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11 May, 2015

Pioneers: Bushra Nasir CBE (MMP Education Committee Chair)

Pioneers is an Islam Channel documentary series which celebrates British Muslim Innovators.

This latest in the Pioneers series charts the journey and achievements of our Education Committee Chair, the hugely successful and influential Bushra Nasir CBE.

Biography: Bushra Nasir CBE 

Mrs Bushra Nasir was a secondary headteacher with 20 years’ experience at Plashet School in the London Borough of Newham before retiring in December 2012. She was the first Muslim female headteacher of a secondary school in the UK.

In 2003, she was awarded a CBE for her services to education and in 2005 won the ‘Asian Professional Woman of the Year’ award. She served on the General Teaching Council from 2000 to 2005 and was president of the Muslim Teachers’ Association for six years. In 2006, Mrs Nasir was awarded an Honorary Doctorate from the University of East London for her services to education; in 2007 she received a Fellowship from Queen Mary College London.

While working in Newham, Mrs Nasir chaired Secondary Heads’ meetings and led a Leading Edge Partnership. She has also mentored ten newly appointed Head-teachers.

She has been trained and accredited as a mentor by the Institute of Education and has completed the Consultant Leaders Programme. She is an accredited School Improvement Partner (SIP) and has supported schools in Essex. She is currently on the Education Advisory Panel for Mosaic and is a coach for the NCSL BME headteacher internship programme. She is a Council member of Queen Mary University and the Chair of the Education Committee of the Migration Museum Project.

Mrs Nasir is co-author of a book called Breaking Stereotypes, which aims to provide positive role models for ethnic minority young people. In 2009, she was named in the top 10 list of Muslim women in the ‘Muslim Power’ list produced by the Equality and Human Rights Commission and published in The Times.

Mrs Nasir was awarded TES Headteacher of the Year in summer 2012.

22 April, 2015

London Live: Adopting Britain

Maurice Nwokeji and Frank Gitro tell London Live TV about the personal objects that they have contributed to the Migration Museum Project’s Keepsakes display in the Adopting Britain exhibition at Southbank Centre.

Keepsakes is a new Migration Museum Project initiative bringing together personal objects that keep alive individuals’ memories of migration and identity. Watch this space for our Keepsakes online gallery – coming soon!

Adopting Britain is curated by Southbank Centre in partnership with Counterpoints Arts. It features MMP’s new Keepsakes display, many of our 100 Images of Migration, and creative content from our partnership project with Leicester Museum Studies, 100 Stories of Migration.

 

See our latest update with all Adopting Britain news.

15 April, 2015

Adopting Britain exhibition at the Southbank Centre

Featuring MMP Images and Keepsakes

Fri 17 April – Sun 6 September 2015⎪10am – 11pm daily
Royal Festival Hall⎪Spirit Level⎪Free admission
Exhibition Tours⎪18, 19, 25, 26 April & 2 May⎪1pm⎪Advanced Booking (Free)
Celebrating 70 Years of Migration (free public event)⎪Sat 2 May⎪11 – 3pm


We are delighted to be collaborating with the Southbank Centre to bring a selection of 100 Images of Migration and Keepsakes to Adopting Britain, the latest exhibition presented by the Southbank Centre in partnership with Counterpoints Arts.

 

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 less 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.
Adopting Britain: 70 Years of Migration launches on 17 April as part of the Southbank Centre’s Changing Britain festival. This interactive and accessible exhibition aims to highlight personal stories of migrants and refugees, celebrate the contribution of migrant groups to Britain’s artistic landscape and open up discussion around one of the most politically sensitive and pertinent topics of this year’s election.

For further details, please visit the Southbank Centre website.

 

When Lily was a young child in Hungary, her mother gave her this small gold pendant. In July 1944, when Lily was 14 the Nazis deported her from her town of Bonyhad with her mother, brother and three sisters. They were taken by train to Auschwitz. The small pendant went with them hidden inside the heel of her mother’s shoe. As they arrived at the camp her mother asked Lily to swap shoes with her. She never saw her again. The guards ordered valuables to be handed over but her pendant stayed in the heel of her shoe. When the shoes wore out she placed the pendant in her daily ration of bread. After about four months in Auschwitz, the sisters were transferred to an ammunition factory near Leipzig. The pendant went with them. Allied forces liberated Leipzig in 1945 and the sisters sought refuge in Switzerland. Lily tried to rebuild her life. She wore the pendant every day in memory of her murdered family. In 1967 she came to London with her husband and three children. Lily still wears the gold pendant and shares its remarkable story with all those who have time to listen. Any gold arriving in Auschwitz was stolen by the Nazis so Lily believes that her pendant is unique, the only gold to enter and leave the camp with its rightful owner. Like Lily herself, it survived against the odds.
Keepsakes is a display of personal items that keep memories of migration and identity alive. Museum collections represent society’s decisions about what objects are valuable enough to hand down to future generations. But museum objects matter less to most people than the objects their parents and grandparents chose to pass on to them, and which they hand on to their own children and grandchildren.

