Tuesday 26 May 2015: "We invited a young lady, Shazeen Chinéad Iqbal, from Birmingham. She is a passionate writer, and a professional researcher at the University of Birmingham, in the field of human development. As part of her research, she has begun a project called the Human Narrative Campaign. By combining her research field with her goal of speaking to people around the country, she would like to produce an amazing narrative of our time. She traveled up to Edinburgh from Birmingham the same morning. Shazeen asked each one of us to give our name and nationality, and she asked different questions to each person, for example: a good memory in Scotland, an ideal holiday place, what brings happiness, the most rebellious time in our life etc.
After that, she explained that she encouraged people to talk about their own stories. Every moment in our life is a story. She experienced isolation when she was at university and experienced 6 years of stomach ache and depression. When someone listened to her, she felt different. An older person helped her to feel love and trust. When she started this project last September, she created a blog and she asked people on the street to put a photo and their stories on her blog. Now, through the Social Media, 3000 people are following the project. She says that future generations need to learn how their forebearers felt. She talks to people who are living in her time to collect their stories on a daily basis. Even though there were just 9 of us, all the women at the coffee morning loved Shazeen’s presentation. After her talk, our casual conversation continued with drinks and snacks.
Shazeen has been cooperating with WFWP Birmingham/UK for several years.
Reported by Keiko Fraser-Harris, WFWP Scotland/UK