Béla Bartók’s entrancing masterpiece, Bluebeard’s Castle. Photograph: Brent Eviston
Flying in the face of opera’s reputation for being overpriced, elitist, and long-winded, the Arcola Theatre has launched its tenth-anniversary Grimeborn festival.
The festival offers new works and reinvigorated classics in both theatrical and outdoor spaces around Hackney.
This year’s event, a rather grittier alternative to the prohibitively expensive Glyndebourne, is presenting sixteen new pieces of music theatre from the sublime to the psychopathic.
The festival opened with a production of Bela Bartok’s Bluebeard’s Castle, translated from Bela Balasz’ original Hungarian text, and performed in one-act. Daunted? Don’t be.
Following its huge success at the Olympic Park last year, this contemporary production was performed for free, outdoors, at none other than Gillett Square, where a cast of community performers manipulated huge, over-sized puppets through this dark tale of blood, tears and unruly husbands.
The setting for opening night was an impressive statement of intent for the seven weeks of festival to come, where almost every ticket is £15 or less and many of the shows come in under the hour mark.
That’s not to say that the rich majesty of some of opera’s more heavyweight material is not represented at Grimeborn 2016.
With Puccini’s classic Tosca, Mozart’s Marriage of Figaro, and Rimsky-Korsakov’s Mozart and Salieri, there is plenty to enjoy from the canon, revitalised for a contemporary audience.
The Hive is a work-in-progress showing of a new piece about psychopathic behaviour and the people who seek it out. The production is directed by Bill Bankes-Jones, who runs the Tête-à-Tête contemporary opera festival.
For anybody who saw the award-winning show Wot? No Fish!!, the closing event of the festival will be one to look out for.
In his most successful work, Danny Braverman recounted the heart-warming story of a shoebox full of his great uncle’s wage packets adorned with sketches designed to entertain his wife.
Braverman has now penned a musical for Grimeborn based on the songs of Labi Siffre. Something Inside So Strong opens in the first week of September.
There are specially-priced tickets for those 16 and under, suggesting most productions are suitable for young adults. It’s also worth noting that many of the shows run for only a night or two so best to book early.
Grimeborn
Till 10 September 2016
Arcola Theatre
24 Ashwin Street
Dalston
E8 3DL
Feminist Dissent’s cover artwork, ‘Seasons of Mud 1’ by Yousif Naser, used with permission
Feminist Dissent, published out of Warwick University, had its inaugural event at the Shoreditch venue last Friday (22 July) organised by the South Asian Women’s Creative Collective, or SAWCC, pronounced ‘saucy’.
The journal was set up by female academics and writers who were part of the Women Against Fundamentalism (WAF) network, formed in 1989 in response to Ayatollah Khomeini’s fatwa against author Salman Rushdie.
The journal’s editors hope to ‘amplify the voices’ of vulnerable women struggling against various forms of oppression.
The launch featured a talk and Q&A with Karima Bennoune, author of Your Fatwa Does Not Apply Here, and UN Special Rapporteur in the field of cultural rights.
There was also a talk by Gurpreet Kaur Bhatti, author of the play Behzti, a 2004 production of which was famously shut down by Sikh protesters for its depiction of a sexual assault inside a temple.
Nahid Siddiqui, a world famous Kathak dancer and choreographer who fled General Zia’s Pakistan in the 1970s, performed to live music, before DJ Ritu closed the evening with music and dancing for attendees.
Feminist Dissent’s editors hope the new publication will be a place to explore gender and religious fundamentalism from a Left-wing anti-racist point of view.
All the writers in the inaugural issue are from minority ethnic backgrounds and have had to struggle against both white racism and the sexism of conservative religious and ethnic communities.
Pragna Patel, Director of Southall Black Sisters (SBS), who attended the launch event and was active in WAF, said she hopes the journal will give voice to women’s struggles.
“We at SBS witness with horror the growing alignment of religion, law and politics and its life-threatening impact on vulnerable women and other groups in minority communities”, she said.
“Feminist Dissent will, I hope, provide a vital space to reinvigorate our struggles and amplify our voices against those who play politics with religion”.
An East London enterprise is helping to tackle the endemic problem of food waste and child hunger in the capital, while serving up high-end baked goods. Founded last year, sustainable food initiative DayOld is London’s first surplus food box scheme.
One of its co-founders, Abi Ramanan, was recently named one of 2016’s ‘New Radicals’. The list, compiled by charity Nesta in partnership with the Observer, highlights the 50 most radical-thinking, socially-conscious innovators in the UK.
