Cultural Historical Association of Rodriguans & Mauritians in Victoria Inc.

SWEETS - Tastes and traditions from many cultures
Festival on Sunday 18 March 2012
Exhibition from Thursday 15 March 2012 for 1 year

Click on link below for more information

Sweet Exhibition & Festival

http://museumvictoria.com.au/immigrationmuseum/whatson/past-exhibitions/sweets-exhibition/

Dear family & friends,

Hope you are all keeping well. Just an update re Immigration Museum sweets exhibition CHARM has been invited to contribute to/assist with.

We have been asked to explore some key themes identified by the group two weeks ago; there were specific sets of questions asked by the facilitators from the Immigration Museum. We have answered these from our perspective, however to ensure we inclusively engage all cultures in our diverse communities we have proposed to take these questions to you, your friends, families and members.

Your participation, contribution and collaboration will positively contribute to this project and make it more reflective of our diverse cultures and experiences.

There is a lot of information here, but please take a few minutes of your busy schedule to review the information and answer some questions we would like you to address. Click on the link below for the questions. your answers will remain anonymous unless you want your name and details acknowledged formally by the Museum. Rest assured that any sensitive information will be treated discretely and confidentially.

When answering the questions also consider the following key points suggested by the Immigration Museum facilitators:

Further information

It would be great if you can all think of more personal stories, cultural significances, histories, recipes, anecdotes, sayings and folk stories that relate to sweets in your culture.

Objects

We need some great objects relating to the themes – please keep looking and if you can email us a photo of objects that you would like to be considered for the exhibition with a description of the item, its use and any personal story that you can tell in regards to the objects that would be fantastic.

Images

The same also applies for images/photos in your personal collections, if you are able to scan/take a photo of them and provide a description of them, and who owns the copyright of the images (who took the photo so this can be acknowledged).

Contacts

Another aspect to think about is contacts within your community.  Who else would it be good for us to speak to in order to get a variety of stories and perspectives from?
If you can pass on their details so we can contact them and interview them that would be fantastic; please ask them if it would be okay for you to pass on their details to us.

Do not hesitate to get in touch if you have any questions/concerns. Your involvement, participation and positive contributions will help us make a difference and will make this project truly inclusive.

Please email all responses and info by Tuesday 8 November 2011 so we can compile all of this and pass this on to the Immigration Museum facilitators.

Thank you for your time and ongoing support. Feel free to pass on this email to your family, friends and members .

Take CARE AND KEEP UP THE GREAT WORK ALL.

Kind regards,

Patricia Kimtia

SWEET! Exhibition and Festival
March 2012

The Immigration Museum in Melbourne is working collaboratively with a number of Victorian communities to produce an exhibition and festival in March 2012 themed around sweets, highlighting shared cultural traditions, rituals and contemporary practices.

CHARM has been approached by the Immigration Museum to be on the organising committee to represent the Mauritian/Rodriguan community since we had worked with them before, there are 5 communities in total being represented.

- Turkish, Italian, Japanese, Mauritian/Rodriguan and Indian.

We have to attend a number of workshop nearly every week for the next 4 months, some of the workshops are compulsory as we need to work together to shape the exhibition themes. Our community is currently represented by Patricia Kimtia, Clency Lapierre, Danielle Laville and Stella Hennequin.

There will be opportunities for more people to be involved/engaged as the planning evolves and the exhibition takes shape and festival is organized.

The strongest themes that were brainstormed by all groups are:

Life Cycle Events (Love?) (births, birthdays, weddings, Christenings, name days, funerals)

Rituals (religious and spiritual sweet based rituals – Eid? Christmas? Ramadan? Easter? Shinto New Year rituals?)

Seasonal food and celebrations (food that is eaten at particular times of year, seasonal festivals)

Daily Life / Home Traditions (eating sweet foods as part of daily life, gift giving)

Here & There (looking at how sweet traditions have changed with migration – to suit Australian tastes, home based cooking to commercialized, health reasons, what foods are available seasonally)

If you have any questions/concerns contact us now.

CHARM is seeking your valuable input and would like you to be in touch to let us know the following by Tuesday 18 October or 31 October at the latest:

1)     Tell us about the traditional sweets you remember you cooked, ate etc. when In Mauritius
2)     Do you still eat/cook this today?
3)     What has changed? Do you stick with traditions? Why or why not? What has been adapted?
4)     When were the sweets made/shared/given to others? E.g. religious events, family celebrations such as birthdays, wedding etc.
5)     Which dominant culture/s would these sweets belong to/emerge from?
6)     Do you have any historical facts/books about Mauritian/Rodriguan sweets?
7)     Do you have any photographs of these sweets being shared/prepared, utensils used, especially ones that are very uncommon and traditional and were brought here to Australia?

Download copy of SWEET! flier

Download copy of project schedule and timeline

Email us for more information:

Email: president@charm.org.au

Email: clencyl@hotmail.com