Report: Mission to London - SATB Partnership Preparation Meeting September 2017  The first  border crossing mission in this new transnational partnership was for project cooordinator (me) Coost (a.k.a. John Moulden) to travel to London and meet with new Step Across the Border partners True North Health, in order to touch base and discuss about our upcoming programme of activities, as well as the general continuation and promotion of  SATB and the chance to seek out potential new friends,partners  and allies.

I found True North Health organiser, Caroline, occupied with graphic design for the latest in a series of 6 Interval Oracle workshops, a project  involving  up to nine people and  part of an ongoing programme of activities under the title "Pleasure is Medicine" a new initiative  / component of the True North Health organisation. I was introduced for the first time to "Prezi" prezi.com, an effective and simple to navigate multi media presentation software .The basic version is free but to enable sound and video components requires payment.

In these turbulent times where Trumps' America signalizes to  significantly roll back of decades of hard won civil rights, our conversation covered such themes as human rights activist Angela Davis (see the film Black Power Mixtape) as well as the questionable facts and figures relating to 17th century "witch hunts" whereby, it is now contended, that the amount of innocent women killed, enormously exceeds official state and church figures. Suggested reading: Caliban & the Witch by Sylvia Federici and Witches & Pagans by Max Dashu. We also touched on the phenomena of de-colonisation of music https://nmbx.newmusicusa.org/decolonizing-our-music/

London is perhaps the most culturally diverse city in Europe with some of the most radically colourfull and progressive organisations therein. Due to UK Governmental “austerity“ measures, (supposedly, money saving measures to aid financial recovery after the banking collapse of 2007) there has been a systematic reduction of funding for the National Health Service (once described as "the envy of Europe") and other social services, such as disability payments. Food banks are the new norm and it is voluntary or privately funded organisations as well as religious organisations that are left to deal with the fallout from these various developments and cut backs. Thanks to the indispensible facilitation from Tad, an old friend and Hackney social networker, i was able to visit a local mosque, a church, and a Salvation Army Cafe all of which have interesting and sometimes ground breaking socio-cultural agendas.

Egg @ Shacklewell lane Mosque   /   Tad: Culture Activist

I learnt about socio cultural initiative, the Duckie club who work with the homeless The Slaughterhouse Club and  events for the aged Posh Club.  "Duckie create good nights out and culture clubs that bring communities together"

"ground-breaking arts group who describe themselves as Purveyors of Progressive Working Class Entertainment. This avant-garde club of tea, cake and cabaret (Posh Club), is for the glamorous golden girls, swanky senior citizens and elegant elders of the parish. With the church used for worship, the hall is quickly turned over to create a drop-in centre for the North London Action on Homeless, while in the meeting room there is the Open Doors Experience Project, working with vulnerable women from the local community." full article here: https://www.london.anglican.org/articles/a-day-in-the-life-of-st-pauls-west-hackney/

Posh Club: putting on the style for Hackneys old folks, run by volunteers from Londons Duckie Club

Upon my return to the EU mainland, i made contact and we talked about them coming to Berlin to demonstrate  their work. Two very interesting videos demonstrating some of  their work here:

Posh Club: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=SPDjpE6pgNA

The Slaughterhouse Club: https://youtu.be/JSxTKSgz3p8

http://www.duckie.co.uk/

I recognised that many of the flyers and pamphlets in social centres centered on support and psychological councelling for the volunteers and carers themselves. Less state support means an increase in their workload which can lead to "burn out".

I visited the Turkish Islamic Trust & Mosque on Shacklewell lane and  talked with its organiser Egg and also briefly met his sister and co-organiser Mel. I found Eggs enthusiasm and openness very inspiring and we talked about the Mosque activities which, as well as  funeral services, includes music and arts events, a community flea market and cafe. The mosque was converted from a Rothschild-built synagogue in 1977 and before being a location for funerals and social  activities and was a prolific recording studio for ethnic music recordings for London’s Turkish communities  : http://www.travbuddy.com/The-UK-Turkish-Islamic-Trust-and-Mosque-v834175

Next I visited Hackney community organiser Alicia, at her homebase Reel Rebel Radio “your local global community radio station offering diversity in music, documentaries and radio plays”  http://reelrebelsradio.com/ We had a lively conversation on diverse topics including the story of migrant passenger ship The Windrush.

HMT Empire Windrush  originally MV Monte Rosa, was a German passenger liner and cruise ship  acquired from Germany after WWII by the United Kingdom as a prize of war and renamed Empire Windrush and is best remembered for bringing one of the first large groups of post-war  West Indian immigrants to the United Kingdom, carrying 492 passengers and one stowaway on a voyage from Jamaica to London in 1948. British Caribean people who came to the United Kingdom in the period after World War II are sometimes referred to as the Windrush Generation. (Wikipedia edit)

We also touched on the subject of Jamaican Pride and talked about the bravery of the organisers in the face of  prolific homophobia on the island. (article: https://www.theguardian.com/world/2015/aug/10/jamaica-first-gay-pride-celebration-symbol-change Alicia is a big fan of flamenco music and she produces a regular radio show “Flamenco Fix” the UKs only dedicated programme for this music genre. We also recognised we shared an aquaintance with  the Syrian rapper Mohammed Abu Hajar.

I travelled with Caroline to Brixton to meet with TNH member Raggi Kotek who works as an immigration lawyer and who, through her work, has first hand experience with many traumatised  people. Raggi has recently started up a series of movement  medicine classes “Bindi Beats” https://www.facebook.com/BindiBeats/ which she will demonstrate at the first Berlin meeting. Together,  the three of us discussed logistics and brainstormed about the TNH upcoming visit to Berlin.  My five days in London were full of many  interesting encounters, giving  me a great deal of food for thought and ideas about the possibility to somehow collaborate with these great people and organisations, something that makes sense in the context of our new partnership , to explore possibilities and create activities that could perhaps help support them and by doing so learn new practices and encourage networking.

Coost Foto Impressions  (HERE)

Next step:  October 2017: first UK-FRA-GER SATB partnership meeting  in Berlin.

Next official scheduled London mission is in October 2018 (HERE) otherwise we are up for exploring all possibilities and opportunities!