Funded by the Bromley-by-Bow Beyond Business scheme, DayOld aims to stop waste from artisan bakeries. It does so by collecting leftover pastries and goods donated by the bakeries, and repurposing them, selling them the next day via office pop-ups, treat boxes and event catering.
Speaking to the Hackney Citizen, Ms Ramanan explained: “I was working for the NGO Sustain, looking at food poverty in London and how to lift people out of it. Even as someone with an understanding of current affairs, I was shocked by the level of food poverty in London, especially amongst children.”
Ms Ramanan met one of DayOld’s co-founders at a friend’s birthday party, and they got talking about food poverty in the capital before deciding to help tackle the issue. They felt that there was a gap in the market for an enterprise that worked with high-end surplus goods, especially one that turned those goods over onto a secondary market rather than merely redistributing them.
Bakeries are one of the most wasteful types of food supplier in the UK, with an estimated 24 million bread slices left over each day. The DayOld team aims to deal with this problem by collecting everything from loaves of high-quality bread to brownies and cinnamon rolls, and reselling them the next day at a discount price.
Profits from the enterprise are then donated to charities that work to address the rising levels of food poverty and child hunger amongst low-income families in East London.
DayOld’s main beneficiary is currently the Magic Breakfast programme, a nationwide scheme providing free breakfasts and nutrition advice to schools where 35 per cent of children or more are eligible for free school meals. The programme, founded in Tower Hamlets in response to critical levels of child hunger in local schools, operates in 59 schools across its three target boroughs (six in Hackney, 25 in Newham and 28 in Tower Hamlets).
Ramanan says DayOld’s eventual aim is to raise enough money to help fund East London holiday hunger schemes, providing food for low-income families who receive free school meals during term-time. “Problems like holiday hunger keep children trapped in poverty”, says Ms Ramanan, who is quick to point out that food poverty is largely down to general poverty, which itself has to be dealt with. “It seems especially important in places like Tower Hamlets where you’ve got such affluence in Canary Wharf and such poverty elsewhere.”
DayOld is not the only food-based social enterprise with which Ms Ramanan is involved. She has also been commended by New Radicals for her company Papi’s Pickles, which provides fresh South Indian and Sri Lankan food for events, pop-ups and street food markets and employs women who have fled the conflict in Sri Lanka.
“It’s been an amazing opportunity [to be featured in the ‘New Radicals’ list]”, said Ms Ramanan, “I’m really honoured, and feel as though I haven’t looked back since I started working in this industry.”
A still from Credible Likeable Superstar Role Model
The organisers of this year’s London Feminist Film Festival (LFFF) aim to provide a space for discussion, organisation and celebration.
The fourth edition of the festival is opening with a 25th anniversary screening of Pratibha Parmar’s A Place of Rage. Parmar’s award-winning documentary celebrates African American women within the context of the civil rights, black power and feminist movements, all of which the organisers deem important struggles to recall in a time when women’s rights are still under attack.
The films aren’t all quite so heavy, with some screenings coming from places of laughter such as feature length “pop-u-mentary” Credible Likeable Superstar Role Model, in which a young girl and her aunt attempt to create an alternative pop star who isn’t hyper-sexualised.
Other notable screenings include the European premiere of documentary feature No Kids for Me, Thanks!, about childless women, and the Shappi Khorsandi-narrated short One Thousand And One Teardrops, about women’s dress codes in Iran.
Each screening will be followed by a discussion with the filmmakers, providing opportunity to discuss the themes of their work and talk about the challenges of working in the film industry.
Throughout the festival there will also be panel discussions addressing topical social issues such as the right to abortion, the experiences of refugee women and the representation of the female body in patriarchal society.
The festival takes place at the Rio Cinema in Dalston from 18 to 21 August, and the full programme can be found on the festival website. If you’re even slightly interested in female empowerment, there’s definitely something at this year’s LFFF for you.
London Feminist Film Festival 18-21 August 2016 Rio Cinema 107 Kingsland High Street E8 2PB
The Mandela Trilogy – an “epic operatic tribute.” Photograph: John Snelling
Africa Utopia presents talks, workshops, music, comedy and performances that celebrate the arts and culture of one of the world’s most dynamic and fast-changing continents.
Featuring a full programme of talks and debates, Africa Utopia highlights the many ways in which the African continent is leading the way in thinking about culture, politics and the arts. A host of experts, entrepreneurs and activists come together as we discuss great innovations, people and progress across the continent and share ideas for positive change in Africa.
