The Colour of Britain - ACE273.2

Images from Asian cultures. Jatinder Verma, Artistic Director, Tara Arts: "We exist … in our diversity … in Tooting, … in Hampstead, … as shopkeepers, … as judges…". London street scenes: young Asian women, drummer. Shobana Jeyasingh, Choreographer: "For myself, I seem to be inventing my own culture". Indian dancers. Anish Kapoor, Artist: "I’m really not interested in knowing if my work is Indian or not… What is important … is emotionality." One of Kapoor’s sculptures. London scenes, including shot from front of Docklands Light Railway train. VO "… these artists are changing out idea of what it means to be British, and how Britain is perceived both at home and abroad." Paul Gilroy, Writer and Critic: "New ideas of tradition have to be created – and are being created continually…" Greek-Asian sculpture with Gilroy VO "a lot of energy generated in that confrontation [between British and incoming cultures". Gilroy. Dancer, street scenes in Asian area, western and Asian music. VO "Britain has been slow to accept its identity as a society of cultural diversity" and talks about the emergence of new art forms from the different backgrounds. Images of dance, cinema, sculpture, etc. Jatinder Verma on the changes in cultural landscape since the large-scale arrival of Asian immigrants in the 1950s, exemplifying this with comments on the availability of more diverse cuisine since then. Verma VO continues over shots of Asian women marketing. Verma: food and colour in dress – very mundane, but affect everyone on a day-to-day level. Indian dancers. Shobana Jeyasingh talking about the Indian diaspora. Jeyasingh VO continues over shots of dancers, talks of inventing her own ethnicity as a reaction against "a straightjacket of ethnicity" put upon her when she first came to Britain. Homi Bhabha, Writer and Critic: "You get this in some of the most sincere multi-cultural thinking..." Bhabha VO continues over images of Asian paintings "… we want to display you …" Bhabha "… but we want you to constitute a recognisable, quasi-national cultural identity before we can really give you the recognition you want." Performer. Musicians and dancers. VO notes that the Tara Arts Theatre Company was founded in the mid 1970s. In 1990, Jatinder Verma became the first Asian director to be invited to stage a play at the National Theatre. Verma talks about the Company and how it tries to bring external sensibilities into the boundaries of Britain, and thus redefining the sense of what it is to be British.