Culture And Memory

1968: Rivers of Blood, Sweat, Hope and Resilience

We will document the powerful, but silent, heritage of 35-40 first-generation Indian women, our mothers. Their undocumented traditions have shaped the success and cultural integration of 2nd and 3rd generation Asians, but remain unacknowledged in publicly accessible collections. We will work with Indian mothers and daughters to record Boliyaan, their traditional storytelling songs, to share their experiences of arriving in England in the 1960’s. Reflecting on Enoch Powell’s ‘Rivers of Blood’ speech, and other significant events of 1968, we will revisit the profound impact these tumultuous times of political, social, cultural change had on the lives of women. We will train 6 educationally marginalised girls to produce a documentary enabling Indian women’s individual stories to be told, digitally archived, so their collective legacy can be amplified for sharing with descendants and communities of interest, who currently have no formal resources for accessing the at-risk heritage of their mothers and grandmothers.