Sangam Festival 2022 – Our Special Projects
For our 2022 Festival, we partnered with a wide range of cultural organisations to present a programme of Special Projects to run alongside our events and activities. Some of these projects produced online outputs, others resulted in a final event.
A Quest for Roti
A Quest for Roti is a timely and moving documentary film to tie-in with this year’s 75th anniversary of Partition. The film explores the emotional and logistical backdrop to journeys made by families of South Asian heritage who came to Kirklees from the 1960s onwards.
Weaving through their stories is the importance of food for the South Asian diaspora, demonstrated by recreating recipes, investigating cooking implements and exploring the heritage and relevance of food in social and faith celebrations. Details of film screening dates and times will be listed on our What’s On calendar.
Our Biennale School Workshops and Parade
Our Biennale is a Kirklees festival of arts and culture made with children and young people.
Huddersfield Contemporary Music Festival are working with Nisha Lall Dance to deliver a range of creative workshops in schools, including dance and costume-making. These will result in a dance performance/parade during Our Biennale.
A Circle of Songs
A series of singing workshops to celebrate and explore wedding and celebration songs. From Punjabi language songs passed down from generation to generation, to popular South Asian and western celebration songs. The sessions will include open-to-all workshops and workshops designed for a care home setting.
The project will be delivered by British-Punjabi vocalist Satnam Galsian from Manasamitra and community musician/singer-songwriter Jess Baker from HOOT Creative Arts.
Textile Fabrics of India
A partnership project with Woven Festival and the University of Huddersfield. In 1866, the Secretary of State for India presented Huddersfield Mechanics’ Institution with a set of 18 volumes containing 700 working samples of cotton, silk and woollen textiles.
Taking inspiration from this Textile Fabrics of India Archive, now held at the University’s Heritage Quay, a North Kirklees sewing group will design a creative output to be displayed in the Sangam Festival Hub.Top of Form
Salt Eaters – short film
The Salt Eaters short film will give a taste of a multi-sensory virtual-reality project being created by dance artist Mez Galaria with Theatre in the Mill.
Interviews with creatives and filmed sequences will show how the final creative experience will transport participants into the world, smells and sounds of Umda, a dancer drawn out of the history books of Sambhar salt lake of Rajasthan.
TOWNSOUNDS – podcast
TOWNSOUNDS is a Let’s Go Yorkshire project to record the rich and diverse musical heritage of the region, as part of Kirklees Year of Music 2023. A podcast will be created for Sangam Festival, featuring interviews with musical artists of South Asian heritage, from traditional folk to classical and contemporary.
Let’s Go Yorkshire will also mark the 75th anniversary of Partition with THE WHITE LINE: a cultural event of outdoor live music, dance and theatre in St George’s Square, Huddersfield, 1pm-4pm, Sunday 21 August.
Intergenerational Project
To commemorate the 75th anniversary of Partition, we have commissioned the Partition Education Group Partnership to create an intergenerational project.
Young British South Asians will learn about Partition through discussion with older, migrator or first-generation-born South Asians. They will then produce short films to be shown in schools and community venues, to explore Partition and its impact on our understanding of British history.
Our Schools Projects
Working closely with schools across Kirklees, we will be raising awareness of South Asian Heritage Month in the run up to Sangam Festival.
This will include sending artists and cultural practitioners into schools, offering assemblies and providing resources designed to help individual educational establishments engage with students and encourage participation in the Festival over the summer.
Any schools wishing to take part should contact our Schools Co-ordinator Louise Grassby on: info@louiseartworkshops.co.uk
Our Supporters
Sangam Festival is run by social enterprise Communities Together and supported by the National Lottery Heritage Fund and Arts Council National Lottery Project Grants.
