Bangla Stories: telling community histories about migration and belonging

The 'Bangla Stories' website was developed in 2009 as a partnership between the research team on the AHRC funded 'Bengal diaspora' project and the Runnymede Trust. The 'Bengal diaspora' was a three year research project exploring the histories and experiences of migration from the Indian state of Bengal in the period after Partition in 1947. This migration was one of the largest of modern times, with an estimated 20 million people - Muslim and Hindu- displaced through Partition and subsequent natural disasters, wars and social and economic hardships. The research combined historical, sociological and anthropological theories and methods to consider why and how people migrated and how they made homes for themselves and their families in new and unfamiliar places. The project focused primarily on Bengali Muslim migrants, about whom less is known, but who accounted for the majority of Bengali migrants to Britain in the post-war years. Working in India, Bangladesh and Britain, the project team collected over 180 life histories of migrants, along with family trees and photographs, which provided a unique and intimate portrait of the experience of migration 'from below'. These stories shed new light on the way in which history and migration is lived, on the resources and experiences of a particular group of migrants in 'the Age of Migration', and on processes of social exclusion and multiculturalism in places of settlement in South Asia and the United Kingdom.

The 'Bangla Stories' website was developed in partnership with the Runnymede Trust, Britain's foremost race equality think tank, as a way of bringing these stories outside the academy and into the classrooms of the next generation of British schoolchildren. The aim was to enable young people, of whatever background, to understand both the broad flow of history and movement which shapes their world, their country, their city and their neighbourhood, and the individual, family and community histories that form part of these events. Told through the personal stories of eight migrants, from India, Bangladesh and Britain, who migrated at different times and for different reasons, the website provides a portal through which to view processes of migration and multiculturalism. Drawing on the established expertise of Runnymede, the website presents complex stories and histories in accessible and engaging ways, providing young people with the interest and the skills to engage with their own family and community histories, and to encourage them to talk to their parents and grandparents about their experiences of migration and of change. Although focused on the Bengali Muslim communities, the website and accompanying educational resource pack provides an exemplary template for engaging with young people in Britain, at Key Stage 3, with broader issues of relevance to a range of curricula, including history, citizenship, geography and English language.

The current project builds on this important and unique resource to 'roll out' the work through school based workshops and community events to encourage young people and local communities to research and narrate their own personal and community histories. Working across the school year, the original research team and Runnymede will conduct workshops disseminating the project findings and community history methods across the country, and opening up constructive dialogue around Britishness, multiculturalism and belonging. The project will also develop the Bangla Stories website to make it more interactive with young people in local communities, and, drawing on Runnymede's groundbreaking Generation 3.0 project, will develop a series of video archives and booklets which tell these local migration histories. We will also engage with policymakers and other academics around the process of dissemination of research, and engaging with national debates around migration and citizenship, as well as educational curricula in an age of migration.

The Bangla Stories website is a unique partnership between the original AHRC funded project team and the Runnymede Trust, Britain's foremost race equality organisation, and funded by the LSE's Heif4 Knowledge Transfer fund, explicitly designed to disseminate the research findings of the project outside the academy, to engage with community groups, with policymakers and practitioners working on issues of ethnic diversity in the UK, and young people. It has thus sought new ways to maximise impact of this piece of research across a range of audiences. The site was launched in December 2009 at a Runnymede lecture given by award-winning Bengali novelist, Amitav Ghosh at an event attended by over 350 people from a range of sectors, including the media. The finished site and education pack were launched in July 2010 at an event hosted by Baroness Pola Uddin at the House of Lords, and was attended by a class of 30 schoolchildren from Mulberry School, Tower Hamlets, community activists and media. These events received coverage by BBC Asian Network and the World Service, and 4 Bengali TV channels (Channel S, Channel I, ATN Bangla, NTV), and an article was published on the site by Eastern Eye newspaper and in the Runnymede Bulletin, which has a circulation of 3000 online subscribers, including government departments and third sector organisations. The website to date has logged over 8000 Absolute Unique Visitors, and this has shown an increase of over 8% for 2011.

The proposed follow-on funding will allow us to build on this established interest and reputation to further develop the impact of both the original research and the website in the following ways: 1) the website will be expanded to enable interaction from users (students, community activists, oral historians etc) to upload their own material and will also incorporate visual and written material from the community and school workshops). This will bring the material to a wider audience and will engage with institutions working around issues of education, community cohesion and race equality; 2) the project will be 'rolled out' through a series of workshops in schools and community groups, raising issues around diversity, community cohesion, family and local histories. This will engage a range of people from diverse ethnic and social backgrounds in the project of constructing inclusive and multi-cultural community and neighbourhood histories, building in part on the current national fascination with family histories. Runnymede's extensive previous work in these areas (such as their recent Generation 3.0 project in Birmingham) has engaged large audiences from local government, the third sector and community groups, and attracted local and national media interest. Runnymede have also worked successfully with teachers across a range of related projects.The resources will be of particular interest to schools, community centres and libraries. 3) Through the publication of a Perspectives paper and organisation of a policy seminar and online conference, we will be engaging with the Runnymede Academic Forum (200 members), the Runnymede 360 network and their Parliamentary network to engage debates around education, community cohesion and the Big Society. The recent Runnymede online conferences have attracted over 500 participants, including from government and the national media.