This workshop is part of the Vagina Museum's South Asian Heritage Month Programme. The event is open to people of all backgrounds and of all genders, but is run by and primarily for folks of South Asian descent.
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Folklore & Woodblock Printing
F. Zeeshan Choudhury has been collecting folklore from diverse communities across Bangladesh and the UK. In doing this, they have designed a set of woodblock stamps (a South-Asian art form used to print on Saris) that can be used to 'record' folklore onto storytelling textiles. In this workshop you will be led to think about your experience of exile, and will use the woodblock stamps to print your own story on a textile to take home with you!
Please bring an item of clothing you'd like to print your design onto. A plain cotton t-shirt is ideal. Everything else will be provided.
Facilitator Biography
F. Zeeshan Choudhury (@fzeeshanchoudhury) leads community projects that use creativity to facilitate radical wellbeing. Their research and practice finds tangible ways for people to interrogate injustice and imagine new futures. They are an advocate for hyper-local community engagement, and run community groups in the London Borough of Tower Hamlets, including the Queer Writer’s Circle at The Common Press in Shoreditch, and Writing to Uncover The Self at St. Margaret’s House in Bethnal Green. They have recently been commissioned by Unlimited to collect and record folklores fron marginalised communities.
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South Asian Heritage Month at the Vagina Museum
Since 2022 the Vagina Museum has been in Bethnal Green in the London Borough of Tower Hamlets, a vibrant and largely South Asian borough. Bangladeshis, and people from other parts of South Asia, have been a part of this community since the 1950’s, when the government encouraged Commonwealth citizens to move to the UK to help rebuild the country after World War Two.
Although we have South Asian volunteers and approximately 9% of our visitors identify as South Asian, there are currently no people of South Asian descent working for the Vagina Museum. We're a small team, but it is precisely this lack of representation that can lead to the kind of universalising narratives of which we are so critical. It is our responsibility, then, to put in the effort to bridge that gap.
This isn’t about putting on one seminar or one exhibition, having one diversity hire or making one statement of solidarity. It has to be intentional and ongoing. With that in mind, we’re prioritising South Asian artists, poets, healthcare workers, and other organisers during South Asian Heritage Month with the aim of building our connections and networks within the community such that those relationships might continue to flourish after South Asian Heritage Month.
As this year’s theme suggests, we’re looking to put down some roots and see where those take us.
Find the whole programme on our website.
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