Join us to explore the value of personal keepsakes in sharing migration stories. Do you have a Keepsake with a migration story? Tweet us @MigrationUK #Keepsakes.

Supported by the Paul Hamlyn Foundation.

 

Hendy's UK passport is 99 percent like mine. Only his says "British Overseas Citizen" and mine says "British Citizen." He was entitled to such a passport and he applied for it when he came to the UK from Malaysia. He was told it would enable him to live and work here. As it turns out this is a very peculiar passport. Now that he has it, Hendy has no rights at all to live or work in the UK. He is effectively stateless. He is a trained accountant but has to work illegally in a restaurant to make ends meet. There are hundreds like him. I took this photo as part of a documentary I have filmed about British Overseas Citizens.
100 Images of Migration is our flagship touring exhibition and is constantly moving, growing and adapting. It began life at our launch in 2011, the result of a competition we ran in the Guardian, and has since been adapted for Hackney Museum, Senate House, Leicester University, Leicester Train Station, BBC Radio East Midlands and the Heritage Gallery in Greenwich. A selection of our 100 Images form a constant thread through the 6 thematic sections of Adopting Britain.

For more information about 100 Images of Migration and to view the online gallery, please visit our Exhibitions page.

If you have an image which tells a story of migration, join our Flickr group to add it to our online gallery.

22 December, 2014

Highlights from our 2014 Autumn Events

Photograph of Migration & Fashion event speakers in front of Migration Museum Project banners

We have had a fantastic autumn at the Migration Museum Project with three special events on top of all the great activity that has been happening in London, Leicester and Oxford around our 100 Images of Migration and Germans in Britain exhibitions.

We were delighted to partner with CARA (the Council for At-Risk Academics) again to bring you two Great Minds events, and to work with our Distinguished Friend Lord Parekh to establish what will be our annual Public Lecture series in partnership with the London School of Economics and Political Sciences (LSE).

Great Minds: Berlin to Britain
in partnership with CARA

Carl Miller shows Lord Moser his copy of Emil and the Detectives as Susie Harries looks on smiling Members of the audience look on smiling

In October, Great Minds: Berlin to Britain brought our Distinguished Friends Lord Moser and Susie Harries together with playwright Carl Miller for a fascinating conversation at the Goethe Institut London.

Lord Moser  was born in Berlin in 1922 and came to Britain in 1936, and captivated the audience with his memories of the Berlin of his childhood and with his reflections on visits to Berlin since and more widely on the value of migration itself for Britain. Carl Miller adapted Erich Kästner’s Emil and the Detectives for the National Theatre’s 2013 Christmas Show, and shared his experiences of working with young Londoners to bring 1920s Berlin to life for today’s audiences.

Visit our Video page to watch them in conversation with Susie Harries. 

The Languages of Migration

Michael Rosen standing at the lectern talking with impassioned gestures. Members of the audience raise their hands.

In November, Michael Rosen gave us plenty of food for thought – and a few chuckles – as he took us through his reflections and analyses on The Languages of Migration. Michael Rosen is a celebrated writer, poet, performer, broadcaster and Professor of Children’s Literature at Goldsmiths, University of London. You can listen to and read the transcript of the lecture on our Audio page, and you can read all about the lecture in a great blog by our Education Officer Emily. The transcript is also posted on Michael Rosen’s blog, where you can find other musings by Michael on migration, education and current affairs as well as great new poems.

We look forward to working with LSE again in 2015 for our second annual joint Public Lecture. Many thanks to Lord Parekh for supporting this new lecture series.

Great Minds: Migration and Fashion
in partnership with CARA

Photograph of Migration and Fashion speakers in conversation - Awon and Hazel laughing. Photograph of an elegant gold netted metal headpiece on a mannequin head. Photograph of oral historian Heiba interviewing photographer Charlie

In December, we rounded the year off in style with Great Minds: Migration and Fashion. Milliner Awon Golding, fresh from London Fashion Week, and designer Hazel Aggrey-Orleans of the exclusive Eki Orleans boutique, joined Maggie Semple OBE of Semple: Women, Fashion, Stories to discuss how their personal journeys have shaped their work and identity as fashion designers.

We were also delighted to be joined by Heba @ Brick Lane, OpenTheGate Handmade and Delores Oblitey who showcased work from their collections.

During the reception, members of the audience then had the opportunity to share their own personal stories with oral historian Heiba Lamara and illustrator Sofia Niazi of OOMK Zine. We are looking forward to sharing the wonderful interview excerpts and illustrations with you in the new year – watch this space!

Do visit our Facebook album for more fabulous photographs from the event. A video of the conversation will be uploaded soon.