Yemeni Roots, Salford Lives
A new oral history project with Greater Manchester's Yemeni Community
The origins of the project
Between February to April 2010, the AIU Education Trust developed a Beacon Project, in partnership with the Yemeni Community Association (YCA) in Eccles and the University of Salford. This small project surveyed the Yemeni community to see how many people feel comfortable and confident discussing their own history in the area and might welcome a larger oral history programme. Information about early efforts at community organising, the founding of the Eccles Mosque, the first Yemeni café and other historic firsts, can manly be found in the memories of the elders. These memories need to be captured so that this hidden history of a minority community in Eccles is not lost forever.
In April 2011, we were sucessfully awarded a grant of £49500 from the Heritage Lottery Fund to conduct the oral history project.
Yemeni Roots, Salford Lives 2011 onwards..
Yemeni Roots, Salford Lives is a project to record the history of the Yemeni community in Eccles from 1950 to the present, through both oral history interviews and creative reminiscence activities. Hosted by the Yemeni Community Association in Salford, the project is led by the Ahmed Iqbal Ullah Education Trust and all oral history interviews and other materials created will be archived within the Ahmed Iqbal Ullah Race Relations Resource Centre. The project will generate lasting outputs including a poster set, teaching materials and a community website that will be maintained into the future by the Yemeni community, forming both a legacy of the current project and a platform for future development.
As part of the project we will:
- collect life-story interviews
- search for historical documents
- run artist-led workshops to help people share memories
- organise community events
- The project will also create a website for the YCA, a poster-display and teaching materials to promote better knowledge and understanding of the history of Yemeni people in Salford.
Our Project Worker has already begun to collect interviews, and she is also working with volunteers and staff at the YCA to develop their new website. We've also started our first art workshops.
Exhibition and newsletter
You can find out more about the interviews, photos and artefacts we have already collected in our newsletter. Click here to download it.
On February 27th, 2012 we will be launching a mini-exhibition which will describe aspects of the history of the Yemeni community in Eccles from the 1950s to the present. Central themes will include working lives, leisure-time and milestones in building the community. It will be hosted in the Ahmed Iqbal Ullah Race Relations Resource Centre. The launch event will feature a presentaton from a member of the local Yemeni Community and light refreshments. Find out more about the launch event and book tickets for the event by visiting our eventbrite page: www.yemenirootssalfordlives.eventbrite.com.
To find out more about the project contact us via yemeniproject@manchester.ac.uk or call us on 0161 275 2920.
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