Engage

Feast For The Senses Project

This wide-ranging project, made possible with funding from Scottish Natural Heritage & Forestry Commission Scotland has incorporated outdoor trips , food foraging and arts activities, involving different intergenerational, multicultural groups, taking place from March – June 2010.

The aims of this project were to sustainably engage participants with local green spaces and woodland & enhancing their understanding of local natural heritage through a variety of outdoor activities and arts activities. Participants were involved in a wide variety of activities from walking, food foraging, plant identification, treeplanting, growing vegetables to drama, storytelling and painting. A large scale six-panel mural has been created by all participants incorporating images of flora and fauna and anecdotes, stories and poems from the different trips . This beautiful, colourful mural will be displayed at the Mela 2010.

Participants included -

Nari Khallyan Shango ( N.K.S ) Bengali group & Pakistani group
N.K.S is a health and welfare project for South Asian women and children in Edinburgh, providing a common platform for South Asian women to act together to improve the quality of their lives.

Saheliya Womens & Girls group
Saheliya is a specialist health and well-being support organisation for women and girls of black, minority ethnic, asylum seeker/refugee or migrant backgrounds in Edinburgh and the surrounding area. It promotes positive mental health, develops women’s confidence and self-esteem, reducing barriers such as isolation and depression.

Sikh Sanjog Girls Group
Sikh Sanjog provides suppport for the Edinburgh Sikh community , offering the opportunity to engage with cultural traditions and heritage by developing skills and creativity through a variety of activities including arts and crafts, IT classes, a young mum’s group, punjabi classes and a social enterprise café ‘Punjabi Di Rasoi’.

The Edinburgh Mela Engage Programme

The Edinburgh Mela Engagement Officer post has been funded by the Scottish Arts Council LEARN fund. The LEARN fund is designed to assist arts organisations to plan and deliver high quality education work. LEARN projects include; training for artists & staff; development & research, as well as testing new models of practise.

The aims of the Mela Engage post include – community engagement, developing strategic partnerships, incorporating the Festival & Artist programme as a learning resource, CPD resource & training, as well as developing engage work as part of Mela business plan.

Mela Engage projects and collaborations over the past year have included:-

Scottish Natural Heritage (SNH) & Forestry Commission Scotland (FCS) -
SNH & FCS have supported the Mela for many years and have recently funded a variety of outreach education projects working with members of BAME communities including a variety of outdoor trips , the Site Sculpture Summer ’09 project & the Feast for the Senses outdoor arts project which has been onging over the past four months – with .

Global Xchange Volunteers -
Two volunteers, one from the UK and one from Bangladesh, from the VSO Global Xchange scheme have been working with the Mela for the past 3 months helping deliver Engage activities with diverse community groups. The Global Xchange team have been active with a variety of organisations throughout Edinburgh.

Children & Families Programme -
The Children’s & Families area at the Mela is an essential part of the festival and this year we are pleased to have strong community representation, including the Nepal Scotland Association, Alchemy Arts with the Community Organisation for Racial Equality (C.O.R.E) and one of our current artists-in-residence, Sadia Gul-Ibrahim who will be working alongside members of the Nari Khallyan Shango (N.K.S) Pakistani Women’s group.

Community Programming Forum -
set up to give local community members the opportunity to have a say in different aspects of the Mela including the programming of the Garden Stage & the Fashion Show.

Future Developments -

Making Space events – a series of events to be held throughout the Edinburgh Festival aiming to address key issues and challenges facing the development and integration of culturally diverse arts practice and minority ethnic artists and arts professional in Scotland.

Shared Territories - pARTners scheme – It is intended that Shared Territories will build on the successes of partnerships with SNH & FCS . Artists residencies will focus on a more sustained and longer-term creative engagement with minority ethnic groups in natural environments using the arts as a lens to explore Scotland’s outdoor landscapes.

CARGO - education opportunities are being developed with this exciting large-scale outdoor production which has its world premier at the Edinburgh Mela.

Mela business plan – sustainable education and outreach work will be an integral part of the 3-year Edinburgh Mela business plan ensuring that Engage developments can continue to progress.

GLOW - A world-first, this is an online network which puts schools across Scotland in contact with each other via forums, discussion groups, as well as specially devised GLOW groups relating to specific subjects. The GLOW intranet is set to be an invaluable asset to pupils, teachers and arts professionals working within education. GLOW will be rolled out in Edinburgh school’s in the next academic year & Edinburgh Mela has been developing links with schools who are early Edinburgh GLOW-adopters.