Witness the return of Chineke! Orchestra, Britain’s first professional orchestra made up entirely of black and minority ethnic musicians, and discover the story of Nelson Mandela in Mandela Trilogy’s epic operatic tribute, presented in three parts by a cast of over 60 performers, including three different incarnations of Mandela.
Members of the Chineke! Orchestra. Photograph: Eric Richmond
Other highlights include a live rooftop performance by desert rock band Terakaft, an evening of comedy from across the diaspora with Presidents of Laughrica, an exploration of social power dynamics in Expensive Sh*t and a delicious street food market.
Bring the family along and get involved in events for all ages. Hear an African retelling of the fairytale Rapunzel, join author Sade Falipe on an ABC Adventure, search for treasure in Mary Ononokpono’s antiquities hunt or move and groove with your little ones in an Africa Utopia special edition of Pram Jam.
Fuel up at the African Food and Drink Takeover and savour tastes from across the continent as Southbank Centre square is turned into a bustling street-food market, with over 35 vendors of authentic African cuisine.
Plus, over half the events are completely free. Learn new moves in dance workshops, discover your new favourite dish in a live cook off, take a riverside tour of London’s African history or get involved in a part in a giant flash mob.
Africa Utopia
31 August – 4 September Southbank Centre
Belvedere Rd,
SE1 8XX
Sound artist Graham Dunning. Photograph: Alex Zalewska
While most people will use the Great British summer as an opportunity to get their skin burnt at an overpriced rooftop bar or see an auspicious indie band blast their way through a muddy festival, there is no shortage of good stuff happening in North East London.
On Thursday 15 July, New River Studios hosted ‘Fractal Meat Live’, an album-launch-cum-radio-broadcast, which showcased sonic experimentations of global proportions. This event was organised by Graham Dunning, a local sound artist who also presents the ‘Fractal Meat On A Spongy Bone’ radio programme on NTS.
The gig began with Me, Claudius, a part-Welsh, all Female electro-dub outfit, who make grating folk music. They were followed by Justin Paton, an avid fan of squelchy synthesisers, whose trademark sound is good ol’ fashioned acid house. The former sounded like a tortured KLF who have had their trademark tangy samples confiscated from them, while the latter locked into imperfect wonky dance grooves that made the walls sweat.
I caught up with Dunning after Paton’s set. He told me that ‘Fractal Meat…’ began its life three-and-a-half years ago, while NTS was still dominated by club DJs promoting their own nights. The station wanted to broaden its output and approached him with an open-ended brief. “They wanted to bring experimental music, electronic music and sound art together,” Dunning explained. “So, that’s a pretty broad spectrum, but I would play stuff the other shows weren’t covering.” Perhaps it’s appropriate then, that the show’s name originates from Paul Hegarty’s 2007 book on sound art, Noise/Music: A History.
Heading back, once again, into the cavernous depths of New River Studios, we were treated to the subtle, melancholic improvisations of Far Rainbow. This electronics and drums duo make music that resembles crackling tinfoil riding an errant wind. There are tepid waves and scenes of a damp, night-time London projected in the background, drawing parallels between the loneliness of both vistas.
The last act I managed to catch before setting off for the night bus home was a collaborative set between Steph Horak and Tom Richards. Richards was launching his new cassette, ‘Selected Live Recordings 2013-16’, on the Fractal Meat Cuts label. Horak also features on this album. Using re-purposed and outmoded electronic devices in tandem with custom built modular systems, Richards creates bleak, but elastic atmospherics. To counter his “heavily textured, polyrhythmic improvisations” Horak works with rule-based compositional methods, which include modulating her voice using software and effects. Horak and Richard’s collaboration was dark, but full of energy.
Before heading home, I managed to catch Dunning once again and asked what he looks for when putting on an event like this: one that is a tape label, radio programme and sound art gig all-in-one. “Lots of like-minded people having a good time,” he answered. Fair enough. And with that, I went into the stifling summer night.
Some exhibits from the Museum of the Future. Photograph: Ministry of Stories
Novelists, illustrators and others with overactive imaginations have long concocted visions of future Londons – the dystopias of George Orwell’s Nineteen Eighty-Four and Aldous Huxley’s Brave New World immediately spring to mind – so perhaps it’s not surprising children are now doing the same.
Sci-fi, futurology and fantasy lend themselves well to a city that breaks boundaries in fashion, architecture and the like, and now a “museum of the future” is to be added to the many institutions in the capital displaying objects from the far distant past.
