Hashiya Frames of Resistance: A Creative Storytelling Workshop (Online / Birmingham)

Funded by the Education, Justice, and Memory Network (EdJAM), Hashiya is a platform for sharing creative content to address topics often absent in mainstream curricula or cultural discourse: colonialism, state violence, the treatment of religious minorities, and broadly speaking, critical approaches to history and politics. Hashiya’s outputs include animated shorts which confront and illuminate violent pasts to initiate critical conversations around contentious ideas and events, ranging from colonial practices in the subcontinent to the Pakistani state’s policies and actions to the present day.

This workshop with the Shehri Pakistan team will unpack digital storytelling and animation as a means of teaching and learning about contentious pasts. Members of the Shehri Pakistan team will discuss the processes that bring Hashiya’s animated shorts to fruition – conceptualization, storyboarding, soundtracks, visuals, and text – and the pedagogical possibilities of developing narratives that rehumanise and generate empathy.

Workshop Objectives

• Highlight the power of creative storytelling as a tool to challenge untruths of the past and the present.
• Emphasise the importance of engaging with history and space in diverse ways to construct a vision for a better future.
• Make audiences conscious of the layers of power and positionality that invariably inform creative exercises
• Bridge divides within and between communities through creative engagement with history and build new solidarities to increase the potential for collaborative work.

Agenda

10:00am – 10:30am – Welcome and introductions

10:30am – 11:30am – Styles and themes: Portraying contentious pasts

11:30am – 1230pm – Controversial Stories and Pedagogy Practices

12:30pm – 1:30pm – Power and Positionality in Storytelling

1:30pm – 2:00pm – Lunch and close

Who should attend?

This event is for anyone interested in critically analysing creative storytelling and animation as educational tools for challenging past and present silences and untruths with the aim of working toward more just futures.

Please note: The animated shorts include themes and images of violence, including sexual violence, and discuss contentious events and issues in South Asian history. Some viewers might find these shorts disturbing. We advise that the viewer exercise their discretion in registering for this event.

Hashiya on Tour is funded by the AHRC Impact Accelerator Account at the University of Birmingham.