The Auspicious Journey at the Birmingham Mela

Sunday 31 July

Mahtab Hussain’s project, The Auspicious Journey focuses primarily on meeting people who have been affected by the construction of the Mangla Dam in Kashmir, Pakistan in the 1960’s. In order to do this we attended the Birmingham Mela at Cannon Hill Park, Birmingham.

The Birmingham Mela celebrates the diversity of the South Asian community within Birmingham, through culture, food, art and entertainment. For the one day we hosted a stall at this spectacular event, surrounded by the beautiful aromatics of food and the sound of the stage performances. We took this opportunity to talk about the project, The Auspicious Journey to members of the public and also spread the word about upcoming events.

During this one day event we spoke to over 50 people who all had their own stories of how they or others they knew, had been affected by the construction of the Dam. It was incredible to discover the huge amount of people that knew about the Dam already. Some could share stories and others could show us photographs, but with each conversation we were learning something knew and making new contacts for the project. It was an amazing experience for myself and Mahtab and we met so many people that wanted to get involved with the project.