Black History Month starts this weekend
Crawley Black History Month kicks off at The Hawth on Saturday October 3 at 7.30pm as Crawley Community Arts present a Black History Celebration Evening.
Spokeswoman Lorraine Gould said: "This event promises to be a lively, colourful and truly-inspirational start to a month of great events, featuring a wealth of local talent. The evening will be an uplifting mix of song and dance including a Thriller tribute to the late, great Michael Jackson from Vision in Youth Collective.
"Opening the evening will be special guest, Kezia Obama, stepmother of US president Barack Obama. The night culminates with a performance by Kaiso, who blend the sounds of calypso, meringue, reggae and of course the steel drum to produce a sound that is guaranteed to get you up and dancing!"
Tickets for Black History Celebration evening are 6 (discounts 4). Family of Four: 15.
Black History Month continues with a screening of vrit film documentary Soul Power (12A) on Thursday October 8. The film is entirely composed of footage shot in 1974 at the legendary music festival dubbed Zaire '74. It shows the experiences and performances of stars including James Brown, BB King, Bill Withers, Celia Cruz, Miriam Makeba, among a host of others.
"This footage has remained vaulted for the past 35 years, unused, unseen, until now", Lorraine said. Tickets for Soul Power are 6 (discounts 5.50)
Road to Crawley Oral History Project will be presenting a free exhibition on the Diego Garcia & Chagos Islands in The Hawth Foyer from Monday October 12 to Friday October 23. Road to Crawley will be using the exhibition to launch their project to capture personal histories to tell the story of the Diego Garcian and Chagos Islands community in Crawley.
Carolyn Murphy, Crawley community arts development officer based at The Hawth, said: "When we started working on events for Crawley Black History Month it soon became apparent that, while we were really good at cultural celebrations in Crawley, the one thing that was missing was the actual history.
"There is nothing in the town's archives that tells us about our growing diverse communities. The Road To Crawley project was developed to fill this gap. With funding from the Heritage Lottery Fund, we will be running projects which aim to record the histories of Crawley's African-Caribbean and South Asian Communities, kicking off with our exhibition on the Diego Garcia and Chagos Islands."
Lorraine added: "There are lots of other events going on across Crawley throughout October including a free Black Culture Experience on Saturday October 17, 11am-4pm in Queen Square. There will be a chance to try drumming, dancing, sample traditional cookery, finishing with music by Mohammed Yahya of Mozambique."
Tickets for all Hawth events are available from The Hawth Box Office on 01293 553636 or you can book online at www.hawth.co.uk
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Weather for Crawley
Thursday 23 May 2013
Today
Light showers
Temperature: 4 C to 11 C
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