The One Agency

Piali Ray OBE & sampad

Brit Writers Spoke to Piali Ray OBE, Director at sampad…Who are sampad, and what do you do?
sampad is a dynamic development agency for South Asian arts based in Birmingham, in the UK. It plays a significant role regionally, nationally and beyond, in promoting the appreciation and practice of the diverse art forms originating from India, Pakistan, Bangladesh and Sri Lanka. Through its work sampad serves, supports and initiates South Asian arts in all its forms working with youth, community, education and professional artists. 2010 marked our twenty year anniversary in supporting, promoting and developing South Asian arts.

What is sampads involvement in publishing?
2011 is the 150th anniversary of the birth of Rabindranath Tagore, the great Bengali poet, novelist and playwright who was the first non-Eurpoean to win the Nobel Prize for Literature.
Our competition this year aimed to celebrate the legacy of one of the most influential writers in South Asian culture. Earlier publications include
Yuva Vani (1998), which means “young voices”, is a collection of poems by young South Asian writers from the West Midlands region all aged between ten and twenty-one years old. The first seven pages of this booklet have been digitised;
Journeys (2010) a collection of short stories and poems from around the world.
Aarohan (2010) thoughts, explorations and case studies on Cultural Leadership in changing times
Lori (2010) a selection of south Asian lullabies

Tell us more about your Tagore Publication?
This was a very rewarding project experience and quite overwhelmed with the response received from across the globe. 1500 entries from 37 countries nearly jammed our computer systems! The aim was to encourage people to read and know more about Tagore and be inspired to develop personal creative writing ability. The publication was launched in three cities in India in partnership with the British Council and will be launched in the UK this October. A Spanish version of the same competition has been developed in partnership with Casa de la India in Madrid for Spanish speaking countries and is leading to another publication to be launched later in 2012.

http://www.sampad.org.uk/learning/education-programme/resources/cds-and-publications/

Why did you get involved with Brit Writers?
sampad fully support the work Brit Writers are providing and continuing to develop in publishing.
We are very passionate about creative writing at sampad and therefore supporting the Brit Writers’ Awards through our networks was a natural start to our partnership. The resources they provide to encourage children and parents to be involved in creative writing activities has been welcomed by our schools and partners through our Education and Outreach strand.
We look forward to continuing our relationship with Brit Writers to keep people involved in writing.