Bengal to Camden

The Bengal to Camden exhibition was curated by the festival project trainees. They met with families in the local Bangladeshi community and gathered photographs artefacts and interviews.

These were collated by the trainees and curated by them into the exhibition with the support of our project manager Junna Begum. The festival design team helped with the final panel design.  The trainees attended story telling and sharing workshops arranged with King’s Cross Brunswick Neighbourhood Association, and Holborn Community Association to audio record and collect photos and artefacts from members of the community. New photographs were also taken at these sessions with the trainees supported by the festival photographer Stuart Keegan. Some of the stories were told by the older generation themselves, some were shared by the children or grandchildren of the original arrivals of people from Bangladesh in this area of Camden. The exhibition also included audio interviews which were linked to by QR code on Instagram.

Introduction To Bengal to Camden exhibition by the Visible People, Visible Places Heritage project team

Since time immemorial, stories incorporating the collective memory have been passed down from generation to generation. Bengal to Camden, part of Bloomsbury Festival’s Visible people, Visible Places heritage project brings to life the hidden stories of migration, identity and belonging of Bangladeshis who settled in Camden.

Celebrating the 50th anniversary of Bangladeshi independence, Bloomsbury Festival collaborated with community partners, Kings Cross Brunswick Neighbourhood Association and Holborn Community Association, to recruit five local young trainees, Noha Choudhury, Labiba Ahmed, Bushra Hanifa, Yusuf Uddin and Wylan Man. Together this young team, who live and study in Bloomsbury and the surrounding areas, interviewed local British Bangladeshis – from those who arrived in Camden in the 1960s, to second and third generation British Bangladeshis – gathering old photographs, letters and objects that comprise Bengal to Camden.

Camden has the third largest Bangladeshi population in London, and the community has made significant social, economic, academic and cultural contributions to the Borough. The Bangladeshis who first settled here predominantly came from the Sylhet district in northeast Bangladesh. More recently, Bangladeshis from many other regions of this South Asian country have made Camden their home.

The story of migration from Bangladesh, just like the story of independence, remains largely unreported. Bengal to Camden aims to improve our understanding of the country and celebrate its people’s extraordinary progress since 1971, spotlighting the remarkable, often unacknowledged, contributions to this country made by successive generations of British Bangladeshis.