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Creative memory, methodology, and the postcolonial imagination

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REPOSITORY RECORD

Hornabrook, Jasmine, Clelia Clini, and Emily Keightley. 2021. “Creative Memory, Methodology, and the
Postcolonial Imagination”. Loughborough University. https://hdl.handle.net/2134/12888380.v1.
 Creative Memory: memory, methodology and the postcolonial imagination

Introduction
In this chapter we introduce the creative methods employed in the Migrant Memory and
Postcolonial Imagination project (MMPI), a five-year research project focusing on the
remembering of the 1947 Partition of British India and postcolonial migration by South Asian
communities in the UK. We do so in order to show how creative participatory methods
provide solutions to methodological challenges in researching memory, not least those
related to doing research on memories of painful or marginalised pasts. Research of this kind
requires the creation of opportunities for participants to approach feelings of belonging,
discrimination, isolation and marginalisation in oblique ways and provide safe expressive
spaces for their articulation. We argue that creative methods contribute to the collaborative
production of knowledge about community and belonging in South Asian diasporic
communities. We begin by introducing the project and our fieldwork sites before addressing
some of the methodological challenges of the project. We then discuss our methodological
approach that combines ethnographic tools with creative community activities, before
presenting our creative methods in practice. While the use of creative methods poses
challenges, we argue that the use of such methodologies, in a reflexive and responsive way,
has the potential to develop more egalitarian research processes.
Creative methodologies use cultural participatory activities that encourage
participants to creatively engage with research themes through cooking, textiles,
photography, film and music. These methods are creative in the sense that the research
activities are culturally generative, producing both intangible and tangible cultural forms
through the research process, rather than being simply extractive. These methods have the
potential to evoke and elicit unique data by providing alternative ways to articulate abstract
concepts, implicit mnemonic meaning and individual and collective identities in comparison
to standard ethnographic tools (Chakraborty 2009; Beebeejaun et al. 2013; Harper 2002;
Tolia-Kelly 2004; van der Vaart et al. 2018). Creative methodologies also provide space for the
articulation of personal and cultural memories and in doing so involve the active production
of community and personal relationships and identities. More broadly, such creative methods
can also promote shifts in the power imbalances within the research process through the
promotion of collaboration, participation and inclusion of multiple claims to knowledge. We

1
argue that reflexivity and responsiveness in creative methodologies within a longitudinal,
multi-perspective study is imperative to achieving two of our central aims. Firstly, to create
collaborative and more egalitarian understandings of postcolonial community and belonging
in relation to memories of Partition and migration. Secondly, to develop more nuanced
understandings of the diversity of roles that different everyday media and creative practices
play in the communication of difficult pasts.
Partition remains a sensitive and painful historical event, remembered differently by
different groups and at different scales, from the individual to the collective. Our research
design and methodology therefore needed to take into account the multiple perspectives and
multiple ways of knowing that we encounter in diverse societies. Memory plays a significant
role, meshing with collective consciousness and self-identification “to shape a sense of
belonging and affiliative membership within a real or imagined community” (Kearney 2013,
132). The concept of ‘community’ is highly complex and multi-layered, often with porous
ethnic boundaries that can speak against ideas of “reified culture” (Baumann 1996;
Williamson and DeSouza 2007). Similarly, a sense of ‘belonging’ can overlap numerous social
locations, individual identifications and emotional attachments and ethical and political value
systems (Yuval-Davis 2006). Finally, ‘home’ is plural, affective, subjective and not necessarily
utopian (Ahmed 1999) and, in diasporic contexts, can refer to a ‘homing desire’ rather than
the homeland itself (Brah 1996). In the contested histories of communal politics, tension and
violence that Partition encapsulates and the multiple migration trajectories and experiences
of settlement in the UK, collaborative and multiple understandings of community and
belonging become all the more important. Creative, participatory methodologies provide the
space for the type of reciprocity and feedback (Tuhiwai Smith 2012; see also Beebeejaun et
al. 2013; Feld 2012; Williamson and DeSouza 2007; Ross 2017) that lead us towards more
nuanced understandings of ‘community’ and ‘belonging’ in South Asian diasporic
communities in our ethnographic sites of Loughborough and London.
Given the postcolonial focus of the project, it is crucial to analyse the power
imbalances involved in knowledge production itself (Foucault 1981), to consider the
connection of research to European imperialism and colonialism (Clifford 1986; Fabian 2012;
Tuhiwai Smith 2012), and to be “accountable to the past” (Gunaratnam 2003, 7). Linda
Tuhiwai Smith (2012) argues that, for the colonised, the collective memory of imperialism
perpetuated through the ways knowledge has been collected, classified in the West and then

2
represented back to those who have been colonized, in a process of interchange between
scholarly and imaginative construction ideas of the Orient (see Said 2003; Clifford 1986). Both
the formal scholarly pursuits of knowledge and the informal, imaginative and anecdotal
constructions of the Other are intertwined with each other and with the activity of research,
therefore researchers should understand and analyse the complex ways in which the pursuit
of knowledge is deeply embedded in the multiple layers of imperial and colonial practices
(Tuhiwai Smith 2012, 2). Shifting research frameworks and methodologies to become more
open, creative and reciprocal with particular, often marginalized, communities (14) is
therefore central to the process of problematising these taken for granted perspectives. The
shift towards co-production in research moves towards more equal partnerships with
communities and researchers; working together in collaboration to understand issues and
create knowledge; accepting different claims to knowledge; and more reflexivity in assessing
the positionality of the research and researcher (Beebeejaun et al. 2013, 41; Enria 2016; Tolia-
Kelly 2007). Such a shift can be facilitated through the co-design of cultural research activities
with communities, through using creative tasks as alternative ways through which to discuss
community and belonging and to disseminate knowledge through community as well as
academic outputs and seeing these two forms of knowledge dissemination as mutually
informing one another. While we aspire to create space for more egalitarian research
processes, we acknowledge the limitations on the co-production of knowledge and the
almost insurmountable challenge of completely removing power imbalances in research (see
Enria 2016; Ross 2017). As researcher’s, we have research agendas and, with such agendas,
we realise the limitations of eradicating power imbalances. This chapter therefore presents a
self-reflexive account of our methodological approach in the MMPI project and considers the
role of the research and researchers in relation to communities, in working with communities,
rather than on communities. In doing so, we aim to collaborate and collate multiple
perspectives on community and belonging in British South Asian diasporic communities in our
research.

