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The value of historical fiction writing in learning history - a one-day conference by Brick Lane CircleAbout this Event
The value of historical fiction writing in learning historyEast India Company Spice War Stories Project
A one-day conference by Brick Lane Circle, hosted by Royal Museums Greenwich, Saturday 5 November 2022, 10.15 am-4.30 pm
Lecture Theatre, National Maritime Museum, Greenwich, SE10 9NF
Programme
Conference chair: Sultana Choudhry - writer, academic with a PhD and a CEO of a charity
10.15 am: Doors open
10.30 am: Welcome and introduction
10.40 am: Early East India Company voyages to Asia
Dr Aaron Jaffer - Curator of World History and Cultures, Royal Museums Greenwich
10.50 pm: Running historical fiction writing projects
Dr Muhammad M Ahmedullah - secretary of Brick Lane Circle
11.00 am: Banda islands live link-up:
a) Banda islands - spice history and its legacy
Mita Alwi is an entrepreneur and public figure in the Banda Islands and manages the iconic Maulana Hotel in Banda Neira, standing opposite Gunung Api’s fire mountain across a deep-sea channel that separates the two islands. She is the chairman of Banda Heritage & Cultural Foundation, founded by Des Alwi, her famous grandfather, to preserve the cultural and historical sites of the Banda archipelago.
Des Alwi was a legendary personality of the Banda islands, who built several schools, and was also known as the uncrowned king of the archipelago. To continue his legacy, the Foundation recently, on 27 October 2022, opened the first university in the Banda islands. Many famous people stayed in the hotel, including Princes Diana in the early 1990s. Mita spent a period in London for her studies.
Abba Rizal Bahalwan is an entrepreneur and public figure in the Banda Islands and owns the famous Cilu Bintang Estate hotel. He traces his ancestry through several illustrious ancestors to the beginning of the Dutch colonial era. His great grandfather established several schools on Banda. Abba studied German language and culture at Patimura University in Ambon. Collecting and preserving the history, legends and traditions of his beloved Banda Islands is a lifetime passion. Recently, he has been selected as the ambassador of one of the five Adat villages of Banda: Kampung Adat Namasawar.
b) A cultural performance from the Banda Islands
12.00 pm: 'Hidden' Family History - Spinning a Work of Historical Fiction
Christina Longden
Christina will speak about the problems inherent with carrying out research into working-class family history – using the example of her own ancestor, the Victorian ‘Hidden’ Muslim, Robert ‘Reschid’ Stanley. She will talk about why she chose to take the factual research that she carried out in ‘His Own Man’ and to merge it with fiction in ‘Imagining Robert’ - and how through doing this, the lives of her ancestors and ‘her people’ have been brought to life for many others.
She is from Manchester but relocated to Namibia, Southern Africa, where she lived and worked with the Kalahari bushmen, writing two oral history books about them. Her latest two books are the product of her research into the life and times of her great great great grandfather, ‘Hidden’ Victorian Muslim and Mayor of Stalybridge, Robert ‘Reschid’ Stanley – one being non-fiction and the other being a work of historical fiction. Her work aims to bring together people from different communities and backgrounds who would not normally meet in order to explore their collective heritage.
Christina is Writer in Residence for Kirklees, and she has also written comedy-drama novels. She lives in West Yorkshire with her family who are the owners of the award-winning Dark Woods Coffee roastery. www.robertreschidstanley.wordpress.com www.funnylass.com
1.00 pm: Lunch
1.30 pm: ‘Human Stories and the East India Company’ project participants share their experiences:
Where do stories come from?
Professor Radha D’Souza
She will address the sources of inspiration for fiction, discussing whether those sources work for historical fiction as well.
Prof. Radha D'Souza lectures in at the University of Westminster. She is a social justice activist, writer, critic and a former barrister from India. Together with Dutch artist Jonas Staal, she is co-producer of the art project 'Court for Intergenerational Climate Crimes', first exhibited in Amsterdam, with iterations in Helsinki and Seoul. She participated in the historical fiction writing project on 'Untold Stories of the East India Company' organised by Brick Lane Circle and wrote the story titled 'The Prophecy' for the collection.
