Why is the national lottery funding in Bolton important for Roma residents and the wider community in Bolton?

KaskoSan, aiming to tackle antigypsyism, social exclusion and deprivation of UK Roma residents via grassroots Roma cultural initiatives, has been running one off Roma cultural and language workshops for local council services, primary and secondary schools, universities, arts and cultural organisations, theatres, libraries, museums, cinemas in the North and Northwest since 2014. However, the opportunity to co-design and run workshops with Bolton Roma residents themselves on a regular basis, has only been made possible via a grant of £10.000 KaskoSan received from The National Lottery Awards for All England in 2022.

Prior to the pandemic, Bolton’s Roma residents organised Roma music and dance workshops to produce a Roma show for a wider audience, but the pandemic cut across their plans. The National Lottery funded project, however, not only helped achieve their dream pursued prior to the pandemic, a professional dance performance at Bolton’s largest cultural festival of the year called ‘Unity Festival’, but it also opened further opportunities in terms of community organising, networking and empowerment.

The initial plan was to run 15 biweekly facilitated Roma workshops with traditional music, dance, language, food, history, cultural presentations and discussions for six months in Bolton, however community members requested to run activities on a weekly basis, workshops have become integral to their life, and they cannot believe that sessions may eventually end.

With KaskoSan we are doing our best to support the community as much as possible so the workshop activities can continue running even when the National Lottery funding runs out.

THE WORKSHOPS

Storytelling

Teaching both English and Romani language and culture to attendees was the kick-off activity at the very first session. Storytelling in the Romani world requires intense team work, it involves singing, acting and it often includes dancing too.

Storytelling with #Gypsy music & dance from the #GRT CULTURAL CLUB in #BOLTON👇Join us from 3pm to 6pm every Sunday: 16 Wood Street, Bolton, BL1 1DY. Thanks to @TNLComFund for the support! pic.twitter.com/jGm1SI91tp

— KaskoSan Roma Charitable Company (@KaskoSanLtd) February 18, 2023

With the combination of workshop elements conveyed through the story of ‘Bendyàlo’, Cunning, the Romano boy, project attendees managed to get an insight to the various development activities workshops had on offer to Bolton’s Roma and non-Roma residents throughout the project. Since storytelling is also an intergenerational activity, it worked well as a community adhesive at the very start of the workshops.

Live music

Live music in the club has also been a great incentive for many of the attendees. Music is the most popular element of ‘Romanipe’, authentic Romani culture, globally and it has proved to be a great magnet in the workshops too. Several community members made musical contribution at each and every workshop via singing, rapping, playing the guitar, water jug, oral bass or violin.

Angelo, Juni and Martin warming up for the musical workshop: https://fb.watch/krG-RqfEcQ/

Jordan’s birthday celebrated via musical activity has been a great fun for all club members:

Istvan Kate, violinist from a famous Gypsy musician dynasty, also joined the Roma cultural workshops as a regular attendee which we are all very proud of at KaskoSan:

Music video

Music video was a project idea Bolton Roma residents have been pursuing since the very first social club activity they had prior to the pandemic. The goal of the community is to eradicate anti-gypsyism via the beautiful presentation of Romani culture and they believe that a powerful way to convey that message is via music video. We helped the community with building the storyline, casting and filming. More activities to come in the second half of the project. This was an unexpected element of project delivery, however ended up being the major incentive for most attendees to regularly take part in club activities and to bring more people in too.

Roma cultural workshop members enjoying the music video shooting in Bolton.

The party scene:

Roma children enjoying the music video shooting:

From left to right: Monica Jonas, female dance coach, Maria Palmai, leader of the Bolton Roma club,

and Jessica Jonas, main character in music video

Filming the bar scene for the music video:

Filming the car scene for the music video:

Arts and Crafts Workshop

Participating children were loving every single session:

Our youth recently enjoyed a lovely art and craft session at the club. Bolton Roma cultural workshops cracking on! Thanks to The National Lottery Community Fund for the support!

Campaign videos

Campaign videos about the International Roma Day created by children ended up being popular across all KaskoSan platforms:

Romani children also decided to mark the coronation and created a video for our social media page:

Dance workshops

Dance workshops have been the most popular activity from the very beginning, and the dance workshop videos have also been the most viewed content we published on all of the KaskoSan platforms.

Dance audition:

https://fb.watch/krEj3XXnYy/

https://fb.watch/krG7LlRaPl/

The enthusiasm of club members to create a dance group yielded amazing results. Workshop attendees decision to form a dance group quickly forged a solid partnership between KaskoSan and Bolton Wanderers’ in the Community that has a wide reach across all communities in Bolton, and that also maximised our reach in the wider community. The partnership between the two organisations facilitated the first ever performance of the Romani dance group at

the Unity Festival in Bolton.

Minors’ group performing at Bolton Unity Festival:

Youth group’s authentic Romani dance performance at Bolton Unity Festival:

Audience amazed over Romani dance performance at Bolton Unity Festival:

Out of the 40 to 80 workshops participants, we had thirty regular attendees whose passion to showcase the unknown Romani cultural heritage has never faded during the implementation of the project and it has been acting as a strong glue holding everyone together.