The Migrant Memory and the Postcolonial Imagination project

MMPI is a five-year project based at Loughborough University and funded by the Leverhulme
Trust. The project investigates: what memories of Partition circulate within South Asian
communities living in Loughborough and London; how such memories are communicated

3
over time and space; how social practices and processes of remembering Partition inform
intercommunal identities and the (re)construction and the idea of community itself; and what
role these memories play in the articulation of a sense of identity and belonging, both in
relation to British Asian identities and also to a sense of Britishness in contemporary social
life. We are particularly concerned with understanding how the past shapes present British
South Asian inter-community relations in a postcolonial context in the specific localities of
Loughborough and Tower Hamlets. As Sean McLoughlin (2013, 16) suggests, “simple
recollections of the stuff of everyday life can unlock the placed, embodied and affective maps
of memory and identity which are at the heart of diasporic consciousness”. By excavating
inherited, cultural memories of Partition as part of a longer process of decolonisation, along
with autobiographical memories of migration, we gain an understanding of how these pasts
are involved in the social construction of identities in diasporic settings.
Memories of historical events such as Partition can be fragmented and partial and
memory studies as an analytical approach attends to and interprets the meaning of these
mnemonic pieces. Ananya Jahanara Kabir (2009) critiques Partition studies for an over-
reliance on narrative as the favoured mode for creative practice and academic scrutiny, with
the focus of historiography, anthropological investigation and literary and cultural studies
overwhelmingly on primary materials that have strong narrative components, such as the
short story and novel, oral history, and popular cinema (p. 489). Given the unfinished
character of narratives living on in different versions of the social memory of different social
groups (Das 1998, 118; Feuchtwang 2000) and the potential for excessive narrativization of
Partition, Kabir suggests that analysis should focus on embedded non-narrative moments
such as theatre, music, lyric poetry, photography, painting, sculpture, public monuments
(2009, 489-90). Deploying creative participatory methodologies as part of a memory studies
approach rather than in an oral history framework is a way of accounting for non-narrative
elements of the past in the present. Using the mnemonic fragments elicited from creative
processes within our community activities is central to gaining understandings of the social
impact of Partition memory. Following Passerini, Radstone (2000, 10) suggests that, in
relation to oral history, some historians have “been struggling to hold in tension an
understanding of oral history testimony that acknowledges its relation to ‘happenings’, to
‘the constituted’, to historical experience while developing an understanding of memory ‘as
an active production of meanings and interpretations, strategic in character and capable of

4
influencing the present’ (Passerini 1983, 195)”. Memory is therefore understood as “a text to
be deciphered, not a lost reality to be discovered” (King 1997, 62), with representations of
memory understood in relation to both cultural narratives and unconscious processes
(Radstone 2000, 10). In relation to Partition, this is at least in part a methodological issue that
can be addressed through the use of methods which engage and employ everyday creative
processes of remembering Partition, Empire and migration in contemporary Britain. Such
memories of Partition and its aftermath are further complicated for South Asian diasporic
communities in the UK. In South Asia, the language of nationality has been tied to and created
with the ideologies and power structures of colonialism, through the assignment of the British
administrative category of India and the subjectivity as ‘Indian’ manifested in anticolonial
nationalism (Shukla 2001, 560). Indian, Pakistani and Bangladeshi nationalities are entwined
within histories of colonialism, communalism and conflict. Therefore, multiple perspectives
and ways of expressing national identity become all the more important and creative
community activities allow for alternative articulations of nationality in a variety of ways. For
instance, during two different activities with different groups, national identity was expressed
through material culture. One participant expressed Indianness through wearing a sari;
“(What does wearing a sari say about you?) I am an Indian lady and I’ve come from India
and I would like to stick to that. I would like to stick to my identity, who I am and who we
were, what we were and things like that, yes. Very, very proud.”

Another participant expressed Bangladeshi identity through food;

“Hilsa fish is our national fish” … “baate masse Bengali (rice and fish makes you Bengali).”

To gain multiple perspectives from individuals and groups from diverse South Asian
backgrounds, the MMPI project is a longitudinal study based on immersive fieldwork based
in two sites in Loughborough in the East Midlands and in Tower Hamlets, London. Experiences
and memories of Empire, Partition and migration vastly differ among participants and
between the two fieldwork sites, that offer a contrast in terms of size, demographic, region
and urban environments; the market town of Loughborough is in the borough of Charnwood
has a population 166,100 people (Census 2011) whereas the borough of Tower Hamlets in
East London, with a population of 317,200 (Tower Hamlets Council 2018). Despite its size,
Loughborough is home to a diverse population, with a higher than average South Asian
demographic of 12,675 people of Indian, Pakistani and Bangladeshi background (Census
2011). Tower Hamlets, on the other hand, is well-known for its large Bangladeshi population,

5
which makes up the 32% of the population, while a 3% is Indian and 1% is Pakistani (Census
2011). Many of the community groups with whom we work have lived in the UK for decades,
and have acquired British citizenship, others were born in the UK. Many identify as ‘British
Asian’ and/or ‘British Indian’, ‘British Bangladeshi’, ‘British Pakistani’ and/or ‘British Muslim’.
As Sandhya Shukla (2001, 551) asserts, multiple formations of nationality take place in
diasporic culture, putting into question the geographical and conceptual boundaries of
community, which are complicated further by their localised manifestations in diverse sites
such Loughborough and Tower Hamlets, in which lived, everyday experience overlaps not one
but many diasporas (Shukla 2001, 563; see Baumann 1996). It is therefore vital to gain
nuanced and diverse understandings of community in our work.
Our diasporic fieldwork sites are further complicated by the diversity and complexity
of memories and processes of remembering surrounding Partition across different social,
cultural and religious categories. For instance, we work with numerous community groups
and organisations from women’s meeting groups for over 65s, well-being groups
counteracting isolation amongst Bangladeshi Muslim women, English-learning groups,
cultural organisations, community members and devotees of Hindu temples and Gurudwaras,
and networking organisations for professionals. The diversity of the participants in terms of
generation, religion, gender, class and caste reflects the diversity of memories and narratives
of Partition that have been circulated, mediated and inherited across time and space. Such
intersections can also profoundly shape the ‘diaspora space’ (Brah 1996) and impact how
‘British’ and ‘Asian’ identities are negotiated and how belonging is experienced (Bakrania
2013). The maintenance of significant transnational connections – through familial, social and
cultural networks and imaginaries - in a globalized world also inform conceptions of
community as social formations “come into being through imaginative and political
renderings of themselves elsewhere” (Shukla 2001, 564). Therefore, a variety of different
memories, knowledges and accounts of community, belonging and identity emerge from
different social groups within the fieldwork sites. The diverse accounts, memories and
understandings of Partition, migration, community and belonging in South Asian diasporic
communities lie at the centre of our research and, we argue, creative methodologies create
the necessary space for multiple perspectives.

