We're the Romany Theatre Company. Have you heard of us? No? Oh, well, if you're sitting comfortably, I'll begin.
It all started back in 2002. Dan Allum, the company director, founded RTC - less of a mouthful than Romany Theatre Company - with the aim of bringing about a greater understanding between Romany people and the settled community. The Romany community can be badly misunderstood by those who aren't a part of it, and suffer from terribly negative views. We want to change that. We try to do it through drama and arts - appropriate for a group of people with such a rich and diverse cultural history with a focus on story-telling - but also through education.
So far, we think we've done okay with theatrical productions such as Our Big Land and The Boy's Grave, but now we've embarked on a really ambitious project. It's called Atching Tan, which means stopping place, or place where fires are lit, in Romani. It's a multi-strand project that spans three years, has five members of staff, and is funded by the Heritage Lottery Fund. It involves a radio series, learning modules, and an education pack for schools. And lots of volunteers and supporters.
The radio series is aired across the eastern counties by the BBC. The first series went out between October and December 2008. (If you missed it, you can always listen again courtesy of BBC Radio Suffolk.) Series two is currently being written ready for broadcast in autumn 2009, and series three will go out in 2010. The actors are a mixture of Romany and non-Romany; some are professionals, but for many, this is their first taste of drama. It's similar for the writers, too, some of whom are novices. We're not just excited about this, but proud as well.
The idea behind the learning modules is that we can offer qualifications to people who otherwise might not be able to gain them. There are five different modules, which all tie-in with the Atching Tan project: radio skills, reminiscence skills, creating an information archive, research skills, and first steps into the classroom.
It's probably fairly obvious how the radio skills module ties-in with Atching Tan, but what about the others? Well, Romany people are great story-tellers, and we wanted to capture some of their personal stories and put them somewhere that they can be heard and used to educate. That's why there're reminiscence and archiving courses. We plan to record about 100 people's stories and make them accessible via the web and museums and libraries. The research module is going to support this element of the project. As for the education module, that links to strand three of Atching Tan.
So that we can contribute more to the communities around us, and help others to understand more about Romany people, we're producing an education pack, too. We're very grateful to Cambridgeshire and Suffolk Traveller Education Services, who have given us their time, experience, advice, and support to get this started. Hopefully, the final product will be ready by summer 2011.
So that's us, and what we do. We'll be seeing you around the intergoogles.
- Daniela
