Walsall Residency

Writer Simon Fletcher
School Joseph Leckie Community Technology College
Teacher Becky Hough
Co-ordinator Ahmed Arif

This project aimed to address the underachievement of ethnic minority pupils. Ahmed Arif is the Ethnic Minority Achievement Consultant for Walsall LEA. He received information about the Writing Together Challenge Fund via the National Strategy and wanted to involve a writer with an understanding of ethnic minority languages and translation. He identified Simon Fletcher via the artscape directory. Simon is part of 'Mini Mushaira' (with Debjani Chatterjee and Basir Sultan Kazmi) focusing on improving Anglo-Asian links and understanding.

Simon’s brief was to explore issues of identity and culture with British-Asian pupils.  The groups he worked with however were mixed, so he was dealing with issues around respect for diversity and understanding of other cultures generally.

Set up as a four day project, the first three days – with pupils from Year 7, 8, 9 and 10 – consisted of general workshops, with the final day specifically for extending and polishing the work of the pupils who had shown most enthusiasm and potential.

Interestingly, for the first time, the National Curriculum test this year had included a focus on immigrant experiences, setting the task of a fictional dialogue between two newly-arrived pupils who feel different and need to adapt. Children don’t automatically open up about home and their family traditions, even what they eat, but Simon began his session with Year 7s looking at poems about food – giving them a clear license to celebrate the special features of their own culture. His examples were from Debjani Chatterjee, Tariq Latif, Ishrat Aafreen and Moniza Alvi. Encouraged in this way, pupils are quick to feel comfortable writing about a world they understand, rather than something alien. If they are expected to write from a European perspective, then they rarely write as well.

Ahmed’s aim was for the residency to raise expectations amongst the pupils of what they might accomplish. Asian Moslems in the school had been having a fairly tough time in the post 9/11 climate (as indeed had all Asians, by association). The project aimed to address this problem by boosting pupils’ self-esteem. And it wasn’t based on countering ‘deprivation’ but asserting the pupils’ innate and special creative capabilities.

Simon successfully conveyed the rich vein of Asian contribution to British culture. Ahmed had initially envisaged choosing a more obvious role-model for the Asian pupils, but Simon’s expertise was clear and persuasive. His knowledge of Asian literature is broad, and it probably came as a surprise – and a compelling one – for the Asian pupils to see a white man so enthused by writers from ‘their’ world.
His workshops began by looking at a range of published work, exploring the variety around a single theme. He then worked through a set of questions, bringing all the pupils into the discussion. From here, they moved into individual writing, with personal attention from Simon. There were 14 pupils in the group, which was a manageable size. All the groups (ranging from 12-18) had been chosen on the basis of enthusiasm, rather than ability.

One session looked at animals and their secret, sometimes symbolic lives. Examples were by Usha Kishore (‘Tiger’), Spike Milligan (‘Hello Mr Python’), Zulfikar Ghose (‘The Crows’), Buddhadeva Bose (from ‘Fogs’) and Sujata Bhatt (‘Maninagar Days’). The pupils responded with poems of their own about the owl, the deer – and several cheetahs. They then discussed how wildlife might be better protected. There were some particularly interesting ideas about fostering wildlife in Walsall itself. Simon read one of his own poems about an imaginary pet and led the pupils into writing about an animal of their own – real or imaginary, focusing both on the animal and their relationship with it.

Having concentrated first on poetry, the second session was more to do with persuasive writing, and effective use of formal sentence structures. The final session returned to poetry – and some challenging issues. Here the examples were from Benjamin Zephaniah (‘White Comedy’), Vikram Seth (‘Homeless’), Shenaz Ali (‘So Where Are We?’) John Siddique (‘neckgrip’), Shamshad Khan (‘Oppressed Coverage’) and Saleem Peeradina (‘Sisters’).

Simon’s questions were simple, but testing. Looking at the poem ‘neckgrip’, and having explained a few of the details (e.g. that Polaroids were a kind of instant photograph popular in the 60s and 70s), he asked “What do the photographs tell the author about his father and the father’s relationship with the ‘folks back home’?” Discussion about this led naturally into the task of writing. The pupils were asked to think about a photograph from their own family albums and to describe what it reveals. It could be something from a few years ago, at home, or a recent photo of relatives abroad. They were urged to bring out the social importance of the picture, based on whatever details might be observed.

The session ended with a particularly challenging poetic task. As Simon explained, there are many verse forms for expressing love, anxiety or grief, but in the Indian sub-continent the ghazal is the most widely used, a complex form originally derived from the Persian. Learning from a single example (by Basir Sultan Kazmi) the pupils each produced ghazals of their own, a considerable achievement in such a short space of time.

Ahmed was delighted to have gained access to the Writing Together funds and would be keen to re-apply if the opportunity were to arise again. Teachers were impressed by the  quality of the work their pupils produced and there is now an ongoing commitment in the school to create yet more of a writing culture.  There is a Mushaira planned at which pupils will read their work to their peers and parents. A Mushaira typically includes Indian, Bangladeshi, Punjabi and Pakistani communities and appeals to an even wider range. It seems fitting that this residency should culminate in what is a recognized high point of Asian cultural life.