Emilia studies Polish culture and food. For Jayden, it’s maths and African history. Photographer Craig Easton captures the weekend schools where youngsters can celebrate their family heritage by Saima Mir
Growing up, every Saturday morning while my school friends were out shopping, going to drama school or learning to dive at the local swimming pool, I would put on my shalwar kameez and head to my mosque’s weekend school. There, I would sit cross-legged on prayer mats with other young girls, our heads covered with soft chiffon scarves, listening intently to stories from Islamic history, before catching up on school gossip and that week’s Top of the Pops.
I was seven when I started going to the school in Bradford, and 15 when I left. It was the 1980s, and there were about 20 of us. Our parents all knew each other, most of the congregation was of Pakistani heritage, and most of the children second generation. We learned the basics of the Islamic faith, how to offer prayer in Arabic with English translation, how to read the Qur’an, and what being a Muslim required of us. We had sports days and speech competitions, went swimming and learned to cook. We navigated two cultures, and languages, weaving together English and Urdu.
It made a change from my Catholic girls’ school, where the syllabus was gospel, sacraments, and Christ through the eyes of Christianity. The supplementary school helped me find answers to some of the questions my friends asked about being Muslim. Growing up with two faiths gave me clarity. While Islam respects all prophets, little is taught about Jesus in the mosque. My secondary school gave me insight into the foundations of British holidays and traditions, in a way that connected with Islam.
During the year, we’d have regional competitions where girls and young women would come together to give speeches on topics such as “cleanliness is next to godliness” and “Islam and the rights of women”, recite the Qur’an in Arabic, sing religious songs and take part in quizzes. We’d pack into a coach and travel down the M1 to London for a two-day event where we’d compete against girls from similar backgrounds from other parts of the country. We all spoke Urdu, but it was our English accents that revealed where we were really from – Bradford, Glasgow, Gillingham or Manchester. The women making the announcements were always Pakistani aunties, and even now place names such as Walthamstow and Redbridge are converted to a particular pronunciation in my head.
Supplementary schools are common to a variety of cultures. Photographer Craig Easton has spent several months travelling across the UK, documenting students at Saturday and Sunday schools, ranging from a Japanese school in Livingston to a school in Buckinghamshire for children of African heritage. “There are hundreds of these schools, full of British kids who want to celebrate their family heritage and culture,” he says. “Some of the schools are faith schools, and others are about ‘this is the country you came from, and this is the political background to the place’.”
Easton, an award-winning photographer, has a thread running through his work: the idea that it is possible to be British and still hold on to one’s heritage. He is keen for his images to be an antidote to the rise of rightwing nationalism. “Photography and journalism are so good at shining light into dark corners, but I wanted to turn that around and say how brilliant some things are across the country. These are kids with thick Mancunian or Scottish accents celebrating their Japanese culture or their Polish culture. They are all deeply connected to the culture or faith, while also being deeply British.”
Easton said he was received well by all the schools. “The children had enormous pride in their cultural identity, and it was celebratory. That’s what I loved about it.” One of the groups he visited was a Polish school in Aylesbury. After Poland joined the EU in 2004, the community in the UK began to grow. Four years later, the Aylesbury Saturday school was set up by the local Polish community as a means of holding on to their traditions and language. “There was a real sense of longing,” Michalina Skierkowska, head of the school, tells me. “People missed their family, the culture, the food and the reality of being in Poland.” Since then, hundreds of children, from reception age to GCSE, have passed through the school, which is funded by the Polish government and membership fees, supplemented by fundraising activities.
You can read the article in full here on the Guardian website and see the beautiful images as part of this story.
This article was published on The Guardian website on April 30th 2022.