The Indian Cohesion Festival

The Indian Cohesion Festival

Community cohesion can be defined as promoting knowledge, respect and contact between various sections of the community and establishing a greater sense of citizenship. This is my aim for the city of Bradford and I am not naive in thinking that I alone can eradicate the invisible segregation in a blink of an eye. I am trying to tackle an issue, which has been dominating the city for years, in a unique contemporary way. I want to use a fresh approach to focus on the positive, look at celebrating a subculture within the city rather than continually pin pointing the negative racial tension that continues to exists.

The goal of my project is to organise an Indian community cohesion festival, to promote a better understanding of the Indian Culture, where family and friends are the essence of life and communities work together and value each other. I want to bring this ethos to Bradford; let people explore the Indian culture and learn from their morals and values.

My target market is the youths of Bradford, as I believe that if we can start changing the views of this younger generation, then it will hopefully have a knock on affect for future generations, helping to distill the segregation within the community. My aim is to try and relate to these youths, being one myself, and take the focus off the negative connotations that some youths associate with words like “religion” or “culture”. I want to engage them in the parts of the culture which they can relate to, like music, dance, clothes and film, exploring the diversity of the country and its culture.

I am aware that some people feel the Indian community is not as segregated as some of the Bangladeshi and Pakistani communities, but the Indian culture is what I have been attracted to. The Ethos of the culture is so powerful and it is this element that I want to bring to my festival. I am also aware of the annual Mela that takes place within the city, however, although this is open to the public, it is a festival which has been generated for the Indian community. The cohesion festival is all about getting people to mix, allowing them to explore and discover an affiliation to the country. Creating multicultural atmosphere, within the Indian style festival, will help encourage people to relax and enjoy themselves. For now I am only looking to generate public interest, support and feedback. I want to know what people think of my proposed ideas, see how they react to them and try and understand what they, as a community, would want this festival to achieve.