Saskia Warren: Connecting diverse communities into the creative economy? A case study of female Muslim migrants in Balsall Heath
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Slides from the Cultural Intermediation Project Continuity Day, 3 October 2014
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Saskia Warren: Connecting diverse communities into the creative economy? A case study of female Muslim migrants in Balsall Heath
- 1. Connecting diverse communities into the creative economy? A case study of female Muslim migrants in Balsall Heath Dr SaskiaWarren University of Birmingham Old Print Works, Balsall Heath, October 2014
- 2. Balsall Heath: 'Go on, you Muslim, dieâ (Daily Mail)
- 3. Balsall Heath: âFrom red lights to green shoots?â (BBCNews.co.uk) 60% of the population recorded themselves as Asian and 10% as Arab, with 71% stating their religion as Muslim (Census 2011). Birmingham City Council Priority Neighbourhood âąIdentified as falling in the worst 5% nationally for multiple deprivations (25 identified in Birmingham below the level of districts) âąIndicators include: education, unemployment, health, crime, housing âą Only area in the UK to pilot Neighbourhood Budgeting and Neighbourhood Planning
- 4. Creativity at the local level
- 5. What is meaningful and has value for you?
- 6. Methods: engaging the âhard-to-reachâ
- 7. Inside the âblandspaceâ? Participatory cultural mapping in the classroom
- 8. âPrayers and read Quranâ âBazaar in mosqueâ âI go with my daughter to the parkâ âI went to my sisterâs [home] to have dinnerâ âI visited the library. I read some books, use the computer and sometimes they sell toys for childrenâ âI bought the black henna from the Arabic shopâ
- 9. Participatory cultural mapping: findings 14 14 10 5 5 4 2 2 1 Mosque Park Shopping Library Home-place Gym Walking School Art Centre
- 11. Case one Route: Womenâs only gym â past pharmacy â local corner shop Aaleyah (Sudan) She asks me to accompany her to the womenâs only gym... Afterwards we go to a local shop where she carefully checks the ingredients written in Arabic on packaged foods. She goes to the park in the summer. The last time she went to the cinema was 25 years ago; as it âdoes not ârespectâ her beliefsâ. She uses Skype to take part in Koranic classes with people around the world and has a teacher in Saudi Arabia. Haifa (Libya) At the weekend she cooks and cleans. She sometimes goes to the supermarket, or her husband does. Occasionally she buys ingredients to make a cake. She does not watch films or go to art exhibitions or festivals because they do not âagree with her beliefsâ. Sometimes she visits her friendâs home in Balsall Heath. She talks to friends and family in Libya using social media networking Viber and Whatsapp.
- 12. Case Two Route: Past home - Daughterâs school â clothes shop - Cannon Hill Park â Aldi â College Thana (Yemen) She never goes out in the evening because she is too scared. She has lived on the same road with her extended family for 17 years (her husband lives in Saudi Arabia). We enter a local clothes shop but the dresses are too expensive for her â she gets clothes bought and sent from Yemen. Her aunt takes photographs on Whatsapp . She goes to the park and visits the supermarket often with her family. At school she read Shakespeareâs Romeo and Juliet. Life is mostly spent going to college to improve her English, caring for her father, looking after her daughter, cooking and cleaning.
- 13. Case Study Three Route: Playground â Calthorpe Park â Community Centre â Daughterâs school â Home â Garden â Library â College Haifa (Yemen; husband Anglo-Bangladeshi) She goes to the nearby playground twice a week with her children, where she spends time with other mothers from the area. She makes her own clothes. She is proud of growing her own vegetables and fruit: tomatoes, green beans, coriander, spinach (UK),and green marrow plants (Yemen). Her husband says laughing: âShe likes her independence, I like my peace.â In the evening she sometimes watches Star TV (a Turkish nationwide TV channel). For a special occasion, she once visited Star City, a complex where she went bowling and ate food with the family.
- 14. Case Study Three Route: Playground â Calthorpe Park â Community Centre â Daughterâs school â Home â Garden â Library â College Haifa listens to music with her daughter, and sometimes alone: âI listen âbut I do not go from Allah. They think if I listen, Iâll start acting differently... Become western culture. But I pray, I know Allah, I read the Koran â why is it haram? We are not all the same... No person can say this is haram, because everyone is different.â
- 15. Case study Four Route: Cannon Hill Park â Midlands Art Centre â Exhibition â College Madeeha and Maimoona (Twins; British Pakistani) Have lived in Balsall Heath all of their lives and never want to leave. They love Bollywood. They go to the local park 3 or 4 times a week. Madeeha has been to the local arts centre in the park â she introduces her sister to an immersive exhibition. They are more animated when talking about weddings. They talk over each other, enthusiastically telling me about dancing, singing, buying new colourful clothes, and wedding parties of over 800 guests. Iâm invited to their cousinâs wedding in the coming autumn. The social highlight of the year is the Birmingham Eid Mela festival, celebrating the end of Ramadan, which is held in the park we are walking in. We head back to the college. They say to their teacher: âWe went into an exhibition, it was really good. Itâs quite scary... there was a dead man inside!â The teacher takes a leaflet and says she will go with colleagues.
