As part of our new learning programme in Leeds, we’re delivering an exciting project exploring food culture with children and young people who have been separated from their families. Working with Child Friendly Leeds and Leeds Children and Families Social Work Service, the project will create a new recipe collection celebrating the young people’s cultural identity, knowledge and skills.

Over the course of 2021, four cohorts of young people from across the world will take part in the project. Each cohort will plan, cook and present their chosen recipes. They will also take part in food photography workshops to style their dishes, gaining a range of skills along the way.

The first cohort took place in May 2021 with six young women from Eritrea and Ethiopia. As well as learning some new skills and practising their English, the young women found the project a welcome opportunity to spend time with others and make friends after life in lockdown. Millen said: “The best part was eating together, it was nice to all sit around and eat together because in our culture that shows love”, while her friend Winta said she most enjoyed “talking about home, memories, and laughing with the girls”.

Louise Sidibe, Senior Social Worker, talks passionately about how being able to cook, eat and share food from their countries of origin opens up a window into a young person’s life before they arrived into the UK. Louise said: “Food is non-verbal and non-judgemental. Even if your English isn’t fluent, food speaks volumes. Young people feel reassured with the familiarity of fond memories and when they cook it gives them a sense of ‘being at home’ in the City of Leeds. By sharing food, you share part of yourself and it’s often a way young people want to show gratitude to others. Our recipe collection will not only be a useful tool for foster carers when young people are new to Leeds, but will also represent the young people’s presence and value in our city.”  

Elvie Thompson, our Lead Learning Producer for Leeds, said: “Our learning programmes aim to give people the skills initially to access, but ultimately to contribute to, the Library’s collections – so awareness of the Library, reading, writing, critical thinking and the presentation of ideas to others are all really important. I hope the participants in this project will not only learn new skills and enjoy taking part, but also imagine themselves creating other things in their futures that could become part of the nation’s living knowledge.”

We’re working with lead creative facilitator and writer Thahmina Begum, photographer and creative facilitator Nicola Fox, and social worker Olivia Rochelle to deliver the sessions, and the recipes are now freely available, ahead of the publication of the full collection in spring 2022.

In their recipe collection, Millen, Winta and the other young women from Eritrea and Ethiopia share a complementary set of six of their favourite dishes to be eaten with injera, the iconic East African flatbread.   

Winta and Millen prepare Tikel Gomen.

Our curators are also providing insights into our food collections to inform how the young people present their creations. For example, Eyob Derillo, Curator for Ethiopic and Ethiopian Collections, joined our first cohort to share stunning manuscript material that explores Lent in the Ethiopian and Eritrean Orthodox Christian tradition.   

This project is in partnership with Child Friendly Leeds and Leeds Children and Families Social Work Service who are providing support for the young people and a fantastic venue – Herd Farm, just outside the city of Leeds – for the sessions.

Winta’s Tikel Gomen (white cabbage and potato dish, pictured above)

Ingredients

1 white cabbage (approximately 2kg)
4 carrots
3 white onions
1 green pepper
6 large potatoes
3 cloves of garlic
2 teaspoons of vegetable oil
3 teaspoons of salt
3 green chillies

Method

1. Peel the potatoes and onions.
2. Wash and roughly chop the cabbage, carrots, onions, green pepper and potatoes into chunks.
3. Peel and finely chop the garlic and chillies.
4. Place cabbage into a large pan with a lid on top, over a medium heat.
5. After 5 minutes add a dash of water to help prevent the cabbage sticking to the pan.
6. After 10 minutes when the cabbage is softened a little add the carrots.
7. Stir in the oil.
8. After 10 minutes add the onions.
9. After 5 minutes add the garlic.
10. Leave on low heat on the hob for 10 minutes until all the vegetables are cooked and soft. Add the chillies and pepper. Mix thoroughly and cook for 5 minutes.
11. Stir in the salt.
12. Eat hot with injera or rice.

