When Sheelin from the Kerala community in East Ham suggested he would like to celebrate ‘Onam festival’ it was received with joy by the Community Development team, as we like to encourage local people to organise events that bring people together. Within a week, Sheelin got some of his friends together and they planned the event which took place on Wednesday 25th August. Over 40 people from diverse backgrounds in the East ham community attended and enjoyed the mingling and experience of a different culture.
The Onam festival is a major festive celebration of the Kerala community, when everyone in the community wears fancy dresses, share large vegetarian meals, flower decoration, traditional lighting of the lamp and conduct cultural performances; such as singing, dancing and didactic poetry.
A major highlight was that all the attendees ate 12 course meal made up of 11 to 13 dishes of vegetarian meals with their hands on a banana leaf’ spread out on a table. Many of the attendees valued the chance to meet with people from other cultures. One attendee said ‘sharing meal with people I haven’t known before gave me confidence to talk to them about my own culture’.
Other activities at the event included Group dialogue on Onam & UK Malayalee and Quiz and Human Bingo to get people mixing and talking. Prizes were awarded to the group that made the best presentation on the dialogue and the Quiz.
From Conflict and Change we liked the enthusiasm of members of the Kerala community who took a lead on the initiative with minimal support from us and were able to get sponsorship for the event in a short time. Our contribution was to help the event be as participatory as possible and we were glad that the organisers were willing to give it a try. We helped them develop a plan, publicise the event to a cross section of the East ham community and offered our training room as venue for the event.
The organisers are inspired to be involved in organising further events that bring people together.
L-R : Charles, Sagar, Biju, Sheelin, Anna, Ros, Sarjoh - Planning Meeting