Methodological Challenges and Approach

6
In conducting research on the role of Partition memory in the experience of identity and
belonging in contemporary diasporic communities, the MMPI project faces a number of
methodological challenges. While the vast majority of our participants did not directly
experience Partition, intergenerational, inherited memories and widely circulating cultural
memories are key to understanding the complex, multi-layered ways in which remembering
is socially experienced, practiced and performed across time, space and different social
categories (Pickering and Keightley 2013, 105). Addressing the specificity of second-hand
memories in terms of their residual connections to an unexperienced past and their implicit
articulation and explicit mobilisation in the present can be difficult to tease out using
conventional ethnographic methods.
To investigate long-held memories of Partition across a wide range of individuals and
groups is difficult in terms of the pain evoked by questioning and the ethical implications of
re-remembering communal tension for the purposes of research. In an interview, for
instance, a first-generation British Indian woman 1 responded to the question “When do you
talk about Partition?” by answering: “It’s too painful … We don’t talk about Partition. We just
don’t talk about it … It’s gone, it’s gone, because it was ’47, 1947, so we don’t talk about it …
It’s a long time now, but you have to move on” (personal communication, June 2019). Both
managing and acknowledging the importance of pain in the research process can be a delicate
task, and a failure to do so can disrupt encounters with research participants and even
relationships with whole groups. Ethnographic methods such as one-to-one interviews
provide a narrow range of opportunities for dealing with pain and so alternative modes of
exploring painful memories in ways that can accommodate pain without being overwhelming
were needed.
In terms of the spatial dimensions of Partition memory mean that for many of the
participating individuals and community groups in the UK, remembering practices and
processes traverse across continents both then and now. Many participants are
geographically removed from the physical site of Partition and live outside the nations that
were created as a result of the division, however strong connections are maintained through
family and national imaginaries. Accounting for the transnational nature of remembering
processes can be difficult using locally embedded ethnographic methods.

1
We refer to first-generation here in relation to migration to the UK rather than first-hand experience of
Partition. The interviewee did not directly experience Partition.

7
 The project took a number of approaches to tackle these methodological challenges.
The research framework itself was designed with community collaboration as a central
feature. In both fieldwork sites, we work in conjunction with community partner
organisations to co-design, conduct and disseminate the research. In Loughborough we work
with Charnwood Arts - an independent community arts and media organisation working with
community groups - and Equality Action – an organisation that works with communities on
matters of equality and immigration and runs projects aimed at marginalised residents, while
in London we work together with the arts and culture office at Tower Hamlets Council. These
partnerships are vital in both identifying and recruiting participants and community groups
who are interested to work with us and in co-designing creative activities that are culturally
safe, appropriate and relevant to participants’ experiences and memories.
Our methodological approach centres around a combination of ethnography and
creative community activities. Modes of ethnographic inquiry include interviews, focus
groups, group discussions, participant observation and fieldnotes. 2 These ethnographic
methods, particularly interviews and focus groups, provide an opportunity to focus directly
on our research questions which inevitably impose the intellectual agenda and analytical
concerns of the researchers onto these interactions. However, creative participatory
methods, such as food and memory sessions, fashion and textile projects and photography
workshops, are then used to open up spaces for multiple claims to knowledge to be made
and to challenge and question the meanings of community, memory and postcolonial
experience that the researchers have used. These claims and challenges then inform
interactions in interviews and focus groups. This dual approach combines the naturalistic
features of ethnography by embedding the research teams in the communities they are
researching with the active creation of spaces in which remembering can be explicitly
articulated and explored. This combination is participatory rather than extractive in the sense
that we work in, and with, community groups to design the creative spaces for remembering.
It is also responsive in the sense that one-to-one interviews, group discussions and creative
activities produce ideas and suggestions for new activities, and is reflexive insofar as the role
of the researcher as both a designer, facilitator and participant in creative activities
continually requires negotiation. Through this multi-method approach, we aim for a

2
For a comprehensive overview of research design and methodology for empirical research in cultural
memory, see Kuhn, 2002

8
triangulation of data (Chakraborty 2009, 422) that accommodates multiple perspectives on
community and belonging.
Creative participatory activities backed up by ethnographic inquiry enable us to
explore the movement of memory across the social scales – from the individual to the
collective, the private to the public, the cognitive to the social (Keightley and Pickering 2013,
9). With the potential of creative methods in both excavating memories and creating more
dialogical spaces in the research process, we now provide a self-reflexive overview of the
creative methods and community activities we employ.

