Akademi’s Oral History Project featured in Pulse Magazine

Akademi’s Oral History Project sees more than 30 pupils from across Krishna Avanti Primary School (Harrow), Pagrav Dance Company and Sanskruti School of Dance taking part in a multi-layered project with an oral historian and a dance artist. Participants have now collected precious oral testimonies from elderly family and community members, and will use this experience to devise a choreographic response, drawing upon themes of diaspora, migration and identity. 

Chamu Kuppuswamy joined the final sessions of the Oral History part of the project in December for Pulse Magazine and captured the essence of this experience in this wonderful article.

“This project is aimed at taking the oral history method out of the academic realm and familiarising children and young adults with the methodology of questioning, listening and recording conversations with their elders. The groups had been meeting online every Thursday and Sunday morning; I joined in for the last of the five sessions. The excitement was palpable at the start of the session: everyone was eager to hear whom their friends had spoken to, what new discoveries they had made and what they had recorded.”

“It was heart-warming to hear how the participants have benefited from the project. Some have grown closer to their grandparents, their heritage and learnt more about their community; others saw their parents in a new light and began to understand reasons for migration. “