{"id":443,"date":"2011-12-17T08:34:20","date_gmt":"2011-12-17T08:34:20","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/1078051064.test.prositehosting.co.uk\/?p=443"},"modified":"2011-12-17T08:34:20","modified_gmt":"2011-12-17T08:34:20","slug":"parallel-worlds-in-moseley","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.forwardpartnership.org.uk\/?p=443","title":{"rendered":"Parallel worlds in Moseley"},"content":{"rendered":"

After a year\u2019s break, I decided to have\u00a0another go at stewarding at the Moseley Folk <\/a>festival. Where else can you be\u00a0useful to your community, meet friends and neighbours and experience some\u00a0 excellent music as a part of the bargain? And all this for free when you are a\u00a0steward. Not bad at all!<\/p>\n

By Sunday, I\u00a0had done my two shifts of duty so I could just enjoy the programme. But then, I\u00a0remembered that I had wanted to go to the Eid Mela <\/a>taking place the same afternoon.\u00a0So, I decided to take a detour and first pop down to Canon Hill Park with\u00a0thousands of other local people. I then managed to get to Moseley Park just in\u00a0time for one of my favourites from two years ago, Scott Matthews.<\/p>\n

Although,\u00a0the two events were taking place in different parts of our lovely community, they\u00a0seemed to be worlds apart.<\/p>\n

Having spent\u00a0many years locally, I have become used to feeling at home in a multiracial\u00a0environment. So, what struck me above all was that the crowd at the mela were almost\u00a0wholly Asian, possibly Pakistani. There was a complete lack of any white faces with\u00a0the exception of a few women who had married out of their\u00a0community and, of course, some of the people who were staffing the display from\u00a0organisations such as HSBC, Ford and Aston Villa Football Club who were there\u00a0as a part of their outreach programme. And then later, at the folk festival, the\u00a0crowd was slightly more multi-racial, predominantly white, with the occasional black\u00a0or Asian face.<\/p>\n

It reminded\u00a0me of the phrase \u2018parallel lives\u2019 <\/a>coined after the 90s riots in a number of Northern\u00a0towns. At the time, it appeared to imply that it was the Pakistani community\u00a0which was the guilty party, now I wasn\u2019t sure who was to blame or indeed\u00a0whether there was anything wrong with communities participating in distinct\u00a0cultural events.<\/p>\n

Surely, the\u00a0main point is that people are free to choose what they want to do, on their\u00a0Sunday afternoon. It could be having a pint of Mad Goose and listening to some\u00a0up and coming folk artist with their friends and family or, a couple of hundred\u00a0yards down the road, listening to Pakistani music also with friends and family\u00a0but without the ale.<\/p>\n

I did wonder,\u00a0however, whether we will come to a time when we will stop having separate\u00a0cultural events; perhaps a better option would be for both the events, and\u00a0others like them, to have a more diverse audience.<\/p>\n

Karamat\u00a0Iqbal<\/p>\n

www.1078051064.test.prositehosting.co.uk<\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

After a year\u2019s break, I decided to have\u00a0another go at stewarding at the Moseley Folk festival. Where else can you be\u00a0useful to your community, meet friends and neighbours and experience some\u00a0 excellent music as a part of the bargain? And all this for free when you are a\u00a0steward. Not bad at all! By Sunday, I\u00a0had … <\/p>\n

Continue reading “Parallel worlds in Moseley”<\/span><\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_bbp_topic_count":0,"_bbp_reply_count":0,"_bbp_total_topic_count":0,"_bbp_total_reply_count":0,"_bbp_voice_count":0,"_bbp_anonymous_reply_count":0,"_bbp_topic_count_hidden":0,"_bbp_reply_count_hidden":0,"_bbp_forum_subforum_count":0,"footnotes":""},"categories":[2],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-443","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-blog"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.forwardpartnership.org.uk\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/443","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.forwardpartnership.org.uk\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.forwardpartnership.org.uk\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.forwardpartnership.org.uk\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.forwardpartnership.org.uk\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=443"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.forwardpartnership.org.uk\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/443\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.forwardpartnership.org.uk\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=443"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.forwardpartnership.org.uk\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=443"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.forwardpartnership.org.uk\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=443"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}