It’s the Yorkshire Festival and Refugee Week next week which means that there are a host of brilliant events across the North which celebrate the diversity, stories and talent of the region.
There is a wonderful week-long Migration Matters festival in Sheffield and Wakefield, and as part of this Verse Matters is running a special event at the Moor Theatre Deli in Sheffield. This will include some of the brilliant artists from the Art of Migration and a group reading of ‘Grapes in my Father’s Yard’ by women who took part in the Material Stories of Migration project run by the University of Sheffield, and the poetry workshops with myself and Sai Murray.
Upscribe are also launching an amazing anthology of writing by refugees and asylum seekers: ‘We Jump, Never Asking Why’ on Friday 24th June, 7pm-9pm, at the Crucible. The launch will include readings from the book which will be on sale to help fund more of Upscribe’s fabulous work across the region.
This Friday (17 June) we are running a Symposium on Postcolonial Education in Leeds on teaching, learning and schooling in and after Empire, in collaboration with the Northern Postcolonial Network, the University of Leeds and Leeds Beckett University. As well as discussing education in light of recent campaigns like Rhodes Must Fall and Why is My Curriculum White, there will also be a poetry reading by Douglas Caster Fellow, Malika Booker, a discussion with Leeds Young Authors and Khadijah Ibrahiim, and a screening of the film, Sugar Cane Alley. Peepal Tree Press and the Moving Worlds journal will also be at the event – it is going to be excellent!
In other news, the William Wilberforce Monument Fund has been awarded a grant of £39,100 from the Heritage Lottery Fund for the project African Stories in Hull and East Yorkshire. The project is looking for more stories, so do get in touch with them if you would like to be involved or if you have any photographs, memories, documents, oral histories, or other kinds of research material you’d like to submit to the project.
This post was first published at Northern England to the World, University of Leeds
Rachel Bower 