Creative methods in Loughborough and Tower Hamlets: Articulating memory, evoking

‘community’
The starting point of the project’s community activities was the screening of Bollywood and
British Asian films in a focus group setting, followed by a group discussion. Participants for
the first focus groups, in both Loughborough and London, were initially recruited via our
partner organisations, Equality Action and Tower Hamlets Council. We chose film screenings
and discussions for two primary reasons. First, we were cultural outsiders and outsiders to
the fieldwork sites. Through standard ethnographic methods, significant time had been given
to immerse ourselves in the field sites through attending group meetings and cultural and
religious events to gain familiarity with group members, to build rapport and trust and to
observe the context of, and participate in, cultural practices, such as the Loughborough and
London Mela, The Season of Bangladrama and other public events of significance for the
communities (poetry, music, theatre, literary or religious events). However, we used the
screenings to introduce the project and to build relationships with groups. Second, we wanted
to start with an activity that would tap into existing cultural practices to engage with, and
appeal to, participants. Considering how, as Bissell et al. (2000, 170) posit, “film can provide
a provocative medium for allowing its subject an opportunity to interpret, question and
theorise” but, at the same time they can be “not only evocative but also entertaining” (174),
film screenings proved to be a good starting point. Given their popularity amongst South
Asian diasporic communities (Dudrah 2006; Puwar 2007; Sardar 1998), screenings of
Bollywood films in particular, and other films focused on colonial South Asian history, were
organised. These film-based activities enabled a first stage of embeddedness into community
groups, to raise interest from other individuals and groups, and to create an initial dialogic

9
space for thoughts and memories in response to the films. Films such as Viceroy’s House, Veer
Zaara, Lagaan, Raazi and Midnight’s Children, which focus on colonialism, Partition and its
aftermath, provided a platform for reflections on memories and postmemories of Partition,
as participants actively made connections between family memories and what they saw on
screen. For example, commenting on Viceroy’s House, a participant in London observed that:
“I grew up with my grandma telling me all these stories of how she used to hide and stuff
when there were Hindus coming, and they found all these different ways of just staying from
conflict all together and seeing that just made everything that she told me come to life even
more as well”.

Such screenings were also very productive in gaining a preliminary understanding of what was
(un)known about Partition. Many participants criticised the fact that Partition is not part of
the British national curriculum and, even though they appreciated that the film portrayed
fictionalised accounts of the events, they valued the fact that the films give visibility to a
history that has been told only within certain families or has not been told at all. Discussions
quickly moved away from films to focus on family memories and personal reflections on the
themes which emerged through film narratives. In some cases, considerations on one’s family
history also extended to political reflections on colonialism and its legacy in postcolonial
Britain:
“These people on the pedestal almost and literally just ignore anything that they’ve done
that’s bad and […] that’s the whole other narrative that we also hear a lot, like we hear the
whole thing about how much like India, Pakistan, Bangladesh have suffered, but equally we
hear like whenever those discussions come up, like we hear those kind of voices going, “Oh,
but yeah, the British gave us railway,” or, “The British gave us this and that”.

“I mean there’s still that colonial mindset almost where we’re like, “No, still we’re going to
have to respect them.” It’s kind of like you know when the master comes in and literally
everyone’s like bowing their heads and all of that, we still have that mind set almost, or maybe
not us as in our generation, but our parents’ generation still – in the same breath they’re
complaining but at the same time they’re also kind of having that mentality where they’re like
– whatever they’ve done, we’re still inferior and we should respect”.

As an initial series of activities, with the aim of introducing ourselves in the social landscape
of community activities in both sites, these screenings provided a good way to begin
conversations surrounding our research theme. Moreover, these sessions were also valuable
in identifying and recruiting willing participants for interview and to set the stage for the
organisation of future activities with a range of different community groups.
Having gained some understanding of the groups and of the social dynamics and
cultural landscape of the two locations through our immersion in the local sites and through

10
the film screenings, we then started to approach specific groups with whom we co-designed
creative activities that integrate and build on the lived experiences, personal memories and
cultural and creative practices of our participants. By referencing and reflecting the histories
and creative practices of the groups with whom we work, we work towards attaining a
trustworthy rapport through familiar actions, evocating sensory memories and accumulating
tangible accounts of memory (Tolia-Kelly 2004, 4). For instance, many of the Bangladeshi
participants work, or have worked, in the catering industry in ‘Indian’ restaurants in the UK
while many participants in Loughborough worked in the textile industry as factory workers
for much of their working lives. In response to this, food and memory cooking sessions were
co-designed with Bangladeshi groups in Loughborough and London and a fashion and textiles
project with a Gujarati women’s group in Loughborough.

Food and Memory

In the food and memory cooking sessions in Loughborough we worked with a predominantly
Bangladeshi men’s group and Bangladeshi women’s group. Both were established community
groups led by Equality Action which served to raise awareness of mental health issues in
marginalised communities and to tackle social isolation. The women’s group predominantly
consisted of first-generation women who migrated as a result of marriage to partners already
settled in Loughborough. A smaller number of women migrated from Bangladesh via Italy,
were born in Bangladesh and brought up in the UK or were born in the UK. The majority of
the women were practicing Muslims. Relationships were built with the groups through
regular visits to their meetings, getting to know group members and through a film
screenings. We had numerous discussions about the possibilities of the cooking sessions with
the group, contemplating what we could do and how memories can be recalled through food.
Co-designed with our research assistants, who also work for our partner organisation and
facilitate the groups, and with the groups themselves, three sessions were organised in each
series. We worked to specific themes for each session to aid with the selection of the dishes
and to direct the types of memories to be explored during the group discussion. Themes
included forgotten dishes, food from childhood, and food from ‘home’, and we encouraged
open interpretation of these themes. A similar series of food and memory sessions was also
organised in Tower Hamlets in collaboration with Mulberry School for Girls. As part of its
engagement with the local community, the school organises a series of group activities that

11
target mothers, with the aim of promoting a sense of community and the creation of a
network for women who might not have the time or the opportunity to develop other
personal relationships. A structure was agreed with the Parents’ Liaison Officer, who also
recruited the sessions’ participants, and followed a similar set of themes to the Loughborough
sessions.
Prior to each of the cooking sessions in Loughborough, the groups decided on Sylheti,
Bangladeshi, and some Italian, dishes, reflecting participants’ everyday cooking practices,
places of origin and trajectories of migration. The participants took turns to decide what
dishes to cook and to lead the cooking sessions and, amid the sounds and smells of the
kitchen, we facilitated several rounds of group discussion and short one-to-one discussions
based on the dish and theme of the session. Once the dish was ready, the group would eat
together and respond to questions based on the dishes, using the dish to evoke sensory
memories as well as triggering personal and cultural memories and reflections of community
and belonging. The participant-centred activities became a space for participants to express
themselves and to enter dialogue with others in different ways, from the decision-making
surrounding the dishes for each session and to correlate to the themes, the creative act of
cooking the dishes and the discussion focusing on food and memory.
The sessions proved productive in evoking personal and cultural memories as well as
providing an alternative space and means to articulate identity and belonging. Throughout
the sessions, participants maintained that food strongly connects them and their families to
Bangladesh as change over time shifts identities towards a dynamic and postmodern sense
of British Islam (see Hoque 2015, 3). While all the sessions were significant in asserting
collective Bangladeshi identity and community, the group explicitly articulated Bangladeshi-
ness through the connections made between ‘home’ and the decision to make hilsa fish
during the ‘food from “home”’ session (see figure 1). A collective Bangladeshi-ness was
articulated through the choice in making this dish, with a participant immediately starting the
conversation with:
“Hilsa fish is our national fish, I think most Bengalis like it … I think most Bengalis like their
traditional food (I: Is this an important dish all over Bangladesh?) ... The whole country like
hilsa.”