This project is in partnership with Child Friendly Leeds and Leeds Children and Families Social Work Service who are providing support for the young people and a fantastic venue – Herd Farm, just outside the city of Leeds – for the sessions. 

 

We go behind the scenes at the Library to introduce you to our people and the many ways they work to bring our collection to everyone. This month we meet Susan Dymond, Interpretation Manager and Cleo Laskarin, Exhibitions Production Coordinator and the voice of our Anything But Silent podcasts.

Susan Dymond

Cleo Laskarin

Tell us about your roles

Susan and Cleo are part of the team that project manages the British Library’s exhibitions. Working with others across the Library, including curators, conservators, and the loans team – who borrow items from other institutions to supplement our collection (and vice versa) – they pull together the narrative and, with audiences in mind, advise on the most effective ways to display the items.

'I manage the storylines of our exhibitions. Working with the curators and others I look at the messaging and carry out audience testing with the marketing team.' Susan Dymond, Interpretation Manager

Cleo works with designers and other contractors, such as mount-makers, art handlers, lighting and audio-visual experts, to help build the physical exhibition space. She is also involved in the logistics of object-handling, installation and exhibition break-down.

'I work with conservators to keep objects safe and designers to make them look attractive and accessible for our audiences.' Cleo Laskarin, Exhibitions Production Coordinator

Give us a flavour of some of the exhibitions you’ve worked on

Susan has been involved in lots of our exhibitions over the last decade such as Harry Potter: A History of Magic, Magna Carta: Law, Liberty, Legacy and Russian Revolution: Hope, Tragedy, Myths. Her focus is currently on Elizabeth and Mary: Royal Cousins, Rival Queens, Beethoven and Gold.

'I enjoyed working on Marvellous and Mischievous: Literature’s Young Rebels because putting on an exhibition for a family audience was something new for us.' Susan

Cleo has been working on Unfinished Business: The Fight for Women’s Rights for the past two years, whilst simultaneously planning exhibitions due to open later in 2021 and 2022.

'I’m also working on a temporary display of miniature books in the Treasures Gallery. It’s ended up being a big job because when the objects are so tiny you can fit more!'

Medieval miniature book of psalms with hooks to be worn on a belt. British Library Shelfmark: Stowe MS 956.

How has Covid-19 changed the way you work?

Usually a very hands-on and chatty team, our Exhibition staff have had to adjust to home-working over the past year. Several of our exhibitions have been delayed by a full year due to closure.

'It was a huge mental adjustment for the team, with projects more protracted and drawn out.' Susan

The team has had to be extremely flexible and only been into the Library for installations and viewing objects.

'The installation of Unfinished Business took twice as long as usual because we could only have half the normal numbers on site with social distancing guidelines. Hanging banners whilst keeping two metres apart was a fun puzzle but it wasn’t as sociable as normal.' Cleo

How did you get into this field?

Susan studied history at the University of Warwick. She started her career in publishing, editing art and history books before becoming web editor for the British Museum. There she moved over to the exhibitions team and joined the British Library in 2010.

Cleo has always had an interest in arts and culture and was dragged to museums as a kid. Her dad is an artist and she used to help out with his installations. She moved to London from Victoria in Canada and joined the Library three years ago starting in Visitor Services and Reading Room roles before joining the Exhibitions team. Cleo also hosted the first series of the Library’s podcast, Anything But Silent.

What do you love about working at the Library?

Cleo and Susan are part of a close team who pull together to deliver exhibitions. This has become even more evident during the pandemic in the way they have supported each other.

'Everyone is more than willing to lend a hand on tasks outside of their roles.' Cleo

What’s your favourite item in our collection?

Susan is a fan of personal items that bring you closer to people such as Beethoven’s laundry list. She’s currently working on the interpretation for Elizabeth and Mary: Royal Cousins, Rival Queens and is enjoying the letters the Queens wrote to each other and their handwritten speeches.

