A musical feast for the Mile Enders'? Music, social inclusion and community engagement in London's East End, c.1890 to the present

My interest in a PHD and study at this point in time comes from an alignment of this particular research area with my own current professional and academic interests. My role as Creative Director at Project Phakama, based in Mile End and on Queen Mary's campus, aptly places me at the centre of Mile End in my own professional work, and the practical based approach to the PHD allows for real life engagement with East London communities, alongside Phakama's current and new communities, re-engaging local people into their own histories, locations and geographical landscapes with storytelling and arts engagement. As a Bangladeshi female artist with roots in Walthamstow but a strong sense of my own familial migration and of diaspora, I bring to the position unique qualities, skills and real world knowledge.

In 2002 I completed my MA in Combined History at the University of Manchester, focusing my thesis on the migration of Sylheti (Bangladeshi) lascars/sailors from the 1890's to the present day. This timeframe perfectly suits the context for my inclusion in this doctorate research award, as I have already undertaken some research into the cultural, political, social landscape of that time, with specific reference to the Docklands which I strongly believe contains a central important aspect to the rich cultural and musical heritage of the East End.
I have 20 years of organising, planning, developing and planning projects as a project manager, arts director and as musical artist. I have a strong ethos of active participation and over the years each project has required a well developed need for research, rigour and critical analysis. In my recent commission to develop Savitri for Northern Opera, research across academic papers became central to understand the mythologies of Savitri and the works of Holst. In 2018 I undertook a commission for Google Curate which I entitled Sound Travels, a photographic feature of 5 women composers in the UK, culminating in an online exhibition of photography and narrative, my own work/cd/flyers now also included in the Music Collection of archived female composers at the British Music Collection at Heritage Quay, Huddersfield.
I lived in Manchester for 15 years but East London is where I was born and where I now work, and I want to input and innovate into the creation of a new way of documenting, recording, archiving, presenting and including those historical voices. Whether that be re-engaing with archives from P an O ferries into the docklands to see what music records we can find on those ships coming into the East End, through to piloting a new project with a group of British East End artists from a wide cultural background, these methods and approaches will assist in developing a strong sense of both storytelling but historical recording and archive development.
I have through various commissions but also my own project Sufi in the City which looks at migration, diaspora, dogma, womanhood and spiritual connections to music, literature and art, been developing a keen interest in maps and mapping. I have created some prototype participatory engagement tools through this project to map journeys and create art outcome from them. I would like this to form a strong aspect of the research, allowing myself and others through community settings and engagement to walk and explore. With sound archives and storytelling forming a central part of how research is processed and disemminated across seminars, talks and presentations.