Food for Thought – An Interactive Report

The Newham Mosaic Report is not intended to be a static document it is a conversational one that we began writing at the beginning of the project by outlining our Principles, Purpose, Programme, Practice and Partnerships, continued writing as the project evolved, presented as the Newham Mosaic Food for Thought Event and re-present as this online document. It refers to and restates things said before in previous reports that appear on this website.

Principles

The project mission is based on three fundamental principles:

• Each individual is intrinsically valuable regardless of their ethnic, cultural or personal attributes and abilities.
• Ethnic, cultural and individual diversity are valuable community resources to be respected and explored. Our shared humanity is also sacred and to be respected.
• Communities should be caring, conscious and collaborative environments that nurture the creative genius of all of their residents.

Purpose, Programme and Practice

At the beginning of the project we wrote that:

This project, ‘Newham Mosaic: Celebrating African Arts and Cultural Diversity,’ aims to use photography, art, the written word, and music to create a cultural collage highlighting the rich heritage of African arts in Newham. Through workshops, an exhibition in March 2024, and interconnected websites, the project aims to engage the community and foster a deeper understanding and appreciation for African culture and its place within the Newham Mosaic. While we have chosen to focus on African Arts for this project we want to create a template for additions highlighting other cultural heritages in Newham.

Over the course of the project we realised that what people involved wanted was a focus explicity on diversity as a whole rather than on an aspect of diversity. We found that we had very strong representation from the African and African Diaspora community in the project and a part of that strength was seeing themselves as an integral part of a connected and integrated Newham community having a leading role in the development of that community. For this reason we changed the focus of the project from ‘Newham Mosaic – The African Diaspora’ to ‘Newham Mosaic – The Art of Community’. The change of title also recognised that building community is an art in itself.

Partnerships

Newham Mosaic was established as a partnership between Our Community Cares (OCC) a community group led by Rose Small and Netstorms Limited a small enterprise directed by Gavin Sealey. It was funded for a six month period by Arts Council England through the Newham organisation Culture Within Community. At the end of this first funded phase its principle managers continue to be Rose and Gavin but it is building on other partnerships that we have developed and are developing in order to remain and grow as a platform and resource for community development in Newham.

Food For Thought

The Newham Mosaic project concluded its first funded season with the ‘Food for Thought’ Day at Memorial Community Church on Saturday 27th April. This event was much what we wanted it to be, a celebration, an ‘interactive report’ on what we had done with the grant funding we got in October last year and also a pointer to future possibilities. A lot of work went into the event and over 40 people attended.

At the Food for Thought celebration we outlined what had been achieved during the project from September 2023 to April 2024. This can be divided into three phases:

Phase 1: September and October 2023.

During September and October, after we were told that we would receive grant funding, our priorities were project planning and partnership development. While the managing partners of the project were Our Community Cares and Netstorms Limited, the partnerships we developed with the Cornerstone Cafe, Jazzanne Drama Group and Carpenter’s Community Cafe led to important collaboration and helped establish the direction and collaborative ethos of the project.

Phase 2: November 2023 to February 2024.

From November through February 2024 we conducted a number of activities and workshops. These included:

• Drumming and Networking
• Ongoing Networking – In Person and Online
• Kwanzaa Online Workshop
• The Mosaic Writers Book Club
• Two Diaspora Dreaming Workshops
• The Conversation Kitchen
• The Art and Languages of Community
  

These activities/workshops are discussed with more detail on content and particapation in our previous interim report.

The Conversation Kitchen and the Mosaic Networking have continued to be ongoing features of Newham Mosaic during March and April and will continue and be at the core of any continued development of the project. Aspects of the other activities/workshops offered during November to February will also be incorporated into Newham Mosaic’s ongoing development together with aspects of the two courses that were run during March and April.

Phase 3: March and April 2024 – Two Courses and an Interactive Report

The three key activities that we ran during March and April were:

• The Story of Africa Workshops
• The AI Art and Story Workshops
• The Food for Thought Interactive Report

The Story of Africa

The Story of Africa consisted of six two hour sessions outlining the history of Africa. These weekly online sessions were presented as talks on Zoom by Ayo Haynes of the company Flametree Collective. Over thirty people signed up to the course and there was an average attendance of seven participants over the six sessions.

