Recently, I was reminded about the need for ‘breaking down the barriers of ignorance’.  Following the shocking news of 24 men in Bedfordshire being kept as slaves on a traveller site, I overheard a couple of people I consider as friends only 4 feet from me talking about the arrest of 4 Traveller men for being gang masters.  They looked at me and dropped their voices so I could not hear the rest of what they said.  What I did hear said was ‘A lot of this goes on with them; more than we know!’ and about Dale Farm I keep hearing people say ‘If they are Travellers why don’t they travel?’

The first  incident shocked and saddened  me because these were people who consider themselves to be open minded and not racist and yet they can come out with comments and generalisations for a whole race of people like this. However, these two incidents have made me realise how important Romany Theatre Company’s work “improving the wider community’s understanding of what it means to be Gypsy, Romany, or Traveller” is.  Our Atching Tan Project has made several contributions towards this work including the Atching Tan Radio Drama series and our Atching Tan Education Pack both of which are available on our web-site

The next step of the Atching Tan Project is research. We want to carry out research on Gypsy, Romany, Traveller Women and the 2 World Wars.  To undertake the research we are looking for volunteers who are able to work on their own to look at one of two different topics:-

• The role of Gypsy, Romany, Traveller women in the community over the last 50 years.
• The role of the Gypsy, Romany, Travellers in the first and second world wars

We will be asking volunteers to decide which topic they would like to research and to carry out that research.  Carry out the research using the Internet, books, libraries any sources that they have access to.  The volunteers will need to give at least 20 hours to their research and writing a report of what they find.  As part of their volunteering there is an opportunity to gain the OCN Developing and Using Research Skills accreditation as part of their research.

We still need a few more volunteers and for those interested we are holding a volunteer meeting at our office in Cambridge on Wednesday 5^th October 2011 at 3pm.  If you are interested, please contact us and we will give you further information of what you will need to do and can give you directions to Llandaff Chambers.

Today is Daniela’s last day with Romany Theatre Company including her holiday.  We wish her well with her new project and hope that she will stay in touch. It has been great to work with you Daniela, you are always so professional in you attitude to work.  Like you we have learned a lot from the Atching Tan Project, the people we have met through the project and each other.  Thank you Daniela for the fantastic work that you have done, the education pack would not have been half what it is without you.

Read the rest of this entry »

Hello. Sorry it’s been so long. I’ve been incredibly busy for RTC since the launch of the education pack, but there hasn’t really been very much to tell you all. Now, on my last day working on the Atching Tan project, there’s some news to report and some goodbyes to say.

Since the education pack launched, I’ve been working on preparing everything that the Atching Tan project has produced over the past two years – from the education pack through to press releases – for archiving with Cambridge Records Office. My office has been swamped with pieces of paper, CDs, and cables. It’s been a feat of organisation, but it’s just about done.

After two years, weeks spent writing, days spent listening to audio material, hours spent in meetings, and nights spent worrying, Atching Tan: an educational journey into the world of Gypsies, Romanies, and Travellers, our education pack for use at Key Stages 2 and 3, has seen the light of day.

We hope that you didn’t miss Atching Tan, which was BBC Radio 4’s afternoon play on Tuesday. We’re utterly delighted by the positive feedback that it has received so far, but please do tell us what you think here, too.

If you’d like to take a peek at the script, BBC Writersroom have thrown it up on their site for general perusal, and you can read a blog post by Dan, our director and Atching Tan’s writer, there as well.

I’ve just noticed that four of my most recent posts have had titles punctuated by an exclamation mark. Obviously there is too much excitement and drama going on at RTC. I have attempted to restrain myself for this entry and maintain a modicum of decorum. Read the rest of this entry »

After what seems to have been months of wrangling with the entertainment section of the education pack, I’ve had a significant breakthrough. It’s such a relief. I was, quite literally, staring at a blank screen for weeks, unsure how to address the dense and diverse world of entertainment in the Gypsy/Romany/Traveller community. And then the thunderbolt of inspiration struck! Read the rest of this entry »

Hello one and all. I’m sorry it’s been a while. Recently, my life has been devoted to preparing the interviews that will be included as part of the education pack, which has been laborious and extremely time-consuming. As a consequence, it means that I don’t have very much of any great excitement to report. Thankfully, other things have been happening in the company, so I have something to tell you. Read the rest of this entry »

I’ve spent this week listening to another batch of recordings from the reminiscence strand of the project, and working out how best they can be integrated into the education pack. Although this is a fascinating part of the education pack process, it is also incredibly demanding. I find that I listen to a recording an average of three times: I don’t want to miss anything, and I need to be sure that when I assign something to a particular element of the project, it’s the appropriate place for it. By the end of the day, my brain is swirling!

Whilst my home life has been exciting because I’ve moved house, my work life has been fairly normal and I’ve been working on the education pack. If I’m honest, I’m rather relieved about that because I don’t think I could deal with too much going on at once! This month, the excitement has all been in Sinead’s camp, where she’s managed to combine home and work in great bundle.