{"id":1810,"date":"2019-09-06T10:00:38","date_gmt":"2019-09-06T09:00:38","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/sites.manchester.ac.uk\/jrri-blog\/?p=1810"},"modified":"2019-09-04T16:45:44","modified_gmt":"2019-09-04T15:45:44","slug":"artist-in-residence-alicia-rouverol","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/sites.manchester.ac.uk\/jrri-blog\/2019\/09\/06\/artist-in-residence-alicia-rouverol\/","title":{"rendered":"Artist in Residence: Alicia Rouverol"},"content":{"rendered":"

Dr Alicia J. Rouverol was one of the JRRI’s inaugural Artists in Residence from February-July 2019. Alicia drew upon the archives at the Ahmed Iqbel Ullah Race Relations Centre (a part of the University of Manchester Special Collections, but located in Manchester Central Library) to influence her creative writing. Here she talks about her residency, and the resources she consulted within the archives.<\/em><\/strong><\/p>\n

When I first arrived at the Ahmed Iqbal Ullah Race Relations Centre (AIU) \u2014 located in Manchester\u2019s Central Library \u2014 I was a relative stranger. I suppose, in a way, this was fitting. I was here to develop a series of short stories about migration, using the AIU\u2019s collection. And migrants are, after all, strangers<\/em>, in the first instance.\u00a0I found at the AIU not only rich print and archival resources on race, ethnicity and migration, but also a vital centre and staff engaged in exhibitions (launching one on Manchester\u2019s Armenian migrant community) and willing to host my proposed workshop on \u2018writing migration\u2019, the subject of my residency.<\/p>\n

I split my residency days between my alcove in the cavernous hall of the John Rylands Library and the AIU. It was early February and I had six months to tackle my project: previous stories to explore and consider in light of this new research; new stories to craft. How would this collection \u2018speak\u2019 to me?<\/p>\n

I also had two neoliberal novels (completed whilst at Manchester) to re-examine, revise and submit to agents and small presses, here and in the US. The task(s) \u2014 so often when we look at the whole mountain \u2014 were daunting.<\/p>\n

Where to begin<\/em>, as Roland Barthes once asked?<\/p>\n

Only I wasn\u2019t analysing texts but rather making up new ones. I was <\/em>analysing transcripts \u2014 finding snippets that held meaning and that might resonate for me as part of my growing story collection.<\/p>\n

So I did what writers do: establish a schedule, plant bottom in chair, get to work. You begin by scratching the surface to determine what might be mined: read, scribble notes, write \u2014 but later, much later, after things have begun to percolate\u2026<\/p>\n

I read volume after volume of transcripts \u2014 Roots Family History Project, Voices of Kosovo in Manchester, Exploring Our Roots \u2014 watching DVDs of interviews where they were available. These were community oral histories by Manchester organisations and local high school students. I knew such projects, having worked at oral history programmes (currently on NHS at 70 at Manchester). But I didn\u2019t know yet how the material might come to life in my own work.<\/p>\n

And it has, in unexpected ways.<\/p>\n

It wasn\u2019t just the material working on me; it was also the place<\/em>. And migration is all about place.<\/p>\n

I drew on the Library itself, with its broad stripes of Manchester: young people, students, older men, busy bedraggled parents, of all races and ethnicities. Daily, recent immigrants to the UK would come to \u2018our\u2019 desks, asking for direction to the Home Office, located not far from us in the Lower Level. One feels the changing tides of Britain here, in a good way.<\/p>\n

I\u2019m exploring these stories of migration in various forms, in a variety of settings across the globe, and featuring the inevitable exchanges and sometimes collisions of culture.<\/p>\n

On 15 July, we hosted \u2018Stories of Migration: A Writing Workshop\u2019, sponsored by the John Rylands Research Institute and the AIU, for interested writers from South America, Europe, South Asia, and Manchester, sometimes offspring or partners of those who\u2019d moved from other regions. Veronica Barnsley (University of Sheffield) and AIU\u2019s own poet Angela Smith joined me. To stimulate the writing session, we drew on writers from Bharati Mukherjee to Langston Hughes to Ali Smith, and the anthology, Wretched Strangers<\/em> (edited by \u00c1gnes Leh\u00f3czky and J T Welsch, Boiler House Press, 2018). Dr Safina Islam\u2014the AIU\u2019s new director\u2014welcomed our group, launching the event.<\/p>\n

The enthusiasm that night filled us all; our writer-participants urged us for more! It fuelled me too. That weekend, I wrote a story knocking around in my head, embellishing on an incident in Corsica from my own childhood. And there are more I\u2019m developing still, inspired by the narratives I\u2019ve read here: stories of migration and change, fear and courage in the face of (so often) such terrible odds.<\/p>\n

\u2018You can\u2019t go back\u2019, writes Roberto Bola\u00f1o in Antwerp<\/em>. No, we can\u2019t. But we can write about \u2018back there\u2019, and we can write too about what it feels like\u2014and means\u2014to have come \u2018here\u2019.<\/p>\n

Dr Rouverol would like to thank the AIU staff for their gracious reception and support during her residency: Ruth Tait, Angela Smith, Laura Briggs, Hannah Niblett, Hattie Charnley-Shaw, Jo Robson, Waqar Younis, Drew Ellery, Laila Benhaida, Jennie Vickers and Dr Safina Islam.<\/p>\n

<\/em>The JRRI offers short-term residencies for researchers working within the creative arts who would like to make use of the University of Manchester’s Special Collections. Keep an eye on our funding pages<\/a> for current opportunities.<\/em><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Dr Alicia J. Rouverol was one of the JRRI’s inaugural Artists in Residence from February-July 2019. Alicia drew upon the archives at the Ahmed Iqbel Ullah Race Relations Centre (a part of the University of Manchester Special Collections, but located in Manchester Central Library) to influence her creative writing. Here she talks about her residency, […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":73,"featured_media":1811,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_et_pb_use_builder":"","_et_pb_old_content":"","_et_gb_content_width":"","_exactmetrics_skip_tracking":false,"footnotes":""},"categories":[1],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-1810","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-uncategorised"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/sites.manchester.ac.uk\/jrri-blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1810","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/sites.manchester.ac.uk\/jrri-blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/sites.manchester.ac.uk\/jrri-blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/sites.manchester.ac.uk\/jrri-blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/73"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/sites.manchester.ac.uk\/jrri-blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=1810"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/sites.manchester.ac.uk\/jrri-blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1810\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":1812,"href":"https:\/\/sites.manchester.ac.uk\/jrri-blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1810\/revisions\/1812"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/sites.manchester.ac.uk\/jrri-blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/1811"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/sites.manchester.ac.uk\/jrri-blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=1810"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/sites.manchester.ac.uk\/jrri-blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=1810"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/sites.manchester.ac.uk\/jrri-blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=1810"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}