The British Council’s multi-dimensional arts campaign, the New Silk Road, aims to marshal the arts traditions of Central and South Asia in order to help people of the East and West to find a common language and dismantle the perception of different civilisations.

The New Silk Road project is designed to explore, develop and promote contemporary adaptations of traditional experiences and techniques from Central South Asia (Pakistan, Bangladesh, Iran, Uzbekistan and Kazakhstan) both around the region and with a UK audience and practitioners.

The British Council will initiate intercultural discussions, and develop spaces for artists and educators from the UK and Central South Asia Region to gather to explore and develop relationships and collaborations. The interaction, networking and relationships built between the Regional participants and UK artists and practitioners will form the basis for building trust and respect between the CSA region and the UK. The work that is developed and promoted in the region and the UK will highlight the relationships to a wider international audience.

Storytelling creates the basis for this project, by exploring and developing traditional tales that are rooted in the region. The New Silk Road project will weave a relationship between storytellers in different art forms. Through the creation of collaborative and individual pieces of work, the countries represented by the region will become recognisable and accessible to UK and regional audiences.

For the years 2008-09 we are already working on or about to embark on following activities, relevant for our country, regional and overall NSR project context.

Creative writing:

One of the main goals for this project is to re-introduce Asian society to the European world, through the literary works in prose and poetry. We shall encourage CSA writers and poets to write more about own culture and traditions through capturing the oral tradition of CSA region, bringing together writers of various genres, networking and mentoring young writers, organizing Creative writing workshops and supporting interactions via internet.

Design networks:

Aiming to facilitate fashion designers’ and textile designers’ cooperation, we shall continue conducting country/multi-country workshops. We shall encourage creating links in design developing, design curriculum between Arts Colleges in UK and region. Challenging and creative joint work is anticipated to be done in identifying the contemporary fashion tendencies, the concepts of garments and colours of the New Silk Road.

Music heritage and fusion:

Our Creative music workshops will focus around Silk Road’s musical traditions and contemporary music. We shall continue our work in popular music education and DJ training at Tashkent school for DJ’s – Remix based on a ‘Creative Space’ model.

Film:

We shall encourage developing networks of young, innovative filmmakers to share ideas and skills across the region. We invite contemporary UK and CSA filmmaking industries to explore and rediscover the New Silk Road”. Through training in digital documentary film-making we aim to produce NSR shorts documenting the region for international representation.

Visual arts:  

These project activities will include museums management and exhibitions curating, especially in getting museums to reach out to their surrounding communities.