The significance of hilsa and other fish was a central feature in discussions of Bangladeshi-
ness through food. The saying “baate masse Bangali (rice and fish makes you Bengali)” was

12
articulated numerous times throughout the activity series in response to questions about the
significance of food and food practices in Bangladeshi communities. Religious identity was
also asserted through food and the practice of cooking for others, with a participant asserting:
“[a]ctually the Muslim people like to cook and eat and feed other people … we are famous
for that”.
[FIGURE 1 HERE]
An explicit sense of community was evoked through the group creative activity itself,
as well as through the active process of remembering. Memories of cooking for and eating
with large groups of family, friends and religious leaders in Bangladesh were often reflected
on during the sessions. During two of the sessions, a participant expressed how the taste of
the dishes improved as she was eating in the ‘community’ setting of the session. She said:
“I love that kind of food because lots of people [are eating] it. I’m thinking it’s more tasty. I
don’t know why. Is it my memory or my mind, I don’t know. I find it’s more tasty.”

“Sometimes I made it [the dish at home], it’s okay, but I want like [a] community.”

While the participants cook at home everyday, the experience of attending the sessions as a
group evoked memories of ‘community’ in Bangladesh. In particular, the experience of
coming together to participate in social cooking and eating in the sessions reminded the
participants of their personal memories of the Bengali cultural practice of tufabat, in which
young people get together to cook and eat a dish outdoors in Bangladesh. Memories of
tufabat became a frequent topic in our discussions, which led to reflections on the change of
such practices as a result of migration and resettlement. The groups and their children do not
practice tufabat in Loughborough and the dishes and the practices of social cooking and
eating during the session provided a focus point to reflect on cultural change across the
generations. This particular memory and the focus on change in Bangladeshi food practices
provided space for the participants to articulate their concerns over the continuation of
Bangladeshi culture in Loughborough. For instance, discussions around passing these recipes
down to their children elicited a mixed response, but led to assertions that their children are
assimilating to “become more and more British” through their food practices. As food is a
significant marker of cultural continuity, as well as difference, hybridity, and/or assimilation
(Mankekar 2015, 84), discussions around dishes allowed us to cover such discussions of
cultural continuity and assimilation and to open up reflections around differences and

13
similarities with neighbouring communities. For instance, reflecting on the differences of
Indian and British food in comparison to Bangladeshi food, the participants discussed:
“Yeah, like fruit and vegetables are the same [in India] … (Chapatis, rotis, same.) But the way
of cooking is a little bit different, isn't it? Little, spice and – more spices or different ways. And
curries are different. Curries, yeah, they use kari patta [curry leaves] all the time. We use, after
cooking we put dhania patta - coriander leaves. So they are a little bit different but similar.”

“I think the British learn from us, lots of curries and things they want now, and spices. We’re
eating your food as well … like roasts and things, we make them our way with the spices, but
British is not spicy, isn't it? … So they learn from us, the spice, they bring the spices, rice,
everything here now, Indian food, restaurants are popular here, isn't it?”

Reflections on food practices is a tangible and relatable way of articulating concepts such as
cultural difference and hybridity and reveal how participants position themselves in relation
to other nationalities (even if they are themselves British citizens). The focus on food and
cooking also countered concerns over memory that many of participants voiced. In London,
for instance, some of the participants were initially reluctant to participate over concerns
that they would have not been able to remember very much. In the pilot session, during
which we illustrated the project to participants, a trip to the food market was followed by a
very lively discussion on fruit in Bangladesh (see figure 2) and how they connected the taste
and smell of fruits with episodes of their childhood, or to their visits to Bangladesh:

“So this is one of my favourite fruits. It reminds me of my childhood. My mum used to

always peel it for us”.

“I remember a memory when I went to Bangladesh after I got married and when they came to
pick me up from the airport, they bought these lychees and it was on the stem, with the leaves
and everything and it was so tasty. I’ve never tasted anything like it, because we had it in this
country and the flavour isn’t as pungent as these over there”.

[FIGURE 2 HERE]

The sensory experiences of the session allowed for the invocation of memories, feelings,
histories, places and moments in time (Choo 2004, 209), in a dialogic and collective way. After
the recollection of autobiographical memories through food in the first session, the
participants literally took the lead in the organisation of the following three workshops.
Similarly, in Loughborough, cultural memories of historical events such as the Bangladeshi
Liberation War and the 1974 post-independence famine were evoked and discussed through
discussions around food practices. For instance, discussions around the use of ingredients in

14
Bangladesh and in British Bangladeshi households led to reflections of the resourcefulness of
ingredients due to the famine of post-independence Bangladesh in 1974:
“The seed is so tasty. No Bengalis ever throw away the seeds, but some people buy the
jackfruit, the whole thing, just for the seeds (laughs)”.

