On 22nd March, we held our first Cultural Celebration day at Kingsland Hub. Thank you to everyone who took part, this was an opportunity to understand others cultures and celebrate our diversity. Tenants, participants and staff all participated and the day was a great success!
We started with food, as most good days start! All the dishes were delicious, particularly the gravlax and Ethiopian dishes, the Cornish clotted cream, jam and scones were a fantastic dessert. Thank you to Eve and Mirach in the Coffee Shop who laid on an international menu for the day of delicious wraps with international filings, and dahl with naan bread.
Jenny launched the Secret postcard exhibition for May with lots of us designing our own postcards lead by Jonathon – artist in chief.
The best part of the afternoon was the World café: conversation corner. We had talks from tenants and staff about their history, their families and their cultural identity. Leanne spoke about being Cornish, Kamye about being Pan European, Valerie about how her Olympic champion uncle migrated to the UK from the Caribbean, and Anjum spoke about being a grandchild of displaced refugees during the partition of India. Then we heard about Mauritius from Diana and Angola from Leinad. This was really informative and so interesting, I could have stayed all afternoon listening to stories and hearing about our histories.
And then finally we closed the day with folk dancing and music. Mirach lead us through some traditional wedding and fertility dances. And then Graeme brought out his guitar and we all sang along to Redemption Song and Man in the Mirror.
The whole day was extremely inspiring and it was great to see so many from our community enjoying the day.