News

Mansfield Harmony

30th November 2002 saw the opening event of Mansfield Harmony, a children’s multicultural event celebrating Divali and Christmas.

The aim of the day was to enable different cultural communities to mix socially. Due to the insular nature of the mining communities it is difficult for people from other cultures moving in to be accepted as part of the community.

In this climate, to get different communities to mix is a real challenge, but if we are to break down the barriers of ignorance and fear and move forward, we must take every opportunity we can to create opportunities for socialising and learning about each others cultures.

The idea was to have children from the Asian, African/Caribbean, Irish and English community perform in concert. Because parents from each of these communities came to see their children perform we were able to create an opportunity for them to mix and mingle socially, a multi-cultural buffet further facilitated this.

92 children performed in the event and the performances included bangra dancing, Indian sword dancing, traditional Irish music and dancing, ballet, tap, African Caribbean song and dance as well as Christmas carols and Divali poems.

Cultural Diversity Week

The community of Mansfield celebrated a Cultural Diversity Week between 21st October to 25th October 2002 (In partnership with Human Relations Network, Mansfield CVS and Hard to Reach Groups Project. The events took place at Park Road Resource Centre, Friends Meeting House and New Perspectives (Old Library in Mansfield. The event covered BUILD’S findings on the experience of being black in Mansfield, research from Human Relations Network’s Interfaith issues in Mansfield (funded by the Community Empowerment Fund) and the Hard to Reach Project’s celebration of cultural and religious diversity. The last day of the event saw live music, multi-cultural buffet and a theatre performance from the young people of Mansfield supported by the Human Relations Network.

Summer Activities

Working in partnership with Mansfield Town Football Club and as part of the government’s drive to reduce street and hate crime over the summer months the Home Office funded a national Summer Activities programme. Human Relations Network worked with a group of young adults by using photography to explore crime and community, safety, connecting communities, faces in the crowd, public workers in local communities. Three of the clubs players met up with HRN’s young people to discuss crime in the Mansfield community and how the club can support HRN’s activities. The club released some players to take part in our dialogue between Mansfield’s youth and Notts Police. The three day dialogue was supported by the National Centre for Citizenship and Law and focused on race/religious hate, drugs issues, citizenship and the law and community cohesion in local communities.