“Jackfruit leaves, she cut them and made pakoras. I never knew that, I knew the goats and
cows eat them (laughs), we can eat them as well. … Actually, to tell you the truth, when it’s
things like famine and things like that, people eat anything. They’ll eat anything in the bin
even, it’s so sad, but it’s true. It happened in 83 or something, after our liberation, there was
a big length of time. So there’s a few films about that, it’s really sad. Like they will go to the
pond and look for food, little fish or anything. They’ll dig out the soil and find some root
vegetables and things like that. Leaves, they will eat them”.
The food and memory sessions opened up a repertoire of memories of Bangladesh and its
history, of migration, family life and stories, thus confirming that “food is central to defining
the manner by which people’s emotional, psychological, social, economic, political, historical,
and cultural realities are embodied as a lived and living history” (Abarca and Colby 2016, 4;
Carolan 2011). With a broad range of knowledge and experience of food and cooking among
the participants, such an activity has the potential to provide a more democratic and inclusive
means of participation and articulation of community and belonging. While we moved the
explicit focus away from of our research themes to memories through food and cooking, the
groups discussed national and religious identity, autobiographical and cultural memory of
Bangladesh, and changes of food practices and community over time and space. Traumatic
topics and emotional and symbolic aspects of people’s experiences might not be accessed
through mainstream methods based on people’s verbal or written competence (van der Vaart
et al. 2018, 2), but through such activities, dialogue and the act of making facilitates specific
cultural practices, knowledge and the senses that provide alternative platforms to express
concepts of community, belonging and identity.

Fashion and Textiles

A series of activities around fashion, textiles and memory was co-designed with a
predominantly Gujarati women’s community group in Loughborough. The project was co-
designed with the group leader and discussed within the group itself, which consisted of
mostly first-generation Indian and East African Indian women. While group members had
been concerned over their lack of Partition memory and lack of confidence in speaking about
issues of migration, the focus on textiles was an engaging and relevant way to talk through
memories and belonging. Significantly, the focus reflected the group’s knowledge and lived

15
experiences of sewing at ‘home’ in Loughborough, East Africa and India and their livelihoods
in Loughborough’s textiles factories. Creative activities rely on different ways of knowing and
therefore potential participants who would not feel comfortable in speaking explicitly about
historical political events, such as Partition and the 1971 Liberation War, and issues of
migration, feel comfortable in sharing autobiographical memories of migration in the context
of a familiar and creative act. With the voices of South Asian women historically absent in
accounts of Partition in the subcontinent, 3 these creative activities provided a means to
access South Asian women’s voices in particular which may not have happened if we had
maintained a use of conventional ethnographic tools. Such creative activities afforded us the
potential to reach a range of voices and perspectives across society, not only those of key
individuals, community leaders and gatekeepers that are readily accessed through qualitative
interviews.
The fashion and textile activities ranged from: ‘show and tell’ sessions with items
taken from ‘personal textile archives’ (Lerpiniere 2013); visits to Gujarati textile collections at
New Walk Museum in Leicester (see Barnes & Kraamer 2015); a stitching workshop; and the
curation of a ‘material memories’ fashion show during the annual Loughborough Mela, which
led to the co-curation of a museum exhibition with Leicestershire County Council. While
several participants from this group have declined to take part in a formal interview, they
have contributed to group discussions during these sessions. In such instances, the activities
have proved vital for participants to contribute to the research process and for us to access
and integrate these multiple perspectives.
During the sessions, the group articulated that fashion and textiles are a significant
means to maintain tangible, material connections with India, to articulate ‘Indianness’ and to
engage younger members of their families in South Asian heritage. As vehicles of memory,
textiles were particularly significant in the evocation of autobiographical memory and
experiences of isolation. For instance, a participant used her mother’s intricately self-
decorated saris as a means to reflect on the ‘culture shock’ she remembers upon her arrival
in the UK and feelings of isolation, having moved to an area without a Gujarati community:
“people don’t have time these days to do embroidery and things like that. Because in Africa
and India, there was plenty of time. … I found it very difficult when I came here in the beginning.
Because it was a culture shock for me, a culture shock for me. I’m settled, well settled now.
But in the beginning it was very difficult, it was all the time dark, cold and we came in winter,

3
Notwithstanding the ‘new history’ of Partition (see Butalia 2000; Virdee 2013, etc)

16
 you know, and I didn’t find any of my people … And I said to my husband ‘I don’t want to live
here’. And he said why, and I said ‘we don’t have anyone here, it’s just you and me. I don’t like
here, I don’t want to live here, to be honest, I’m scared of living here.’ Then my husband called
up a friend in Loughborough, he phoned him on the Wednesday and on the Saturday he came
to collect us.”

Material objects and the act of stitching became the point of focus and vehicles for memory
that allowed for the articulation of painful pasts in more oblique ways (see figure 3). While a
participant was initially worried about what she could say when I asked to have a short
discussion with her during a session, she quickly went on to reflect on her memories of her
multiple migrations between Kenya, India and England following the question “have you used
a sewing machine before?”:
“… I remember a little bit, not much. It’s funny, your past, you remember so much when you
dig it out. … We didn’t know nothing about India. When we arrived in a trolley, big truck, we
had lots of stuff, we had a bed and a sewing machine and everything. It’s a big ship. About
fifteen days travelling on the sea. Me and my brothers were young. So when we went in the
village with the truck, all the luggage and all the stuff, all the village come out and just staring
(laughs), who is it? Somebody come from outside, another country, Kenya, outside, it was
something different for them in the village. … They would come together around the truck and
just looking at us. And we knew nothing about India, nothing at all. … It was a strange place
for us. Five years we lived there. Slowly, slowly we settled down. Then time to come to England,
my father bought house here in England, and he had money, then he just called us.”

[FIGURE 3 HERE]

The focus on different ways of knowing through autobiographical memory and Indian
material culture also opens up a space where the roles of researchers and participants go into
flux, where participants share significant cultural knowledge that can be reintegrated into the
ways we pose our research questions, particularly in interviews and subsequent group
sessions. During a visit to New Walk museum in Leicester, for instance, a participant reflected
on a permanent exhibition, which incorporated Gujarati textiles, Hindu deities and Indian
toys:
“(I: What was your favourite thing to see in the exhibition?) Oh, well we all discussed that
because they’ve got some gods and goddesses there and everybody said they’ve got our gods
and goddesses here which is really good. Okay, they’ve gone from A to Z, everything is there,
I’ll show you, which we were very proud that it will be there all the time. See the top one is
Lord Rama, his younger brother Lakshman and his wife Sita-ji and then Hanuman. That’s
Lakshmi, Narayan, that’s Shiva that’s Ganesh and there’s a Ganesh there. That’s baby Krishna
and that one we worship that every Monday, you know the Shiva linga, we always … do the
ceremony by pouring milk, and water and then sandalwood powder and other powders and
flowers and all these things. So we all felt that although this museum is in England, they’ve got
our stuff as well.”

