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At last count, more than ninety different ethnic and cultural communities are to be found in contemporary Colchester. Its an amazing figure, compared to just a few years ago when a migrant was an object of curiosity. They come in their ones and twos, and as small families, a migratory process guided by a hope for a better life, perhaps the desire to flee from war, famine or cruelty, the ambition to survive to join ones family and - why not -the luxury of education for oneself and ones children. They come, in spite of a deep longing for one's homeland, with the strength and the will to work all the hours, to contribute, to pay their way, perhaps as X ray technicians, financial experts, hospital porters: doctors, motor bike repairers and electricians: stonemasons, tree surgeons, shepherds and a multitude of other useful jobs
Since the earliest times, Colchester's history is writ large by wave after wave of these immigrants, the fruits of an ongoing international diaspora of Celts, Picts, Jutes, Angles Saxons, Danes, Romans, indigenous tribes, Flemish weavers, Polish artisans, Greeks, Turks, Balkans, Africans, Asians, latin Americans, Jewish, Irish, Caribbeans and people from countless other parts of our world. As a town - a nation! composed almost entirely of immigrants ourselves, we are compelled to reason that the world is a complexity of social, economic and cultural interdependence which we can no longer ignore or from which we can escape, and that national boundaries and isolationism are luxuries which is soon to be no longer available to any of us
Our project is a step in this direction, in the hope that only a knowledge of our changing world can help us understand it.
Contact Dorian Kelly by email at gift@theatrearts.biz or phone 07770 950964
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