'It’s a fascinating insight into these two women and their relationship to each other.' Susan

A letter Elizabeth wrote to Sir William Cecil on 31 December 1547 before she became Queen. British Library Shelfmark: W MSS (870F).

Despite the complicated installation involved for the display, Cleo has a soft spot for the wonderfully impractical miniature books collection.

'Also a telegram that was sent in response to a damning theatre critic: it’s so sassy and emphatic, it’s hilarious. I love that it was sent via telegram.' Cleo

Telegram sent by John Osborne, 1966, from the Correspondence of Irving Wardle: surnames Me-O
© The Arvon Foundation. British Library Shelfmark: Add MS 88961/3

What’s your favourite (non-British Library) exhibition you’ve been to in recent years?

Susan’s pick is the Oceania exhibition that was at the Royal Academy in 2018.

'It was a magical experience, I ended up staying three hours!' Susan

Cleo enjoyed both the design and wonderful content in the recent Artic: Culture and Climate exhibition at the British Museum which sadly had a very brief run due to Covid closures.

Any book recommendations for our readers?

Cleo’s book pick is The Argonauts by Maggie Nelson, a memoir that weaves together love, gender theory, queer parenting and language.

Susan has recently read the Booker Prize-winning Girl, Woman, Other by Bernardine Evaristo.

'It’s a landmark book that introduces characters often missing from fiction, and asks really interesting questions about feminism and race.'

Find out about exhibitions at the British Library

Ten years ago the British Library and the Qatar Foundation for Education, Science and Community Development started exploring possible areas of collaboration. For some time the British Library had been working on an international engagement strategy to make our collections more accessible in partnership with other organisations.

Fast forward to 2021, and our partnership with the Qatar Foundation and Qatar National Library has gone from strength to strength, this week hitting the major milestone of making our two millionth image freely available online via the Qatar Digital Library.

Under the British Library’s Living Knowledge strategy we have sought new partnerships and collaborations, particularly when it comes to digitisation and digital scholarship.  Our aim is to open up the collections to a global audience and the British Library Qatar Foundation Partnership is a prime example of this endeavour.

Camera view during photogrammetry creation of Astrolabe on QDL by Jordi Clopes-Masjuan.

Two million images is a nice round number, but as soon as you stop to consider how much work it is to make available such a vast amount of content, it is even more impressive - even by national library standards, it is a lot of content.

Thousands of files, manuscripts and maps have been brought up from the Library’s basements through dozens of different workflow stages in order to make them available online. Every item is checked by conservators, catalogued by archivists and content specialists, and returned by our Library Assistants. Every one of the two million pages has been foliated, copyright cleared, scanned or photographed, quality checked, processed and uploaded. A new enhanced catalogue record for every item is created and then translated into Arabic, so that the QDL is a truly bilingual resource, transforming access to these collections for researchers in the Gulf, and indeed for users around the world.

A collection item undergoing conservation treatment, with information added as part of a Hack Day (Photo: Imaging Services)

A key part of the online resource is not only making high-quality images and catalogues available, but contextualising the collections in an engaging way. Over the past year during several lockdowns the partnership team have been unable to work on the collections directly as they normally would, however, they have pivoted to working remotely, in many cases working creatively to open up and highlight the fascinating collections that we continue to make available.

Screenshot of the Bitsy Game created by Ellis Meade of the Qatar National Library

Colleagues have produced new and innovative ways into the collections through ‘hack days’, including making games and mosaics, as well as adding to the over 170 Expert Articles that are available. These pieces cover topics from introductory articles on Arabic Manuscripts at the British Library to Pivotal Moment in Qatar’s History through the collections.

Mosaic of the Qatar Digital Library homepage by Laura Parsons

Please do explore this amazing resource, and tell us about it through our Twitter feed: @BLQatar.

 

Richard Davies

Head of Collection Programmes and the British Library Qatar Foundation Partnership