17
Here the participant responded to the curation of a museum exhibition that incorporated
Hindu deities and, in doing so, articulated a sense of (not)belonging through the inclusion of
‘our gods and goddess’ in the exhibition, while simultaneously articulating exclusion (“that
although this museum is in England, they’ve got our stuff as well”). Importantly, she specified
significant cultural knowledge that articulates belonging in this group, while also directing the
conversation through relevant knowledge and everyday practices, revealing a relaxed and
“dialogic space (where learning and communication is two-way)” (Tolia-Kelly 2007, 4). The
fluidity, or ‘liminality’ (Tolia-Kelly 2007), between researchers and participants that these
spaces afford results in opportunities for participants “to introduce terms and vocabularies
that are more relevant to their experiences” (4-5). The significance of these religious practices
as vocabularies of belonging and community can then be integrated into later conversations
to ensure meaningful discussions in terms that are useful for participants. For instance, the
significance of Hindu festivals and rituals in articulating community in Loughborough’s
Gujarati community became an important question in follow-up interviews. It could be said
that these activities, both in their broader co-design and in the instances of fluidity during
such interactions in the sessions, signal to ‘moments of empowerment’ (Ross 2017). These
moments arise in interactions between researcher and participant and exist when spaces for
equal dialogue between research and participant are built into the research process (Ross
2017, para 22). Importantly, these ‘moments’ acknowledge the limits of creating equal power
relations, but they also show the possibilities of collaboration in the research process when
working with creative methodologies.

Photography, Locality and Belonging: Creative Outputs

Creative methods also have potential within and beyond the research encounter through the
dissemination of collaborative research outputs. Such outputs, we argue, create
opportunities for community ownership of the project activities and have the potential to
challenge disenfranchisement and (re)claim spaces of belonging (see Zahir 2003). For
instance, we worked with a Bangladeshi women’s ESOL group on the project on
“photography, locality and belonging” in London. Most of the group – aged between their
twenties and their sixties - had arrived in London from Bangladesh, apart from three of them
who had lived in Italy for some years before relocating. All members of the group migrated

18
to join their husbands or families, their social life mostly revolved around family and their
participation in the public life of the area is very limited. As a particularly hard to reach group,
it would have been very difficult to reach out to them had we not been approached by their
teacher, a local activist, who saw this collaboration as an opportunity to expand the range of
activities for the group. The project was co-designed as an opportunity for British Bangladeshi
women living in the area to narrate their neighbourhood through their own eyes while
providing us the opportunity to discuss our research themes. Each participant was assigned a
disposable camera and we took a guided walk around the neighbourhood, during which
participants took photographs of places that they deemed significant for their own personal
history. Walking around the area of Whitechapel and sharing ideas and comments with other
participants triggered specific memories which led to participants deciding upon what places
were more relevant for them. Some of the most photographed places included the East
London mosque, the Ideastore library, Whitechapel market, the statue of Sheikh Mujibur
Rahman, and the Zakat centre in Whitechapel. The photographs were then used as a starting
point to discuss migration from Bangladesh, their life in London and their engagement with
the local community. As photographs offer a visual aid that facilitate mnemonic processes
(Pickering and Keightley 2013), the photographs made it easier to draw connections between
places and personal stories of migration, life in the neighborhood and questions of identity
and belonging. While almost all participants initially expressed their surprise at being asked
about their own memories and experiences (instead of their husbands), they found that they
had a lot to say through the process and agreed to integrate their photographs, and
reflections, into the exhibition “Aldgate East My Neighbourhood” at Ideastore Whitechapel,
curated by Four Corners and Swadhinata Trust (see figure 4).
[FIGURE 4 HERE]
The inclusion of the group’s photographs and reflections in the exhibition represented
a way for the group to make an intervention in a public debate (for example on the diverse
character of communities in East London) from which they are mostly excluded. Moreover,
the creation and inclusion of these outputs in a public space reflected a way to claim back
space from a position of marginalisation. As Saskia Warren (2016, 801) notes, ethnic
exclusions and inclusions can form part of the very construction of public space, along with
other markers of class, gender, race, religion, sexuality and age. Indeed, as Puwar (2004, 8)
points out, social/public spaces “are not blank and open for any body to occupy. […] There is

19
a connection between bodies and space, which is built, repeated and contested over time”.
During our walks and discussions, the participants of our workshops clearly expressed that
there are urban spaces they feel entitled to occupy but at the same time there are others they
feel excluded from, hence, when entering spaces of exclusion, they are akin to what Nirmal
Puwar (2004, 8) calls “space invaders” – people whose bodies are marked out as
“trespassers”, where others are deemed as having the right to belong. Through the
development of outputs that are exhibited in public arts and/or heritage spaces, community
groups, particularly those who are most marginalised, can claim back new and old spaces and
self-produce and self-represent diverse cultural identities (Tolia-Kelly 2007, 11-12; Zahir 2003,
207). The outputs of the creative activities themselves open opportunities to challenge
disenfranchisement and (re)claim space both within, and beyond, the research process.

