Following on from the highly successful touring exhibition in 2011, Beyond the Frame returns to India to visit new areas.
Beyond the Frame: India in Britain, 1858-1950 celebrates the often overlooked, long history of the Indian presence in Britain, reaching less-well visited areas of India. Open to the public, this ground-breaking exhibition, part of a larger Open University led project, Beyond the Frame: Indian British Connections, takes a new look at this little-known history and will tour Southern India at British Council libraries, starting in Pune on 17th February, Hyderabad on 21st February and Chennai on 27th February.
Based on extensive archival research deriving from the 3-year project Making Britain: South Asian Visions of Home and Abroad, 1870-1950 (funded by the UK Arts and Humanities Research Council, 2007-10), this exciting follow-on is led by the Open University and directed by Professor Susheila Nasta in collaboration with Penny Brook of the British Library. The current exhibition and activities continue to be supported by the AHRC, The Open University and the British Library with new partners, the British Council India, the World Collections Programme and the National Archives of India.
Project Director Professor Susheila Nasta MBE of the Open University comments:
“In taking the exhibition to India we want to swivel the perspective to examine India’s role within Britain (rather than Britain’s well-documented imperial influence in India). The exhibition will trace Indian-British interactions across the race, class, gender divide and draw public attention to the complex realities of both countries’ intertwined histories. The accompanying activity for schools, the timeline, microsite and online database extend the interest in this project to a very wide audience. We hope that this work will capture people’s interest and make them appreciate the huge impact that people from India have had on British life.”
The British exhibition, after a successful tour around Britain in 2011, is currently in Berlin returning to the UK in 2012.
- For more information on Beyond the Frame, visit the project website here.
For information on the Making Britain project, including the touring exhibition and venues near you, visit the website here. - A multimedia timeline and Asians in Britain website has been created in partnership with the British Library in London to bring these stories alive for a much wider audience – http://www.bl.uk/asiansinbritain
- The online database Making Britain: How South Asians shaped the nation is at http://www.open.ac.uk/makingbritain. This provides free information on over 450 South Asians in Britain from 1870 to 1950, the organisations they were involved in, their British connections and the major events in which they participated.