Pan Intercultural Arts, in association with Adfed, presents There Ain’t No Black In The Union Jack:

Project Director’s Introduction
There Ain’t No Black In The Union Jack, inspired by the book of the same name by Paul Gilroy, has evolved out of 8 years of thinking. After a successful one-year pilot in 2006, the current project was launched in 2007 as a mentoring, training and development programme.  Thirteen  groups of young people aged 14-30 from across London received support from a range of established arts practitioners, mentors and organisations, with the final aim of creating their own original works connected to the themes and ideas of There Ain’t No Black In the Union Jack.  These include themes of home, place, identity, displacement, flags, anthems,

imperialism, race, personal histories, belonging and unbelonging. At the heart of the project is the concept of cultivating and supporting the young cultural leaders of the future.
Each group is led by 1-2 leaders who attend monthly Cultural Leadership weekends.  Here they learn techniques in peer mentoring and professional development enabling them to become art workers on the project and further their careers.

In the mainstream the publication of reports such as the McPherson Report and the recent government commissioned Runnymede Report have contributed to the debate about Britain’s identity and its emerging redefinition as a multicultural society.  We now have a British citizenship test which all immigrants must pass, triggering

fundamental questions such as ‘What does it mean to be British today?’ it is against the backdrop of this social and political climate that There Ain’t no Black in the Union Jack was born. “We are very aware that in Britain a new generation is emerging.
It is a generation that is born here and is familiar with the interplay between cultures and nationalities''.

Shabnam Shabazi
www.creativestatesinternational.com

About Pan Intercultural Arts
Pan has been working for twenty-one years at the crossroads of cultures. It was the first UK Company to open up the possibilities of interculturalism in the arts and remains at the cutting edge of this field. Reacting to the ever changing and morphing profile of society in the UK,

click here for next page