There were 22 Zoom logins to the first ‘Story of Africa’ workshop on Saturday 1 March ‘Beginnings and Wonders’. Discounting Ayo, Rose, Sophie and myself who are all involved in the management of these events, that means that there were 18 non-management logins from about 36 who had pre-registered – of course these logins would in some cases represent more than one participant.

The feedback from people who attended was very positive. There are some notes about the course content of the first four sessions in our blog posts, Beginnings and Wonders, Kingdoms of Wealth and Wisdom, Empires of Gold and Learning, and Crossroads of Culture.

AI, Art and Story

In April we ran four ‘AI Drop-in Workshops’ at Carpenters Community Cafe from Monday 8 April to Thursday 11 April, 12.00 pm to 4.00 pm. Exploring AI, Art and Storytelling these workshops included the use of Artificial Intelligence (AI) tools to help participants to:

1) create whatever images they might imagine and

2) write stories and articles on any subject.

The Food for Thought Interactive Report/Celebration

At the Food for Thought event Sharon Wellington who had attended all of the workshops and events gave feedback particularly on her experience of the AI workshops. She later wrote:

Thank you for a lovely celebration day last Saturday.  I am looking forward to further Newham Mosiac events. Participation increases my well-being and confidence. At this time of semi retirement and carer for my father, I have thoroughly enjoyed and learnt greatly from your events. Hoping the organization will get funding to continue.

We would like to thank Sharon for her support. Sharon has been more than a participant, we consider her a partner in the development of the Newham Mosaic Project as we consider all of the other people who attended and contributed to the Food for Thought event.

We thank Culture Within Newham, through which we received funding from Arts Council England, for their support . Culture Within Newham, represented by Sophie Crocker ast the Food for Thought event, is a great resource for the voluntary sector in Newham and we look forward to collaborating with them in future.

We have previously noted our collaboration with the Cornerstone Cafe and Carpenters Community Cafe which partnered with us on our Writers’ Book Club and AI, Art and Story initiatives. Another collaboration that we were involved with was the ‘Breadline’ play led by Jazanne Arts and Agewell Drama Group. Gavin and Rose of Newham Mosaic took an active parts in the preparation for this play about a foodbank and the lives of the people involved in it. Annie and Jacqui of Jazzanne and Zhenreenah of Agewell returned the favour by playing prominent parts in the Food for Thought event by leading us in movement and singing. Our Community Cares gratefully received donations collected by Jazanne from the audience at the final Breadline production. In the end Newham Mosaic is about the promotion of partnership, collaboration and community building.

At the core of the Newham Mosaic project is the Our Community Cares (OCC) community of women (and a few men) who have been running a food bank and food club and organising community activities for several years. The OCC stalwarts were responsible for the excellent food for the belly at the Food for Thought event. They are a very multicultural, multilingual and multi-talented community. Many thanks to all who contributed to providing both food and cultural activities on the day.

The Newham Mosaic project continues to develop partnerships and collaborations that will bring together the talents embedded in our diverse Newham community. Thanks to Hugh Bernard and Lia Rees for talking about the Science Fair and NIFIS (Newham Institute For Interesting Stuff) projects. Gavin is discussing with Hugh and Lia possible collaboration between Newham Mosaic and NIFIS with a view to extending the creativity, capabalities and connectedness of our diverse Newham community.

Special thanks to Sue Agyakwa for her role in organising the Food for Thought Event. Sue used her expertise as an events manager to help Gavin and Rose plan the day from the setting up of the space to the order and timing of the presentations and activities.

Thanks to everyone who participated in the Food for Thought event and more generally in the Newham Mosaic project. Thanks to Peter Payne for his sketching of event participants and his encouraging participants to do their own sketches.

The Food for Thought Interactive Report does not mark the end of the Newham Mosaic project but only the end of its beginning. We look forward to continuing to work in partnership with the Newham Community.