Opening night of Stay With Love exhibition - we celebrated with poetry, music and good company!

On October 3rd the opening night of the Stay With Love exhibition at The Sound Lounge in Tooting saw a very diverse group of 75 join in to celebrate the exhibition. There were teenagers, families and young children from the asylum-seeking and refugee community who are served by CARAS. There were many of the CARAS team of staff and volunteers, and lots of TTT volunteers. All have been contributing to the creative and expressive work that makes up the exhibiton.
Plus there were friends old and new from the wider community - it was a great welcoming mix from many countries!

Carrie was our MC for the night. She welcomed everyone and reminded us that the offer to 'Stay With Love' had been written in July on one of the pallet-benches made in the Youth Club. That's a poignant invitation for a young refugee to make.
  
We saw the delightful CARAS Youth Club short film: two minutes capturing the experience of sharing and value that many of us have enjoyed as volunteers over the past two and a half years. We'll add a weblink asap.

Hannah White, co-founder of the Sound Lounge, celebrated the work and good humour of the young people from CARAS who are doing certificated training as coffee baristas and as sound engineers at the café.

We shared poems and prose linked to the experiences of living in and valuing a new place, of changing perceptions and of new languages and relationships. Here is a poem read and written  by Resina Chowdhury:

Prayer

To move away from a land

We must break ourselves off it completely. 

The split leaves a wound

a loss of memory, huge and gaping

which nothing material can fill. 

O Mother of a false birth, 

you were not ready for me. 

Where was the milk to offer your baby, all drained of blood? 

Dying, I was taken to where

the milk was plentiful

where there was blood to give, rich and warm

and we survived, 

more or less, weaned by another. 

But cannot forget those who held us before. 

What is the treatment for the loss of a culture? 

To see oneself continue in history? 

What can be said when the spirit is forgotten? 

When a life is not nurtured

because it is not understood? 

Still we seek out a tongue that will define. 

Mother

Teach me who I am. 

Give me knowledge to recover myself. 

Give me understanding to fill the loss. 

Give me strength to withstand hostility. 

Give me love to endure.  

We had live music of many kinds -

Dermot and Gerri led half an hour where the children 

used all the percussion instruments we could find. 

They were the backing band for extempore songs with words taken from some of the CARAS participants' statements about their heroes or ambitions.

David sang about Cristiano Ronaldo, Carrie sang

'I Want to Be a Dentist', Emiliano drummed...all fantastic!

Shonar Spiral from London played two gutsy songs.

Fadhil Alfadly and Kaspar King from Iraq rapped in Arabic over iPhone tracks and live drumming. One of the children stayed on to accompany their songs: she was very composed.

Dermot played a solo set as conversation continued until it was time to tidy up and head home after a lovely evening together.

Please visit The Sound Lounge and enjoy the exhibition any time the café is open. There are two interactive pieces alongside the wide range of creative work done by the Youth Club, the Family Groups and the ESOL classes.
There's a comments book set up, you can take a CARAS or TTT leaflet and please get in touch with CARAS or TTT if you want to know more, or if you want to find out how to volunteer. 
Please take a #StayWithLove sticker or two and ask your friends to visit!

The Stay With Love exhibition is open and ready to visit. You can add your own views to the show.

We're thrilled that the Stay With Love exhibition has moved from concept to reality alongside our partners CARAS and The Sound Lounge. We experienced so much energy, creativity and patience from all the volunteers and staff involved in this experiment: Thank You!

We hung the show on the 2nd October, and then the exhibition opening was brilliant last evening. Now the show is available to enjoy whenever The Sound Lounge is open, until October 29th.

Drilling holes for hanging

Suspending the figure drawings

Two of the exhibition pieces ask for your views and ideas. 
We hope you get there and add to When I Dream and Thread Your Story devised by CARAS and the adult group. Of course, you can enjoy the whole show with coffee or a sandwich served by young people from CARAS who are engaged in certificated work training at The Sound Lounge.

'Thread Your Story'

'When I Dream'

The exhibition opening festivities yesterday included an afternoon family crafts workshop and then the main evening celebration - we'll report on the celebration in the next blog post.

Afternoon Family Crafts
Straight from school, two dozen children & adults launched into an hour and a half's making, all crowded around two long tables. It was a great scene and we admired their energy after a whole day in school. We offered two of our favourite and valuable projects. Both are related to the purpose and content of the creative work we have carried out alongside the refugees and aslyum-seekers from CARAS over the past two years in the Rooting in Tooting and Gardens of Refuge projects

"Tooting's insects need your love!"
We looked at photos of some local garden insects (predators and prey; garden crop-friendly and also less desirable) and then made plastic bottle insect shelters for beneficial ladybirds and lacewings in the garden.
With some clever planning, decorations onto the rolled-up corrugated cardboard could be protected from rain by being placed inside the bottle rather than stuck on the outside of the plastic (= design and technology for real).
Families took their bottle-houses home to hang in the trees in their own gardens or neighbourhoods.

She's added a #StayWithLove sticker

"Feel safe and breathe!"
Secondly, we painted garden row markers with messages of welcome on them. That's in the same spirit the CARAS Youth Club showed when they wrote inviting comments in many languages on the on four inscribed pallet-benches for the Tooting Twirl - one is in the show and two more are being used in the cafe.

Children and adults devised messages - another design and planning challenge - which they painted on narrow wooden slats we've rescued from discarded bed frames - very neat recycling as the slats are strong and a perfect size. The artists donated all the painted markers to the Tooting Community Garden, which we really appreciate.

All the new markers, laid out on one of the benches

More soon on the evening opening celebrations....