The sense of ownership born in the Roma cultural workshop in Bolton resulted in enthusiasm all around the Bolton community. A local seamstress from the South-East-Asian community designed and delivered 18 authentic Romani dance outfits for the female dance group members in consultation with regular attendees.

The Unity Festival hosted several thousands of attendees on Easter Monday, April 10 2023 and the dance performance of the KaskoSan Roma Group ended up being the featured content on next day’s Bolton News issue:

Source: https://www.theboltonnews.co.uk/news/23445423.bolton-wanderers-host-cultural-festival-unibol-stadium/

Maria Palmai, Bolton Roma club leader answered dance group members why some of the festival performance requests have been turned down:

Improving mental health through Roma identity workshop sessions

Roma families will have no or only poor access to function rooms, ball rooms or other similar venues and their only space to run social activities is their own home or the public streets which leads into conflicts with neighbours and/or police incidents. As a result isolation of UK Romani residents has increased over the years and it deteriorated with the pandemic. Roma mental health issues are cross generational and there has never been a wide academic research conducted about the mental health impact of the five centuries long Roma slavery that ended one hundred and fifty years ago, the legacy of the Roma holocaust or the institutional persecution of Roma people that has been ongoing for a millennium.

Anti-gypsyism, the last accepted form of racism, is a phenomenon affecting all communities globally, including the Roma. There is no or hardly any solidarity between Roma family networks even within the same Roma group which may also be called Roma caste, and Roma family networks often blame each other for their own experiences of anti-gypsyism, and nurture deep hatred against one other which is often a severe obstacle when it comes to Roma community organising from across diverse Roma groups or within the same caste.

As a result of the long history of fear of institutions and long standing isolation, Romani speakers developed a culture where all activities are intergenerational, and there is a constant encouragement, reassurance taking place between members of the company, participation of everyone present including children and elderly is essential in expressing and practicing the sense of belonging to somewhere. There is no physical homeland for Romani speakers which amplifies the significance of taking part in Romani cultural activities.

However, the ones severely impacted by mental health issues will not be able to engage either with their own family, and would not seek medical care either because of the legacy of institutional fear.

The Roma cultural workshops, however, have offered a location in the town centre of Bolton, a never-before-seen and emotionally neutral and safe space with an opportunity to celebrate their belonging to the same cultural community which proved to be a great magnet in the Bolton community.

The Romani cultural workshops have several attendees with mental health issues, diagnosed with low mood and depression, with history of substance use. It also attracted residents with physical disabilities, with hearing or speech impairment.

It is important to note, that all Roma workshop attendees have issues with identity, self-esteem and confidence to engage with outsiders due to the daily lived experience of anti-gypsyism.

At the beginning of the project, ‘shy’ attendees would stay withdrawn, however, as we have been proceeding from one week to another, they’ve been showing significant improvement. They now engage with our activities on a weekly basis, they engage with all other attendees in our activities, and we can see them smiling, communicating and they heal from the wounds of anti-gypsyism through celebrating their common cultural heritage.

The results in terms of how Roma cultural workshop activities tackled mental health issues of Bolton Roma residents call for research to measure and understand impact.

Food workshops

Due to the popularity of the dance workshop and since dance activity is also physically demanding, attendees decided to have only light food at all workshops and not to run activities in relation to food in the first half of the project. Several workshop attendees lost weight as a result of the regular physical activity. Also, the venue we are hiring has no facility available to run food workshops. Organising a proper venue for the food the workshops in ongoing and will take place in the second half of May 2023. A decision in the group to film and share the cooking activity, just as the dance workshops, has also been made.

Partnerships

Bolton Wanderers in the Community, a reputable charity with a high reach across all communities ended up being our key partner. They also invited KaskoSan to take part at the Show Racism the Red Card event at University of Bolton Stadium where 450 primary school students took part from all over Bolton.

We raised awareness about the phenomenon of anti-gyspyism and the importance of Romani culture which yielded interest in our cultural workshops as well.

We are in the process of building links with Pikes Lane Primary School and Gilnow Primary School, Bolton University and Octagon Theatre in Bolton.

Khadija Ingar, a highly experienced, professional seamstress in Bolton not only designed and delivered 18 beautiful outfits for the female dancers, but also offered to coach women so they can make their own outfits in the future. Outfits KaskoSan dancers were wearing have received loads of appreciation both online and offline.

Neil McAlister, KaskoSan trustee revived a link with the Caribbean-African Health Network (CAHN), an organisation KaskoSan collaborated with in 2016 as part of the Supporting Roma Voices project which was thanks to Phil Martin, a solid trustee of KaskoSan since 2017.

CAHN is one of the implementing organisation of the Greater Manchester voluntary, community and social enterprise mental health research and partnered KaskoSan to run a focus group discussion with workshop attendees in Bolton about obstacles in access to health and care which can also be expected to happen in the next phase of the project.

