In autumn 2018 we run a series of workshops on migration, memory and local history at the Stifford Centre (Stepney Green, London). The workshops were co-designed with Julie Begum (Swadhinata Trust), who led a guided tour of the local area for a group for a group of students of the centre (ESOL course). During the walk, participants were provided with disposable cameras and invited to take photographs of those places that they deemed more important in their experience of locality. The photographs paved the ways for group discussions on issues of locality and community, migration and belonging and were followed up by one-to-one interviews. The photographs were later incorporated in the Aldgate East My Neighbourhood exhibition by Four Corners, at the IdeaStore in Whitechapel (December 2018).
“When I was in Bangladesh and I heard I’d be going to London, I had a feeling and I knew that London would be something beautiful […] So when I came to London at first I didn’t like it because I felt lonely […] but as time passed I started to like it and I realised that what I heard back in Bangladesh [was true]“
– Participant