The “museum” is in fact a temporary exhibition at the Hundred Years Gallery in Hoxton, and it will introduce visitors to possible sights, sounds, threats and artefacts from the future.
Curated and created entirely by children, whose naturally overactive imaginations mean they probably needed no encouragement, it is the brainchild of charity Ministry of Stories.
It features space-football and “evil washing machines”, and there will be five zones, each exploring a different theme including “creature attack,” natural disasters and time travel.
All of stories in the exhibition were penned by Hoxton children aged 8-12, who have been working with Ministry of Stories in its Thursday and Saturday out-of-school groups.
Hoxton Museum of the Future will open to the public on Saturday 30 July (11am-5pm) and Sunday 31 July (11am – 3pm).
Imagine what Samuel Pepys might make of Pokemon Go and you will have some idea of how our city in four hundred years’ time might look to us today.
Catch the show soon before it’s a thing of the past.
“Top-notch city writing” – An Unreliable Guide to London. Photograph: Influx Press
An Unreliable Guide to London looks and sounds like a bit of a gimmick. The title positions it as a humorous alternative to the city’s latest Lonely Planet publication, while the front cover – laden with hackneyed London graphics and brandished with the tagline “bad advice – limited scope – no practical use” – is the type you might expect to find attached to an unwanted stocking filler. The content, however, is of an altogether different nature.
The idea for the collection, which contains more than a few exceptional stories set in some of the capital’s lesser-known locations, arose during a conversation over meatball subs at a Tottenham retail park. Editors Kit Caless and Gary Budden of Influx Press sat together wondering why publishers weren’t printing books about the parts of London they knew and interacted with on a daily basis. “What novels had we read set in Hanwell, Cricklewood or Barking?” they asked.
Inspired, they brought together 24 diverse contributors from across the city, before launching a successful Kickstarter campaign to give new literature to a London “that exists on the periphery of the imagination”.
An Unreliable Guide… is divided into four sections – West, North, South and East (in order) – and draws on areas as far apart as Wormwood Scrubs and Exmouth Market, and then further again. Aki Schilz gets the collection off to a great start with “Beating the Bounds”, but it’s Eley Williams’s bizarre and brilliant “In Pursuit of the Swan at Brentford Ait” that really sets the work alight.
Williams delves into the rich, ambiguous world of cryptid research, painting a mythological history of an over-grown swan believed to have long terrorised local riverbanks, with a plumage reported to be “dim smoky purple or a vivid electric pink”. She describes Brentford FC football chants that pay credence to the beast and details umpteen dangerous encounters stretching back centuries. It’s a stunningly strange tale.
Budden’s own “Staples Corner (and how we can know it)” – about a trip on the 266 to Currys and PC World, dropped off amid a “web of underpasses and roundabouts, of concrete walkways and steps to nowhere… trapped in the fevered dying dream of a brutalist architect” – is another of West’s highlights, while Chloe Aridjis kicks off the North section with an evocative exploration of night, shadows and optical illusions in N1.
Though M John Harrison’s “Babies From Sand: A Guide to Oliver’s Island, Barnes & the St Margarets’ Day of the Dead” is one of the weirdest, most-inspired pieces of short literature I’ve come across in a while, it’s the assemblage from East that is, for me, of most interest (primarily because I know the territory so well).
The poet Tim Wells lyrically laments the loss of wanker-free record stores in Hackney, where back in the day he’d purchase reggae, drink beer and chat with mates, before moving on to get his fill of pie, mash, liquor and slippery eels at Cooke’s on Kingsland Road. Nikesh Shukla makes fine work of Tayyabs, the famous Whitechapel curry house, while Irenosen Okojie brings a dizzying, Borges-like tale of time travelling monks to Barking.
As if that’s not enough, Marshman Gareth E Rees delivers a typically fun and enlightening account of a walk around Leyton Mills Retail Park – the car park, specifically – and co-editor Caless finishes things off with a probing series of politically-loaded vignettes dedicated to the forces tugging away at Exmouth Market; there’s spiced lamb, adulterous office sex and a bronze bust of Vladimir Lenin.
Despite appearances, An Unreliable Guide to London is a formidable anthology of top-notch city writing.
A selection of Café SoVegan’s comfort food. Photograph: Jade King
I am not a vegan. I feel at pains to open this review with this fact, especially as I arrived at Café SoVegan’s home, the Royal Sovereign pub on Northwold Road, with my girlfriend. She follows the vegan diet that I sometimes feel I should follow too, given the often catastrophic environmental impacts of meat consumption, not to mention my waistline.
