Gypsy Roma Traveller History Month Success
Gypsy, Roma and Traveller History Month 2010 has come to end and what a month it’s been. Last year’s single event at the Chamber of Commerce Building was the foundation for the three events this year.
National Launch
The National Launch at the Senedd (27th May) celebrated the work of school children across Cardiff and Newport in our first GRT History Month poster competition. Schools in both cities worked with Cardiff Traveller Education Service and Gwent Education Multi-ethnic Service (GEMS) to put Gypsy, Roma and Traveller issues on the curriculum culminating in two competitions to design posters to advertise the main events in those cities.
The winners were presented with framed copies of their posters that were almost as big as they were, by Helen Mary Jones AM and Chair of the Welsh Assembly’s Children and Young People’s Committee.
Celebration and Challenge
The Newport event at the Riverfront Theatre and Arts Centre (17th June) was designed to challenge while celebrating the contribution of Gypsy, Roma and Traveller people to the local community. A week long residency, funded by Newport Children and Young People’s Partnership, involved children from a wide range of ethnic backgrounds drawn from 6 schools across Newport and led to a performance of unity entitled ‘Me, Us and You’.
The event, which also included traditional storytelling, waggon painting workshops and video, included a short documentary on the plight of the children of Dale Farm who are fighting eviction from Europe’s largest Gypsy/Traveller site (Courtesy of the Children’s BBC/International Film School Wales) compared and contrasted with the eviction and demolition of Sulukule in Turkey and the plight of the Romani minority in Kosovo, who remain in a UN refugee camp in a disused lead mine (Mitrovica) in a lecture given by Dr Adrian Marsh.
Community
The Cardiff event (29th June) at the Pierhead Building was designed to bring out the Gypsy, Roma and Traveller communities, and it certainly did that. An unashamed celebration of community and particularly of our young people saw performances of dance, both traditional and hip-hop, waggon painting workshops, dukering, traditional storytelling and circus skills performances.
The NoFit State Circus worked with young people on the Shirenewton site over a period of 3 weeks to put together their performances for an audience of family, friends and strangers.
Download: grthm feedback
All of the events received plenty of press coverage notably from the BBC (Newport, Cardiff), but, as you can see, each was very different. We look forward to next year, and something even bigger.very different. We look forward to next year, and something even bigger
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Comment by Isaac Blake on September 12, 2010 at 9:31
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Hi Mathilde,
The Romani Cultural and Arts Company is pleased to invite you to join them in Wales’ 3rd celebration of Gypsy, Roma & Traveller History Month on (30 June 2011 @ The Riverfront Theatre, Newport).
The Romani Cultural and Arts Company was formed in September 2009 as a not-for-profit company limited by guarantee (No. 07005660). Working through the arts the Company raises funds to take community development and educational projects onto Gypsy, Roma and Traveller sites and into Gorjer and ‘country-folk’ communities across Wales.
One of the most important aims of the Romani Cultural and Arts Company is to change the future through our work with young people and so we are delighted to confirm a grant of nearly £19,000 from BBC Children in Need to bring award winning animation company Cinetig to the Shirenewton site near Cardiff.
This project will allow young Gypsies and Travellers to research their own culture, develop a sense of pride in that culture as we demonstrate its importance to us as outsiders by committing it to film. In the process we hope that they will become less tolerant of discrimination as they recognise their own value and self worth.
The young people will work with traditional storytellers, youth workers and film makers over 10 weeks culminating in a public performance of their work designed to educate others about the history of the Traveller community in Wales.
The young people will follow all of the stages of the filmmaking process – researching, scripting, storyboarding, animation production and post production alongside professional film-makers and will create their own artwork and designs for the film.
Gerald Conn says “Children often surpass their own expectations when they see the finished animation. The one-to-one approach that we are able to bring with a project like this raises the self esteem of all the children involved.”
Cinetig has a long track record of making films with young people and have received many awards for their community films including best child produced film in the Chicago International Children’s Film Festival in 2009, and two first prizes in Bradford Animation Festival 2003/01 for best child produced film.
The partners behind the project also include Cardiff TES and SEWREC and hope to secure additional funding to take the project onto Newport and Swansea in the future.
Read more on the Romaniarts website www.romaniarts.co.uk
Best wishes & thanks
Isaac
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Comment by Mathilde Lopez on September 9, 2010 at 22:00
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Hi Isaac,
My name is Mathilde, I am National Theatre Wales Creative Associate and I am gutted I've missed the events, please do keep me posted about future Gypsy Roms cultural projects, I am very interested. Thanks for sharing. m
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