Creative methods and community activities: challenges

While creative, participatory methods have myriad advantages, such work presents
numerous challenges. Before concluding the chapter, we briefly highlight several of the issues
that have arisen using this approach.
The group discussions that arise from community activities are one of our primary
modes of data collection in our creative methodological approach and the dynamics of these
group discussion is significant in numerous ways. In terms of researching memory, the group
dynamic can trigger personal and cultural memories between individuals and provide a
window into social processes of remembering in action. While we advocate this type of group
interaction and data collection, group discussions also present challenges and additional
issues. In practical terms, group discussions during creative activities can quickly become
overlapping conversations among participants, in worst cases, rendering our research
recording unusable. While interventions in the discussion can solve this problem, too many
attempts to gain more control of “which voices talk when, how much, and in what order”
(Feld 2012, 241) can become counterproductive to methodologies that aim to be more
egalitarian. While John Kui Wei Tchen (2006, 200) notes that multicultural, collaborative
projects and person-to-person dialogic spaces need explicit nurturing and curating, we have
to strike a balance in our intervention to simultaneously gain useable data, support the
dynamic of the existing group and maintain an ethos of collaboration within the activity itself.
More challenging in such discussions and participation overall is the playing out of internal

20
group hierarchies and politics, in that individuals with more power in the community group
become those voices that are heard. In this case, one-to-one fieldwork interviews become
the site of privileging the voices of participants involved in the creative methods who may
also be subject to inter-community hierarchies and power imbalances. More broadly, the
multiple hierarchies and power balances within and between community groups reminds us
the ‘other’ ought not to be essentialised as powerless in the essential process of researchers,
especially those that come into marginalised communities as cultural outsiders, to identify
their privilege (Enria 2016, 326). Acknowledging the multiple layers of power and hierarchy
at play thus becomes a significant part of the reflexive process in our creative approach.
While working with community groups and within their dynamics and internal politics,
we also become embedded in the navigation of community politics with the potential risk of
our involvement aggravating pre-existing issues, hierarchies and/or sensitivities within the
group. Our positionality within communities in diverse areas becomes all the more complex,
particularly in a project examining intercommunal relations. With numerous, overlapping
community groups and networks of communication between and within such groups,
spending comparatively equal amounts of time with different community groups, is a
practical challenge. With more collaboration and immersion with community groups, comes
more complicated interactions and multiple layers of responsibility (see Enria 2016, 325). The
concern of the impact of the researcher’s effect on the field is not a new one in ethnographic
research, however, in the pursuit of equality, transparency and collaboration, such
participation-centred interventions move further towards the spotlight. Reflexivity in both
our research practices and in our interactions with different community groups becomes all
the more significant in such a research process.
Finally, while creative methods and dialogic, empathetic spaces for discussion pave
the way for multiple voices and claims to knowledge, they do not provide access to all
personal memories and histories. In researching memories of Partition and migration,
memories and experiences of communal violence, racism and discrimination may also be
actively left out by participants. During creative activities and interviews, first generation
participants, in particular, have subverted experiences of racism, with accounts of these
experiences only surfacing in rare, off-the-record settings. A strategic process of forgetting
may be taking place, and questions turn towards the ethics of ‘knowing’ or ‘grasping’ such
accounts into our data. While such memories are significant for our study, we should also

21
acknowledge there are certain aspects of participants lives that we should not assume we
have the right to know (Enria 2016, 325; Lather 2002, 213). Enria (2016, 325) suggests that
the limitations of knowledge, even when collectively produced, may be a symbol of respect
for the integrity of others’ subjectivity rather than simply a barrier. The ‘right to know’ is a
broader issue in social research, but the acknowledgment of subject-to-subject relationships
between researchers and participants and respecting subjectivities in numerous ways is a
significant reflexive step towards collaborative understandings of community and belonging.
Despite these challenges, by using creative methods we both acknowledge the political, social
and ethical importance of moving towards more democratic means of research and aim to
meaningfully integrate multiple voices and claims to knowledge in our research.

Conclusion
Through creative, participatory, ethnographic methodologies we are starting to
collaboratively uncover layers of memory and belonging across different community groups
in order to understand the consequences of Partition in South Asian Britain today. Combining
tried and tested ethnographic methods with creative activities creates opportunities for
multiple ways of knowing and experiencing the past, enabling a deeper and richer
understanding of the nature and role of cultural memories of Partition and migration in the
articulation of community and belonging in contemporary South Asian Britain. The
integration of creative practices in our research also brings us towards more nuanced
understandings of everyday media in the communication of difficult pasts.
In this chapter, we have argued that creative participatory methods provide solutions
to methodological challenges in researching memory because they provide opportunities for
participants to approach feelings of belonging, discrimination, isolation and marginalisation
in oblique ways and provide safe expressive spaces for their articulation. They are moments,
not for uncovering hidden meaning, but of shared knowledge production in which the making
of meaning is analogously intertwined through the cultural forms of making, from cooking to
sewing. In contexts of migration, creative participatory methodologies are also profoundly
important in facilitating inclusion, including the creative regeneration of identities,
communities, and subjectivities, and are integral to cultural citizenship (understood as “the
right to presence and visibility, not marginalization; the right to dignity and maintenance of
lifestyle, not assimilation to the dominant culture; and the right to dignifying representation,

22
not stigmatization”) (O’Neill 2013, 53). Such an argument for the use of participatory arts
methodologies in contexts of migration, diaspora and in experiences of exclusion,
discrimination and racism, as a means of harbouring cultural citizenship also reflects the ethos
of co-production and the shift in presence, visibility and representation of marginalised
communities in the research process.
Longitudinal research design allows for ongoing negotiations with community groups
and for cyclic processes of reflexivity and responsiveness in the methodological approach and
research design, integrating co-produced and multi-perspective experiences and meanings of
community and belonging and moving towards a multi-voiced, more egalitarian approach.
Constant problematisation and reflexivity in assessing power relationships, being self-critical
about assumptions, judgements, expectations and self-perceptions and embracing
discomforts and challenges (Enria 2016, 325; Tolia-Kelly 2007, 4-5) is a first step towards
confronting and shifting the unequal power structures in research. To facilitate such an
approach is not an easy task and holds numerous challenges and limitations, but creative
community activities, as well as long-term engagement and immersion in the field, provide a
path towards developing the necessary relationships, trust and rapport that may result in
more egalitarian knowledge creation. While such research, MMPI included, serves
researcher’s agendas, by starting with participation-centred research, creative methods and
a reflexive and responsive approach are vehicles for researching memory in a more egalitarian
way.

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Figure 1. Food and Memory Workshop, Loughborough. Egg Bhuna and Hilsa fish. December
2019.

Figure 2. Food and Memory Workshop, Tower Hamlets. Preparing pomegranates.

December 2019.

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Figure 3. Stitching Stories Workshop, Loughborough. Sewing a self-portrait. July 2019.

Figure 4. Aldgate East, My Neighbourhood Exhibition. Participants visiting the exhibition.

Dec 2018.

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