- 16. Inserting migrant experiences into the creative economy? College â creativity in the classroom Mosque - learn Koran better; safe space to go and food on Friday Home - reading; music (for some); dancing (for some); cooking; TV (Eastenders; Asian programmes); arts and crafts with children; growing plants Hybrid sacred and secular public nodes for cultural and creative engagement: Parks â walking; cricket; picnics; playground; fair; Eid Mela Big event culture - Summer weddings (dancing and music); Eid Mela
- 17. Thank you Dr SaskiaWarren University of Birmingham Email: S.Warren@Bham.ac.uk Twitter: @ SaskiaWarren1 http://www.culturalintermediation.org.uk/ @CultIntermed
Hinweis der Redaktion
- This paper on women Muslim migrants in Birmingham is part of a wider project on how the so-called âhard-to-reachâ â a term mobilised by Arts Council and Birmingham City Council - experience inclusion or exclusion in the urban creative economy. The ways in which the creative economy is experienced locally, particularly within peripheral spaces of the city, remains under-studied, along with tailoring place-based methods to an exploration of its everyday dimensions.
- The area we are working in is Balsall Heath which is 2.5miles south of the city centre. To give some context , the ward Balsall Heath is located within has received considerable UK and US media attention as part of public anxiety over âOperation Trojan Horseâ, an investigation into an alleged fundamentalist Islamist plot to take-over 21 schools in Birmingham. Media coverage of the area centred on extremism is layered upon its reputation as a former red light district with prostitutes once visible on the street and in windows (Hubbard and Saunders 2003). The area has become stigmatised and sensationalised, therefore, as a place of illicit, threatening and transgressive behaviour by very different kinds of marginalised groups. Intra-religious divisions in Sparkbrook have also gained visibility, for example, in the recent interruptions to dancing and music as part of Chand raat celebrations on the night before Eid by a small group of conservative Muslims, terming themselves the Shaytaan police (âDevil policeâ), which was circulated on social media and headlined local newspapers. [NOTES: Education Secretary Michael Gove expected to dismiss the governing bodies of five schools being declared inadequate, including Golden Hillock, Park View, Nansen, Oldknow, and Saltley. Three schools were given a snap Ofsted Inspection: Gracelands Nursery School; Ladypool Primary School; Montgomery Primary Academy. Waseem Yaqub, fomer Head of Governors at Al-Hijrah school, called it "a McCarthy-style witch-hunt" and that the letter was used by councillors "to turn on [Muslims] and use Muslims as scapegoatsâ]
- Rewinding eighteen months - to before the Operation Trojan Horse story - we selected Balsall Heath for a number of reasons. Firstly, Balsall Heath is a diverse area, in what is now described as a super-diverse city. In the most recent UK census of 2011 60% of the ward population recorded themselves as Asian and 10% as Arab, with 71% stating their religion as Muslim (Census 2011). The area has been the home of new migrants to Birmingham since Yemeni groups settled in the 1940s, with waves of Pakistani and Syhlet Bengali groups arriving from the mid-1950s, and more recent migrants from Afghanistan, Sudan and Somalia. Secondly, Balsall Heath faces some of the highest levels of social and environmental deprivation in the UK. Accordingly, Birmingham City Council has named the area one of its âPriority Neighbourhoodsâ. Thirdly, Balsall Heath has an infrastructure of trusts, charities, neighbourhood forums, schools and places of worship which serve as local nodes and networks for different resident communities. Lastly, in a connected point, the neighbourhood has seen a rise in arts programmes which have sought to engage âhard-to-reachâ communities. Importantly, these initiatives have been identified and built upon by local authority cultural pilots. Given changes in the area in terms of governance, demographic and cultural initiatives it is a unique place in which to investigate the experiences of recent and second generation migrant groups in creative economic activity at the local level.
