West Midlands: Apna Ghar (Our Home)

Foursight Theatre used a core group of professional actors but also involved children from a local school. In 2006, English Heritage worked in collaboration with Foursight Theatre and Black Country Touring on a project to develop a community performance inspired by the stories of South Asian women from Sandwell.

A group of local British Asian women were trained by an oral historian to gather stories within their communities and put together a performance based on the testimony of women who had migrated to the area from the 1950s onwards.  The theme of the piece was the meaning of “home” and the struggle to make a home in a new environment.

The project engaged the Asian community in collecting and interpreting their connection to the historic environment, and sharing their story across communities through performance art. The production was staged in a disused Victorian school building in Wednesbury with a range of interior and exterior period locations.

Foursight Theatre used a core group of professional actors but also involved children from a local school, an Asian women’s mental health group and individuals from the Asian community as performers. Women whose reminiscences were used in the piece attended the performances and helped shape the play.

Audience feedback was strongly positive, many people were attending a performance or heritage event for the first time, and the inter-generational and cross-community sharing of heritage has generated new and lasting benefits for the communities involved.

Please contact Suzanne Carter, Outreach Manager for the West Midlands for more detail on 0121 6256870 or suzanne.carter@english-heritage.org.uk  

For more details about this project visit the Black Country Touring Website: http://www.bctouring.co.uk