There’s more to Bradford Mela than just the festival weekend in Peel Park! The 21st Anniversary of Bradford Mela promises to be a full year of events and activities. This new look to the website is the place to find out all about them. It will be updated all year round, so keep coming back to find out more, or sign up to our e-newsletter to keep up-to-date with what’s happening.
The celebrations start on the festival weekend, 13th and 14th June 2009
Mela Summer Festival
The Bradford Mela Summer Festival will continue to be a free, family and community celebration, but with important new developments for this year.
There will be higher quality and more variety amongst the traders and food out in the market; a new, more intimate performance space for quieter events; and “The Hive” – a safe, interactive environment with activities and workshops specifically for young people and family groups.
There will also be opportunities to experience two new artworks specially created for this year’s event:
Superfield (Mumbai)
Unique sound recordings which recreate the vibrant sounds of the streets of Mumbai will be performed during the Bradford Mela festival weekend.
Created by sound artist Craig Vear, from recordings of people and places, traffic and city life, and sounds captured in the city earlier this year.
Movieplex
Look out for a mini-cinema showing a 'lost' work by legendary Indian film-maker Shanta Rao Dutt at this summer’s Bradford Mela festival. A new production from Nutkhut, the company that brought ‘Bollywood Steps’ to Bradford for the IIFA weekend, promises to give you a red carpet treatment and more than few surprises during it’s screening of this mythical director’s career highlights.
In the coming year there will be major projects taking shape which look back at the history of the Mela;
Coming of Age – 21 years of Mela in the UK.
Both Nottingham and Bradford staged their first Melas in 1988. A gallery based exhibition of archive materials and photographs will put together, looking back at the past 21 years, presented along with an oral history of people’s stories and memories about the event.
In conjunction with Nottingham Mela, the Nottingham New Arts Exchange, the Asian Arts Council, Oriental Arts (Bradford).
Plans are taking shape for an ‘archive hour’ radio programme reviewing history of the Mela, to be broadcast nationally.
There will also be projects designed to develop understanding and skills amongst young people:
Schools Cultural Exchange
Projects developed between children from two distinctly different towns –will be showcased at the Bradford Mela and an event in the South West of England in 2010.
Festival Craft Academy
Apprenticeships will be available for recent graduates the develop skills and learn techniques of ‘site vibing’ for the Mela weekend. This will be an opportunity to develop creative skills as a pathway into careers in the visual arts industry.
Leeds Met Partnership
Students at the UK centre for event management based at Leeds Metropolitan University will hear lectures, work on projects and have practical opportunities to gain work experience at Bradford Mela.
Bradford Mela will also play a key role in three important national conferences in the coming year:
Quest Conference
The Arts Council will be partnering with the Mela for a prestigious two day national conference exploring outdoor artists and street theatre.
National Mela Consortium
Bradford Mela will have a leading role in a national debate about how Mela events can contribute to the events industry in the run up to 2012.
Mela Conference 2010
A two day event planned to take place ahead of the 2010 Summer festival, discussing multicultural arts, and a showcase of the projects over the 21st Anniversary year.
And finally, we aim to work with partners to agree on a new definition of the word ‘Mela’ in order to up-date how the word is explained in the Oxford English Dictionary.
Keep coming back to this site for more details.
