Kotha and Kantha: Bangladeshi Women's Memoir Project

Kotha & Kantha: Bangladeshi Women’s Memoir Project was a 2016 project, held at Manchester Central Library, run by the Ahmed Iqbal Ullah Race Relations Education Trust and Centre (AIUC) and funded by the National Lottery through Arts Council England - Grants for the Arts Award.
We invited Dipali Das to be the Writer in Residence for the project, who as well as writing her own pieces based on aspects of the Centre’s collections and archives relating to migration, encouraged the 10 women attendees to share their experiences of living in both Bangladesh and Manchester through poems, drawings and memoir.
Lynn Setterington, Senior lecturer in Textiles in Practice at Manchester Metropolitan University, also ran workshops with the group, using traditional Bangladeshi embroidery techniques to produce vividly patterned stitched panels. Photographs of the women and the workshops were taken by professional photographer Jason Lock.
Kotha and Kantha was devised to gain new work for our library and also to help the participants tell their stories in writing and embroidery. We hope the project outputs will also increase the wider community's knowledge about migration, history and culture.
During the project, the glass meeting room on the lower ground floor of Central Library was filled with chatting and laughing as the attendees formed new friendships together as well as continuing existing ones, and talked over their experiences of leaving Bangladesh and coming to Manchester.

https://aiucentre.wordpress.com/2016/08/11/kotha-kantha-bangladeshi-womens-memoir-project/

We chose to work with the Bangladeshi community because 2016 marked the 30th anniversary of the death of Ahmed Iqbal Ullah, the Bangladeshi boy murdered in the playground of a local Manchester school, and in whose memory the Trust and Centre are named.

The ‘Threads of Identity’ project, which was funded by HEFCE National Networks for Collaborative Outreach (NNCO), involved us working with 15 year 8 boys from Burnage Academy for Boys.
Following on from ‘Kotha and Kantha: Bangladeshi Memoir Project’ (the Trust’s project using writing and embroidery to examine identity) we decided to run embroidery sessions in a local secondary school. Sam Kalubowila (our Undergraduate and Widening Participation Officer) looked at identity with the boys from the perspective of symbols and Lynn Setterington then carried out 7 embroidery sessions, assisted by the Trust’s Engagement Officer (Faizah Aktar) and two of Lynn’s textile students from MMU.
The boys collected 10 signatures of significant people, such as family, teachers and friends and sewed the signatures onto individual handkerchiefs. Lynn also embroidered Ahmed Iqbal Ullah’s signature, which we found in one of his old exercise books, onto a handkerchief, making the project all the more poignant. The handkerchiefs were then pieced together to create a banner, which will be displayed at the school.
This project has helped the boys consider their own identities and identify significant others in their lives. They have learned new skills in expression, especially the use of stitch, and hopefully the project has also broken down the stereotypical idea that sewing is a female activity.
Mary Stark, an artist filmmaker with a background in textile practice, created a short film about the project.

Manchester Bangladeshi Women's Organisation (Ananna)

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