Brown Canada

Dear CASSA Members & Supporters,

As you may know, CASSA is currently engaging in the documentation and archiving of  South Asian history through our Brown Canada project. Brown Canada is a community-led project documenting, creating, and sharing South Asian histories in Canada. Our collective entry point is through the Komagata Maru incident of 1914. We are writing to invite you to participate in an informal focus group to share your knowledge about community histories and experiences for our community snapshots.

We are in the midst of creating written community snapshots  for various South Asian communities in Canada. We are currently researching the community involvement and history of South Asian women, LGBTQ communities and labour activists as well as the Bangladeshi, Pakistani, Sikh, Indian and Tamil communities. These community snapshots  will be shared in a traveling posterboard exhibit, online at www.browncanada.ca and at community events.

We are holding focus groups with  the Bangladeshi, Pakistani, Indo-Caribbean and Sikh Communities in the next  week, from June 2^nd-6^th We are hoping that you will be able to participate in one these sessions. The focus group schedule is: :

Bangladeshi Community Focus Group: Saturday, June 2^nd from 12:00-2:00pm
Sikh Community Focus Group: Monday, June 4^th from 6:00-8:00pm
Indo-Caribbean Community Focus Group: Tuesday, June 5^th from 6:00-8:00pm
Pakistani Community Focus Group: Wednesday, June 6^th from 6:00-8:00pm

Refreshments will be provided!

The proposed location of the focus group is the CASSA office located at 2401 Eglington Avenue East, Suite 212 between Kennedy and Eglington Avenue.  Tokens will be provided

If you are a member of the above communities and you wish to share  knowledge of the community’s resources, challenges, and organizations, please contact Krittika Ghosh by Friday, June 1^st via email at krittika@cassa.on.ca or call (416) 932 1359 x18 and respond to the following questions

Name:____________________________
Phone #:____________________________
Which focus group are you interested in attending:_______________________________

Organizations/cultural groups/businesses/community groups that you have been a part of, in Canada: ________________________________________________________________

________________________________________________________________________

Why do you think you would be a suitable participant of the focus group:_______________________________________________

If you are unable to attend a focus group, but still wish to be involved and share your knowledge for the Brown Canada project, please let us know!

For more information on the Brown Canada Project

Join us on Facebook: http://www.facebook.com/browncanadaproject
Check us out on tumblr:
http://browncanada.tumblr.com/
Check out our website at: http://www.browncanada.ca/

Thank you for your support and assistance!

Brown Canada is looking to audition actors for a series of vignettes based on the Komagata Maru incident and related themes of exclusion, questions of belonging and unspoken/unknown histories, among others. Firstly, we are looking for actors to either perform at different venues across the province: 4 performances across Toronto, and 5 outside of Toronto. These projects will be performed at various times from May to July 2012.  We are also looking for actors to perform in our final performance, which will take place at the end of June.

Staff at CASSA would set up the performances and facilitate the community dialogues following the performances. We do have a small budget and can provide compensation for the development of the work and pay travel expenses for the actors.

Actor/Performer:

• Interest or experience in theatre
• Interest in Canadian South Asian history
• South Asian identifying preferred

For more information, please call or email Deena Hai: 416 932 1359 extn. 14  / deena@cassa.on.ca

 webpage: browncanada.ca

facebook: browncanadaproject

youtube: browncanadaproject

tumblr:  browncanada

 Brown Canada is a community-led  history project to encourage South Asian communities to create and document their histories in Canada creatively, through writing, video, interviews, art, theatre or other means.  Our collective entry point for this project is through the Komagata Maru incident of 1914, when a ship of South Asian people was denied entry into Canada due to restrictive immigration policy known as the continuous journey regulation. Through this project, we will be creating an interactive website, offering educational & creative workshops, producing a short video as well as seeking to tour a short theatre piece to raise awareness of the incident and spark community dialogue within Ontario.