Creative Historical Fiction – The Stories That We Could Tell
Anita Harrington
Anita was born in London and worked in Tower Hamlets as a teacher for 22 years. She became part of the Brick Lane Circle Project in 2015 and wrote The Blue-Eyed Girl based on her research into the journals of Eliza Fay, an English woman who travelled to India three times in the late eighteenth century. The history of the Spice Wars has a special interest for her as she is currently working on her second novel, entitled Spice Island, set in contemporary Grenada.
2.15 pm Break
2.30 pm: Working with archives for immersive historical fiction writing
Jamie Rhodes
Jamie will speak about his experiences working with historical archives to write creative historical fiction. He has worked closely with the British Library archives and the National Trust archives, as well as the national archives of Finland in Helsinki. In all of these projects he used original historical documents and objects as the seeds for creating stories. His work with archives has involved residency programmes that saw him live on-site in historical locations while writing, and deliver workshops to help the general public engage creatively with archive collections.
Jamie Rhodes is a writer and academic working in comics, books, TTRPG, and film. His first book was published in 2014 after he worked with the British Library to write a collection of stories inspired by unusual documents in the library archives. The collection, Dead Men’s Teeth, launched with a series of dramatic readings at the British Library‘s Brontë Room. His first graphic novel was a collaboration with the National Trust and Arts Council England entitled A Castle in England. He was Scotney Castle’s Writer-in-Residence, writing a graphic novel inspired by the castle’s archive collection. The book was published by Nobrow Press in 2017 and nominated for a prestigious Eisner Award at San Diego Comic Con 2018. After moving back to West Yorkshire, Jamie wrote and co-directed an award-winning short film, Amputee (2020). The film made the official selection of 22 film festivals worldwide and was nominated for Best Short Film at Cannes Shorts. In 2021, Jamie started his PhD in Philosophy & Creative Writing. He is currently writing his thesis, Alternate Realities: the Phenomenological Experience of Story Immersion. Find out more about Jamie and his work here: https://thisisjamierhodes.com/
3.30 pm: Two ‘Spice Wars’ participants share their stories
‘My journey into the Spice War World’
What led me to this historical fiction writing program? What experience do I intend to create for the reader? Why does historic fiction interest me? Why do I think historical fiction is key to making history more interesting? What will I do in the next couple of months through this program?
Shenbagaraja Vanamamalai
Shen, to his friends, is a Tamil living in Woolwich, London, with his family. He currently works as a product manager with a tech company which focuses on helping people get the right jobs. He grew up in a small town called Tirunelveli in Tamil Nadu, on a steady diet of Tamil historical fiction, sailing with protagonists to far-off lands through the words. The historical works of Ramachandra Guha and William Dalrymple are his favourites in English.
Historical Fiction - The pen is mightier than the sword
Amina Ali
Amina has been a Secondary English teacher in inner-city London schools for over 12 years. Born to Bangladeshi parents and the youngest of six siblings, she was the first member of her nuclear family to attend university. Within the last year, after teaching children to find their voice and write their own stories through memoirs, fiction and poetry, she rediscovered her love of writing. Saying a sad farewell to her students, she hoped to live by example and write the stories and poems she had been too afraid to pen. Amina is currently compiling her first anthology of poems entitled 'Poems from the Others' as a nod to the GCSE poetry collection called 'Poems from other cultures and traditions'. The East India Company Spice War Stories project by the Brick Lane Circle brings together her passion for teaching a decolonised history and her love of literature.
4.15 pm: Painting competition prize-giving ceremony
4.30 pm: Conference close
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Event Venue & Nearby Stays
National Maritime Museum, Romney Road, London, United Kingdom
Tickets
GBP 0.00