19 July, 2017
The photograph was taken at a central London hotel, where Fatima Seroukh was working as a chambermaid. She came to this country from Tangiers in 1978. At the time most of the service and hospitality industry in the UK was in need of recruiting foreign labour to fill its workforce. Morocco, Spain, Portugal and the Philippines supplied such labour and most of the workers recruited were single women, who left their families behind in their home countries. Alone in a new country these women came to see their fellow workers as a new family, encouraging a strong feeling of sisterhood.
This image, of migrant workers, working in a London hotel in the 1970s, is part of a series of pictures produced to accompany an oral history project produced by the Al Hasaniya Moroccan Women’s Centre London 2010–11. The project documented the personal migratory stories of Moroccan women who came to the UK between 1960 and 1990 and settled in the Portobello area of London.
6 July, 2017
Linda Dawsing teaches the sons and daughters of Chinese families recently arrived to live on Merseyside: ‘Only four weeks ago, the 60 youngsters knew hardly a word of English. But now, after going on the specially devised crash course, they can all chatter away in English. The children, aged between 6 and 16, now know enough English to understand and be understood in their new life, and have lost their shyness and reserve.’
19 July, 2017
Worshippers have just begun a three-hour parade, to welcome the annual Sikh festival of Vaisakhi. This is an ancient harvest festival in the Punjab region of India and commemorates the founding of the Sikh nation in 1699. It also marks the Hindu solar New Year and is observed by people of different faiths across the sub-continent.
Leicester’s annual Sikh Vaisakhi parade normally attracts around 30,000 worshippers from all around the UK. It has grown enormously since it started in 1986 with a gathering of fewer than 1,000 Sikhs. The parade begins at about 11am at the Guru Nanak Gurdwara, which is located on a street named Holy Bones, since there is a church and graveyard adjacent to the temple. The Gurdwara normally see more than 1000 worshippers a day, either paying their respect for a few minutes to offering sewa (selfless service) through cleaning, cooking, serving food, prayers and much more.
Through this image and my wider body of work, I am keen to explore a community, in which individuals come together and work towards a collective goal. Leicester is a place where sophistication and tradition is continuing and being reinvented at every turn.
