A seaside town in northwest England was one of the destinations where bales of raw jute imported from Calcutta were headed towards the end of the 19th century. Now, the two endpoints of the journey are being connected by a cultural exchange project, titled A New Jute Route.
Seventeen members from Barrow in Furness are here till Monday on a reciprocal visit as part of an artiste-sharing cross-continental partnership between BarrowFull and Song of Soul, two non-profit cultural outfits based in Barrow and Kolkata respectively, funded by the British Council.
“We have a shared history about jute being supplied from here to the Barrow & Calcutta Jute Company, founded in 1870. Though the mill has long shut, we still have streets with links to the jute trade, like Calcutta Street and Jute Road, close to the jute sheds,” said Daniel Tyler-McTighe, BarrowFull’s creative director. “We are a town of just 70,000 people. Instead of jute connecting us, we are now connecting with Kolkata in a new way – through creativity and art forms.”
“The project started last year. Nine of us visited them in June. Now they are here on a nine-day visit,” said Kaushik Dutta, director of Song of Soul.
Members of associate company Open Theatre ran workshops for 12 organisations in the city, like Manovikas Kendra and Mentaid, which look after and teach young people with learning disabilities and autism, and their teachers. Connections were also discussed between them and the students and staff at Barrow’s special school, George Hastwell.
Representatives from DropZone, a youth charity, and Women’s Community Matters, a charity for women, visited women’s and children’s charities and a school for slum and street children. Rapper JD and singer-producer Swerve have jammed with local classical musicians and recorded in a studio.
Kate Davis, a poet, did creative writing workshops with children. “I asked them for topics they wanted to write on. They came up with ‘silence’ and ‘kindness’. We discussed what colour, shape and texture silence and kindness could have, what food each would be like, where they could be found…” said Davis. The simple lines they wrote were strung together by her in a poem on each topic with profound meanings and formed part of an exhibition at ICCR on Friday.
Barrow-based Lego animation-creator Tori Davis held workshops at Future Hope, using toy bricks donated by the Lego Foundation in Denmark. “They donated 50kg of Lego bricks which we divided amongst ourselves and carried in our suitcases. Many of the children had not seen Lego bricks before,” said Tyler-McTighe. The shapes created by the children became the subject of animated short video clips which were displayed at the exhibition on tabs.
Children also created flags with fabrics of the colours of their choice which they said could be found in their favourite places in Kolkata, which they were asked to name.
At the exhibition, Richard Hayhow of Open Theatre engaged spectators in non-verbal theatre, just as they had done in schools. Scenes from three Shakespearian plays were also enacted as a result of a collaboration.
The UK team was taken on a tour of a jute mill in Kamarhati to underline the jute link.