Out of Many One

Celebrating Cultural Diversity and

Community Cohesion in Schools

Teacher Resource Pack

About Sampad South Asian Arts Based in Birmingham since 1990, sampad has helped to establish South Asian arts within mainstream culture in the U.K. We aim to broaden the perception of British-Asian arts with audiences of all backgrounds and also to provide opportunities for South Asian people to explore and recognise multiple heritages. This role is vital in contemporary Britain where issues of identity dominate the social, cultural and political landscape. We work in a range of ways using the diverse art forms originating from India, Pakistan, Bangladesh and Sri Lanka and we take pride with the range of intercultural work that we’re involved with. Our work ranges from the creation of original new work in music, theatre, dance, digital and visual arts; promotion of established and emerging talent; and advocacy, education and outreach activities. Our reputation for quality and innovation in the field has been built through enduring partnerships with leading arts organisations and with youth, community settings and the education and learning sector.www.sampad.org.uk

Out of Many One

Out of Many One was a project to highlight the benefits of community cohesion. Birmingham has many varied communities with different cultures, religions and races; Out of Many One was about bringing those communities together through South Asian arts to show the positivity in working together and the value in respecting and accepting one another.

2010 was the 20th anniversary of the beginning of sampad as an organisation and to mark this, 20 groups from the diverse communities of Birmingham all took part in the project. Each group took part in a series of workshops to create work that reflected the theme of ‘Out of Many there is One’. The song ‘We are One’, written specifically for the project, was used as the stimulus for the work the young people and children created. The idea was for all of the many communities to come together and produce something as one.

Sampad worked with 20 groups to produce ‘Out of Many One’ through the following art forms; dance, music, spoken word and animation. This resource book has been created to help support schools to outline some of the key themes from the project, as well as demonstrate some activities which can be recreated by teachers within their lesson planning when studying citizenship, PHSE or community cohesion.

We are One We are many cultures, And we are many creeds. We’re diverse human beings, With diverse human needs We come from many places, From all over this globe. Some countries are so very hot And some are very cold Chorus: Where ever we are from, Who ever we maybe. All of us belong, To the human family. We are ek We are uno We are moja….. WE ARE ONE! We have our own traditions And different foods we eat. Different forms of clothing, And different ways we speak. With many celebrations How joyous they all are So colourful and vibrant

They bring people from a far. (Chorus) If we want a happy planet Where things are not all wrong. We need to come together And learn to get along So lets attack all prejudice And bring it to an end Learning from our old mistakes Why can’t we all be friends? (Chorus) By Rohit Ballal

One Poem

To begin the activity read or give the children a copy of the song ‘We are One’ and have a discussion around the words within it.

After the discussion ask the students to say the number 1 in as many different languages as possible while you the teacher scribe these out for them. If they are struggling to come up with them, why not get them to research the number 1 and find different ways to write and say the number 1 in as many different languages as possible. Using what they have come up with, support them to structure the different ways of saying the number one into a four line poem. This can rhyme or not but use the topics in ‘We are One’ to create a poem about ‘being different but the same’.

Performance Poetry Using the ‘We are One’ poem, encourage the children to practice their performance skills. You will need;

Multiple copies of the poem

Percussion instruments e.g. Djembe drum, Tabla etc Divide the class into groups of four or five. In the groups, discuss the structure and content of the poem. Give each group a verse of the poem to create a performance to and ask each group to learn the chorus for them all to perform as a class. The groups need to focus on creating a rhythm that they can recite, sing or rap the poem to, paying particular attention to timings, working together and how they use their voice to deliver the message of the poem. In their groups, get them to perform their part of the poem and have everybody join in for the chorus.... with plenty of practice, this can be performed to the rest of the school during assembly, why not invite parents and celebrate the message of the poem!

Who We Are - a community cohesion project

This activity aims to give children the opportunity to get to know other children from a different school or area and gain a better understanding of diversity and stereotyping. The group or class of children need to have a link with another school, preferably in a different area from their own. Every pupil needs to have their photograph taken which will be sent to the other class. Each photograph should be put in the middle of the Identity Wheel opposite. It is a good idea that the teachers of both schools pair up the children with a child from the other school prior to the exchanging of the Identity Wheels. Discuss with the children what kind of judgements they make about people and what they think others may think of them. The Identity Wheels are then sent to the linking school for the children to fill in. Have a discussion with the children once they have received the Identity Wheels from linking school about, based on the photograph, what do they think of the person. You can discuss topics such as faith, cultural background, likes and dislikes etc and fill in a separate section for each on the wheel.

Pupil Picture

Faith

Likes

Ethnicity D

islik

es

The teachers then need to arrange for one school to visit the other.

It is important that the Identity Wheels are filled in prior to the

visit.

Once the children are all together, it is their task to find their

partner pupil and find out whether their judgements were right and

together they can fill in the correct information.

Towards the end of the visit discuss as a group their differences and

similarities and how we should be respecting and celebrating these.

To continue the links between the schools, set up regular visits to

each school for linking activities; build in Skype sessions with ICT

classes for the children to communicate with each other; or each

class can take the other on a community walk to introduce them

and welcome them to their community.

There are many different and exciting activities to get to know each

other, start linking!

United Flag of Many

We are lucky to live in such a diverse and inter/multi-cultural

society. We can learn so much from each other so why not

celebrate all the different cultures in your setting with an arts

activity that you can display. Within one country there are many!

You will need;

Large piece of white material (size of a single bed sheet)

rectangular shape

Fabric paints or acrylic paints and plenty of paint brushes

Large area to paint

Lots of children wanting to celebrate their culture and get a

little messy

1. Draw a large Union Jack covering the whole of the material

in pencil

2. The next step can be carried out by the teacher if the

children are quite young and for speeding up the process or

this can be done by the children. In each triangular section

of the flag, small flags of the children’s home countries or

cultural background are drawn into the space, until all of the

triangular shapes are covered in different flags, changing

the shapes of the flags to fit

3. After each triangle has been filled in with all the small flags,

get a few children to paint the original colours of the crosses

on the Union Jack in the original colours of red and white.

4. Next get the children to paint their flag already drawn onto

the union jack

Display your United Flag of Many for visitors to see when they

enter your school showing your celebration of everybody’s

culture.

Additional information for the project Out of Many One

228 young people and children took part in the project overall.

What did they do?

Workshops were led in Bhangra dance and music, Islamic Nasheed

singing, Bollywood dance, Kathak dance, storytelling and animation.

The workshop leaders were all professionals in their own discipline, some

of whom we have not previously worked with in a workshop capacity

which was an opportunity for sampad to expand our artist network and

be in a position to offer a wider range of activities.

Each workshop was individually unique due to the workshop leader’s

unique creative process and the dynamics created from each participant’s

contribution and this impacted on how they worked together as a group.

c/o mac, Cannon Hill Park Tel : 0121 446 3260

Birmingham B12 9QH Email: info@sampad.org.uk

www.sampad.org.uk

Each series workshop consisted of;

Introduction into the discipline they would be working in; some of

the artists demonstrated this by giving the participants a mini

performance.

Learning the basic technique of the art form in order to learn a

performance piece.

Contributing their own creative ideas to the performance piece

through discussion and analysis of their own progress.

Participants were taught set choreography, songs and rhythms,

previously planned by artists who used Rohit Ballal’s original song

written for the purpose of the Out of Many One project, focusing

on global citizenship, community cohesion and working together

as one.

Participants rehearsed the performance pieces to improve their

skills and technique and also gain performance techniques.

The finale to the project consisted of a collaborative performance

and animation screening held at Town Hall Birmingham.

Photography by Adrian Burrows