- How did we go about doing this? We attended local events, spoke to people, wrote letters and emails to schools, colleges, artists and arts organisations, trusts, neighbourhood forums and places of worship. One particularly serendipitous opportunity was created by turning up at an open day of a local Womenâs only college. An adult education teacher â a second generation British Pakistani female â was enthused about the potential of the research. She took me to her ESOL classroom and showed me how everyday creativity was used to enhance learning objectives via a wall display her students had made from hand. The students had been asked to research architectural icons in Birmingham, creating a bridge from the local neighbourhood to the city core. Many of the females were recent migrants to the city, from countries of origins including Pakistan, Yemen, Somalia, Sudan, Iraq and Algeria. The tutor was acting as an intermediary before the research, imaginatively connecting students with cultural institutions and flagship icons in the city. This role was formalised as that of community intermediary in the project where she introduced the research to the project and supported recruitment.
- Initial stages to build trust and stimulate thinking about the terms of the project, involved asking the students to bring in objects to the classroom which were meaningful and held value for them. Most of the objects brought in â wedding jewellery and dresses â had literal value â items of material worth. Although one student also brought in a diary of poetry and another showed her recently hennaed hands.
- Given the breath of ethnic, cultural and spiritual traditions â including Arabic Muslims, Asian Muslims, and British Muslims - the heterogeneity of cultural and creative experiences of Muslim Women was evident. This was revealed as we sequed into our mixed methods of a participatory cultural mapping exercise and walking interviews. Instead of tracing the flow and reception of arts programmes to audiences, we aimed to take a bottom-up approach to improve understanding of how, in what modes and forms our participants engaged with cultural and creative activity (if at all). Of particular interest, was learning about what activity interviewees engage with in the local neighbourhood. This was to begin to investigate whether a stated move towards localism in cultural policy and funding pilots was impacting upon experience of place in the case study group.
- Informed by the work of Steve Cinderby the participatory exercise was undertaken in the womenâs college classroom. It was intended to engage those who are not usually consulted with or who attend meetings on cultural policy and practice in the city. The value of engaging for residents was envisioned as an opportunity to improve cultural and creative opportunities in a neighbourhood with multiple social and environmental deprivation âwhere sensitive improvements can greatly enhance peopleâs quality of lifeâ (Cinderby 2007, 5). Large maps of the neighbourhood were used with a female facilitator on hand to support the exercise. Students were introduced to the maps â in some cases introducing students to map-reading - and asked to pinpoint the places they visit in any âfreeâ time (explained as time outside of work, college, religious, and domestic duties).
- The participants were told by the researcher and their usual teacher that we were open to any interpretation of cultural and creative activity. No answers were wrong. Many of the women in the study had limited free-time in their day-to-day lives therefore by taking the maps into the classroom we were able to overcome more practical barriers to participation. During four 1.5hours classes we mapped the responses of 23 participants using post-it notes and group discussions.
- [The mosque and park received the highest number of flags] [Followed by the nodes of shops, the library and home] Â The participatory cultural mapping exercise begin to reveal the variables of gender, religion, ethnicity, education and issues of morality in researching the interstices of migrant groups, urban spatial politics, and cultural and creative engagement.
- In the next stage of the research we invited volunteer participation in go-along walking interviews of significant cultural and creative places visited in the neighbourhood. Flexibility was built in: participants could do the tours independently of the researcher, in their first language or English, one-on-one or in self-elected groups. Walking interviews were conducted with eleven female students (and four children also accompanied us). Lack of time, confidence and familial responsibilities were contributing factors to the cancellation of walking interviews informing understanding of why the so-called âhard-to-reachâ may remain disengaged with research, consultations and public provision at the local and city level even when the willing to take part is there. The participants who did the walking interviews were keen to talk. Interviews lasted between 40 minutes to 120 minutes with the length determined by the interviewees. Women muslim migrantsâ routines in the area of Balsall Heath were characterised by fleeting and cautious engagements with public space. Orientating the neighbourhood on foot without a practical purpose â such as going shopping, or dropping children to school - was beyond the routine experiences for many females in the study. The social-spatial qualities of talking whilst walking required a leisurely traversing of public space which uncovered perceptions of its exclusionary secular and gendered dimensions. Most of the female participants in the walking interview were non-conservative in some way, such as being divorced; financially independent; or with a husband living in a different city or country. The argument that class shapes spatial practices has been advanced elsewhere, with those who are more educated, also more likely to travel further for higher education (Mohammed 2005). In the present study the participants cannot straightforwardly be grouped according to class, education or ethnicity, but, significantly, only three of those who did the walking interviews were house-wives. The first case study offers an exception: both women were conservative Muslim â in this case strict religiosity was performed. Also there were notable spatialised differences â it was the shortest and arguably narrowest route.