Leaders of The Voice Assembly and the Accord Gospel Choir also joined the music workshop. For many in the club that was one of their first friendly encounter with individuals having white British and Yemeni British background. They also joined forces with attendees to perform on Easter Monday, 10^th of April 2023 at the Bolton Unity Festival on one stage.

Istvan Kate, Bolton Roma resident, comes from a reputable Roma musician dynasty and is a regular attendee of KaskoSan

‘Pecsi Juni’, a young performer with millions of views on YouTube also decided to join the workshop on a regular basis. His singing and guitar music is another magnet for many of the attendees.

In appreciation of the international reputation of the workshop activities, KaskoSan also received round Roma flag badges from the European Roma Grassroots Organisation (ERGO Network) to hand out to Roma workshop attendees. Workshop attendees are proud to wear the badges they received directly from the Roma Week at the European Parliament Brussels.

Budget overview

We had eight budget items in total and all of them have been delivered according to our major expectations. Due to unforeseen circumstances, we managed to save on some of the budgeted costs, and two additional costs have also emerged.

We initially planned to use the Victoria Hall in Bolton as a venue for the workshops. However, the Socialist Club in Bolton had several rooms on offer also £250 cheaper. That facilitated the running of several different workshops at the same time in different rooms of the building, and also for a larger number of attendees, which helped us better meet community needs.

The impact of the community advocate’s work as well as the years of individual support KaskoSan has been providing to Roma families in Bolton since 2014, triggered the achievement of our initial expectations. The target of the 40 to 80 attendees we hoped to achieve by the end of the 15 sessions scheduled in the project was hit at the very first event. That means that 15 days of community advocacy contribution, instead of the initially planned 20 days, was also sufficient which helped us save £600. That also entailed that the initially planned promotion activities were not required either and that helped us save another £250.

Another unforeseen circumstance was the firm request of attendees to run workshops on a weekly basis which we scheduled to take place every second week when designing the project. We have carried out 12 workshops since the beginning of the project to date.

A major incentive for community members was the opportunity to be featured in professionally edited Roma cultural videos which enhanced the importance of content production. An iPhone 14 Pro Max and a Sony Alpha 7 III, the latter purchased from the National Lottery funded budget, have been used to capture the footage and Adobe Premiere Pro has been used to carry out the video editing, translation and subtitling. Content is being regularly rolled out on the KaskoSan website and social media platforms, find links below. As shown on enclosed bank statements, both community advocacy and content production services have been paid by bank transfer in three instalments.

The actual cost of the Sony Alfa 7 III camera was £38 more than the original quote since the previous product wasn’t available at the time of purchase. We also realised, that logistics of food provision and recruitment and management of dance coaches conducted by the community advocate locally in Bolton will be easier, therefore we subcontracted the community advocate not just for workshop attendee promotion, but also for food provision and dance coach management for each and every session.

Half of the project management fee has already been paid and the other half will be paid upon the completion of the project.

Public liability insurance costs ended up being cheaper than expected and we managed to save £43.

Workshop attendees chose not to have traditional Roma food at sessions, instead they suggested easily digestible products so they could engage in the dance workshop. That way the originally itemised budget for food, coffee and tea has been halved with which we managed to save £600.

We have not foreseen at the planning of the cultural workshops that the dance component of cultural workshops would gain a huge popularity, and that project participants would request to learn from professional dance coaches. The Bolton based community advocate recruited a male and a female dance coach with dance coaching experience from the Roma community to run the dance component of the cultural workshops in Bolton. The male dance coach is a proud member of the Roma LGBTQ community and we are also proud of him. They each charge £40 per workshop which is £80 per session and that rounds up to £1200 for 15 sessions in total.

The enthusiasm of Bolton community members to form a dance group and to perform publicly was another unexpected circumstance. The dance group was invited to perform at the annually held Unity Festival in Bolton with an audience of several thousands of Bolton residents from all of its communities.

The performance opportunity was due to the partnership we initiated with Bolton Wanderers’ Charity to connect Bolton Roma residents with local community members. KaskoSan’s workshop attendees were first invited to attend the ‘Show racism the red card’ event at Bolton University’s Football Stadium in Horwich with more than 500 participants. That collaboration triggered an invite to KaskoSan’s newly formed dance group to the Unity Festival, where workshop attendees had further opportunities to network with the local Indian and Irish communities. KaskoSan’s dance group performance has the highest popularity in the diverse festival audience and workshop attendees ended up being featured in the local Bolton Evening News paper.

To film the first ever performance of Bolton Roma residents, a historical event in the community life of Bolton, we decided to hire a professional director and cameraman. The person KaskoSan managed to recruit for the filming was Phil Turner, a highly reputable producer director, who charged us £505 for a whole day of professional filming and directing.

The total savings of £1705 were used to cover the extra costs of dance coaching and professional filming totalling to £1705.

To book a workshop
email juice@kaskosan.org