Nonetheless I felt on more familiar ground once I’d figured out that, aside from the open kitchen and serving area, this café is situated in a classic London boozer. There’s a spacious beer garden (festooned with posters advertising charity drives and the local cricket club) and a covered area where we chose to plonk ourselves. There, we mulled over the daily specials board, before deciding the main menu was too generously stocked with options (pancakes! a burrito! how on earth do they make quiche?) to overlook.
We ordered four dishes, all to arrive at once. My partner let me have the first bite of the Café SoVegan Seitan Burger, which we both ended up considering the standout of the afternoon. Not to bring things back to meat unnecessarily, but the seitan (a ‘meat’ made from the protein in wheat) had a firm texture and meaty succulence that was really a revelation – especially for my dining partner, a veteran of many a flavourless vegan mush-burger.
The patty is perfectly seasoned and peppery to boot, and the optional guacamole served as an extra ace-in-the-hole (vegan cheese and/or bacon can also be added.) At £5.50, it’s excellent quality and value for any kind of burger in the capital, and it comes with a wonderfully fresh Hackney Salad, comprising leaves plucked from Growing Communities, the Stoke Newington social enterprise and organic veg connaisseurs.
Special diet: a selection of the daily specials at Café SoVegan. Photograph: Jade King
I had the Mac ‘no’ Cheese: visually the same, if not as the luminous boxed variety, as the snappily packaged Mac ‘n’ Cheeses you see served at various London watering-holes. (Refreshingly, the portions here are much bigger.) The dish uses butternut squash in its base, and is then enhanced with turmeric, smoked paprika, crispy onions and of course, “cheese”.
Vegan cheese, from what I hear, is an eternally difficult thing to get right – it seems where one aspect of cheese is achieved, such as meltiness, one is sacrificed somewhat. Here there is a slightly missing cheesy tang to be borne in mind. It all has a lovely warm comforting effect though, especially with the accompanying kale. This adds a salty, semi-crisp texture that works excellently in the mix – showing the real culinary skill that married co-owners Michelle O’Mahoney and Davina Pascal are able to bring to this food.
The two other sides, which we opted to share, confirmed Café SoVegan as a proposition that will appeal to vegans and non-vegans alike. Firstly – sweet potato fries. These really can come out with varying degrees of success, a truism that I’ve demonstrated with weary regularity at home. The ones here strike a really good balance of crispness and flavour, and obviously go brilliantly with a pint.
The second was the Cauliflower Nuggets, which I was particularly in favour of ordering, as chicken is the only thing I’ve eaten in nugget form before. These were battered cauliflower pieces with a delicious spicy warmth, light as a feather and without a hint of greasiness – a really worthwhile addition.
Given the paucity of fully-vegan restaurants in the country as a whole, Café SoVegan is a project to be heralded. Vegans with a taste for comfort food will be in raptures, and omnivores like me, if not totally converted, at least walk away knowing what “seitan” means – and why they may well be dining SoVegan again.
Café SoVegan @ The Royal Sovereign pub 64 Northwold Road, E5 8RL London
Aida Silvestri, Type II B: Distance. From Unsterile Clinic, 2016
Female genital mutilation (FGM) is the focus of Aida Silvestri’s new photography exhibition in Shoreditch.
The practice, in which parts of a girl’s genitalia are cut off for non-medical reasons, often in the belief that it will control their sexuality, is still taboo in many parts of the world and frequently ignored by the media.
“I had another project about migration that had lots of coverage in the arts world. But when it comes to this [FGM], they don’t want to know.
“People are not comfortable looking at FGM images. Some say they are a little bit too harsh, but that is just an excuse. We need to be bold if we want to raise awareness,” said Ms Silvestri.
In the midst of Shoreditch’s Friday evening revellers, six women from the fields of art, health and advocacy met at Autograph ABP gallery to discuss ongoing efforts to eradicate FGM.
The panel, which attracted a 50-strong audience, was part of Silvestri’s Unsterile Clinicexhibition, a collection of photographs inspired by the artist’s personal experience.
Her silhouettes of FGM survivors feature layers of hand-stitched leather showing the type of mutilation they suffered.
Each portrait is accompanied by a poem, with the words edited from the subject’s own, moving story.
Aida Silvestri, Type II F. From Unsterile Clinic, 2015
In an interview prior to the panel, Silvestri, who was born in Eritrea but now lives and works in London, said that knowledge of FGM has improved in the UK.
