Roots Salford Lives funding of £49,500 to undertake the project.

The aims of the project were:? To enable and build capacity among the Yemeni community in Salford to explore the heritage of their community.? To create resources that make visible the contribution of the Yemeni community to the history of Salford.? To create opportunities for members of the community to receive training in aspects of research, collecting history and dissemination.? To enable the wider community in Salford to learn about the contribution of Yemeni people to the development of the city.Partners involved in the Yemeni Roots Salford Lives project were:? The Ahmed Iqbal Ullah Education Trust (hereafter AIUET) - a registered charity linked to the Ahmed Iqbal Ullah Race Relations Resource Centre, which specialises in collecting and communicating the histories of BAME communities in Greater Manchester. ? The Yemeni Community Association (hereafter YCA) - a registered charity based in the heart of the main Yemeni residential area in Eccles, Salford, which delivers services to the community and represents their interests to the local Council.? The University of Salford, Arts Development Unit (later Advancement Services) ? responsible for developing events and community engagement initiatives in Salford.The initial project idea was to record first generation Yemenis and their memories of migration to and settlement in the UK. However, the project quickly expanded during the delivery phase to include second and third generations, keen to reflect on their experiences of growing up in the UK and of navigating their British / Yemeni identities. Topics of conversation included: community, education, food, employment, identity, racism, leisure and religion. Excerpts were shared via a dedicated section of the YCA website, an exhibition at Salford Art Gallery and a printed publication.

The arts reminiscence strand was developed specifically to engage Yemeni women and to facilitate the representation of their experiences. (All of the women involved asked not to be photographed and some were less willing to take part in ?on the record? conversations. Female networks also tended to operate around the family and home, making them more difficult to access.) Visual artist, Lesley Sutton got to know an ESOL group and was invited by participants to photograph their home environments, which later became a metaphor for the women themselves. The results were published in the limited edition book ?From Sana?a to Salford?.

Towards the end of the project, a ?spin off? initiative? was launched to engage third generation girls through creative activities and research. Jennie Vickers worked with participants to produce a newsletter and banner exploring aspects of both their Yemeni heritage and contemporary lives.

Project Worker Jennie Vickers also established relationships with the female relatives of male participants. Eventually she was able to persuade an equal number of men and women to record their life stories.

At the end of the project an evaluation of the projects impact was undertaken and several groups were identified as beneficiaries of the project:? People of Yemeni origin or heritage living in or connected with Eccles. The project collected and archived the experiences of this community which stretched back to the 1950s in Eccles, but which had little recorded evidence of its long presence in the area. A particular concern was that the young people in the community were unaware of the work of the elders in building the community and maintaining their cultural heritage. Many of the elders had already passed away and as there was very little written evidence, the community?s heritage was ?at risk?. ? The wider community of Salford. In a survey conducted before the project, the vast majority of the Yemeni community pointed out that the larger white community in Salford, and even many of the later-arrived BME communities, were unaware of the Yemenis? particular identity, their long presence in the area or their role in Salford ?firsts? such as the first Salford mosque. Through the project, histories have been documented and resources produced that explore and explain aspects of the Yemeni community?s history to the wider community in Salford.? The wider public and academic audience. There was no evidence of the Yemeni presence in collections at the Ahmed Iqbal Ullah Race Relations Resource Centre and very little in local libraries or archives, rendering this community invisible and their history inaccessible to the wider public or academic audience. The interviews collected and resources created are now available to this wider audience and a range of dissemination events were held.The legacy of the project has included:? Project worker Jennie Vickers speaking at the North West CILIP (Library and Information Association) branch day school: Recording our Past on the Yemeni Roots Salford Lives project? The Yemeni community using resources created as part of the Yemeni Roots Salford Lives project on their YCA stall at the annual Eccles Festival in 2017.? The YCA website, which was established as part of the project, being nominated and accepted as part of the British Libraries web archiving project in 2019.