What are we to make of landmark events like St Patrick’s Day, St George’s Day, Refugee Week and Black History Month, in the new era of the Big Society?
As an organisation we have always been rather cynical and sceptical about the power of such days and weeks. There is always a hiatus of activity for the few days prior to the event and then it all falls flat, faster than you can say ‘tokenism’.
However this year we may have to curb our cynicism and crank up our enthusiasm. Just because these events, IF managed properly maybe our only option for supporting a more sophisticated understanding of race, culture, ethnicity and migration.
So what can we look forward to? It is really hard to think of anything that is different, genuinely interesting, and that does not patronise or come across as a form of voyeuristic fascination with the 'other'.
So while we put our thinking caps on, here is RAMFEL’s top 10 dos and don’ts for celebrating cultural landmark events:
1. Promote properly, make sure your publicity material includes a consortia of multi ethnic hands, and a globe. Make sure you have the date right – June is just one long celebration of carers, volunteers and refugees. You could have carers who were also volunteers and happened to be refugees - but people might think you were being a bit greedy.
2. Book a room with expandable walls! That way you can always literally model your event around the number of people who do or don’t turn up
3. Make sure the food is spicy enough to be understood as ‘ethnic’ but not too spicy to put people off and make poor jokes about Delhi belly
4. Have a bit of history in there – but do make sure you have the right community's history. Not all black people are refugees, and not all refugees are black people!
5. Make sure you have transportation available for your guest speaker or if you’re on a limited budget, have roller skates available. Your guest speaker will usually be in high demand because they will have to do 18 events a day for a week, and then no one will call them for the next 11 months!
6. Have ethnic music that is not too loud – because you don’t want to have an ASBO stuck on you for disturbing the neighbours
7. Have an awards ceremony. Make up a reason, like people showing up - to create that authentic sense of achievement
8. Don’t use the event to make any campaigning or policy points – cos that just sucks, and doesn’t make for good photos
9. Plan neither to start or finish on time - as your audience, like your speaker, would probably have just come from an event, and be planning to go onto another.
10. Any finally do believe that these things work – because just being in the same room as half a dozen refugees and ethnic people means you understand them so much better - which would also mean that getting on the tube in London could be the greatest advancement of community cohesion in years
For help on planning your key cultural calendar events, or help with flogging your dead horse, call RAMFEL on…..
The sense of unease about these special "days" comes from the fact that you are a migrant/refugee/woman/LGBTI etc etc person not just on these "days" but pretty much every moment of your current life. So why bother? Some of us (i.e. those who are considered to be the objects of these singing / dancing events) would rather people just leave us alone: it is the rest of the world that wants sees me as a BME migrant person, not me. I'd rather spend my time drinking a cup of tea, nibbling a digestive biscuit. By a migrant girl, approaching 40
ReplyDeleteThis part of the sentence means I can head into the weekend with a smile…… but people might think you were a being a bit greedy.
ReplyDelete