She said: “I had my first child in 2011 and nobody knew about FGM. Even though some [health workers] should have been aware, nobody said anything to me.
“And then, with my second pregnancy, I was asked if I had undergone FGM. I said I had, and was then sent to be checked.
“So the awareness has greatly changed, and health centres and specialist clinics dealing with FGM are doing a lot of work to raise that awareness.”
However, Silvestri still encounters a lot of “ignorance” from people regarding her work.
She recalled a lady at a summer festival last year, who, when confronted with her art, said: “This isn’t our problem, this is the migrant’s problem. This is a Muslim problem. We Christians wouldn’t do that.”
The experience showed Silvestri, who is Christian herself, that people still don’t understand how widespread FGM is.
It is practised around the world, including in Africa, South America, the Middle East and the Far East, by communities of various races, religions and traditions.
“It is everybody’s problem,” Silvestri explained.
But she admitted that the subject matter had made it difficult to attract attention from mainstream media.
Education, the artist argues, is the way forward.
“I think we need to educate more people, and it has to start in school. The government has now included FGM as part of its safeguarding, so everyone has to know about it.
“During an Equality and Diversity workshop that I have attended recently, it was discussed that Ofsted apparently downgraded one school because the dinner lady didn’t know what FGM meant, which is really good, but we need to do more.
“More than prosecutions, we need education and support.”
Silvestri is planning more events to get people talking about FGM: “I’ve started a fight and I won’t stop.” And she is calling on councils to engage with locals and do more to teach youngsters about the practice.
It was a view echoed by her fellow panellists later in the evening.
Many issues surrounding FGM were raised during the three-hour debate: the patriarchal society within practising communities. The fact that FGM is an economically lucrative crime. The lack of clear guidelines for treating victims. The dearth of follow-up services, both psychological and physical, in the NHS.
But one message in particular rang out loud and clear: that the key to ending FGM is educating children and practising communities about its effects, as well as providing better training for teachers and health workers.
Deqa Dirie, health advocate and anti-FGM campaigner, said: “I’m not bashing anyone, but I know women who have been severely damaged by health professionals in the UK.”
She called for more follow-up services for survivors in the NHS and said nurses and midwives need to be better equipped to deal with survivors.
Emma Boyd, a senior producer at Animage Films, explained how the company works with UK charity FORWARD to produce short films for its FGM campaign.
Boyd said they were focused on getting their message into primary schools. She introduced an animation called The True Story of Ghati and Rhobi, which is played to children across Tanzania to raise awareness of FGM. FORWARD is hoping to adapt the film into a variety of languages.
IKWRO has launched theRight to Know campaign, which aims to get honour-based violence, including FGM, on the national curriculum in the UK.
Hoda Ali, a nurse and trustee of the 28toomany charity, spoke passionately about the merits of education.
Ali survived Type 3 FGM, which involves sealing the vagina until only a very small opening remains, and said it “took away her chances of being a mother.”
She was constantly in hospital from the age of 11 because her injuries meant her periods accumulated in her uterus. She was 17 years old when she had her first period.
She said: “My nieces are eight and eleven, and they’re at the back tonight because they’re not too young to listen. And they will go into school and educate their teachers.”
Ali also called for Silvestri’s work to be used at clinics, so women who have difficulty communicating with health workers can point out what type of FGM they have.
There was controversy when a teacher in the audience asked whether compulsory medical examinations at schools should be reintroduced so cases of FGM are caught early.
Hilary Burrage, author and chair of the debate, initially agreed, but her fellow panellists rejected the argument out of hand, saying it would do nothing to prevent FGM.
A suggestion was raised that midwives should be trained to explain to mothers, before they leave the hospital after giving birth, the law regarding FGM and its impact on victims. Again, the emphasis was on training and education.
The experts agreed that no amount of prosecutions or early diagnoses will end FGM: only when people are taught about the consequences of the practice will it stop.
Aissa Edon, a specialist midwife at The Hope Clinic and a survivor of FGM, described the moment she confronted her family: “I sat my father down, and I didn’t accuse him of child abuse. I explained to him the consequences that I have to live with every day,” she said.
“My father cried and simply said, ‘I didn’t know.’ And then he promised that no more of the girls in our family would ever be forced to suffer as I did.”
Unsterile Clinic 8 July – 17 September 2016 Autograph ABP Rivington Place (off Rivington Street) London EC2A 3BA
