Update

5th Week Update (Week ending 9 March)

“I came here when I was sixteen… Came into London then had to take the trains, three trains, to Leeds. But all of that was just passing through. My brother met me there at Leeds central station. It was the first time I felt safe, knew I was safe” Z3.

1) We’ve collected more than 25 narratives from the Chapeltown Community and more people are coming forward to share their memories of im/migration and railway travel. Thank you again Chapeltown Community.

2) Representatives at Leeds Central Railway Station and Network Rail have been welcoming of to the project and its organizers. Additional thanks to Diane Shaw and Gary.  Your time and attentiveness were greatly appreciated.

3) I have neglected to mention and continually acknowledge the Centre for Interdisciplinary Gender Studies at University of Leeds, and especially Matthew Wilkinson, in their support of this project. Without access to the library’s resources as well as practical infrastructural support, the project would have been far more difficult to undertake.

4) Physicist Almut Beige at the University of Leeds has been invaluable in her willingness to be available for share quick updates and clarification of concepts.

5) The staff and support team at Frederick Hurdle Adult Day Care,  the Leeds West Indian Centre, and RJC Dance were absolutely stellar.

The rehearsals this week have frequently turned out to be intense discussions of history, culture and physics. We realised that because of the furious pace of the project we could easily not pay adequate attention to process, which is as important (if not at times more so) as the product. Now the video and audio recorders are present at all rehearsals. This is to ensure documentation of as we finalize the movement and spoken language for the performances, but it is equally for documentation of the process. We have found the process richly valuable, documentation of some of the brainstorming sessions that brought us to a particular understanding of ourselves, the community, and science are important processes to archive.