Cambridgshire’s Travelling culture honoured in exhibition

This photographic exhibition showed Jean’s family and friends as they travelled, during the summer, to fairs including the Henley-in-Arden Horse Fair. Narrated by Jean O’Brien, the show invited the settled community to see some of our culture, talk to the librarians about what they saw and leave comments. Cottenham is a village with a large community of Irish Travellers at Smithy Fen. In Cambridgeshire we are part of the largest ethnic minority. We use the library regularly but there are no books about our culture. Hopefully this will change soon.

This exhibition was part of a literacy project, which has been run at Smithy Fen with a number of Traveller families and Oblique Arts. Teenagers meet at the library for fun art and literacy classes that support homework for those in school. Oblique Arts is a charity registered with ‘Education Otherwise’ made up of artists and some activists who were at Dale Farm. They can offer tailor-made teaching for family members. This includes getting through driving tests and form filling.

Henley-in-Arden horse fair and market featured in lots of the images. It was a small fair run by Jimmy O’Brien at Wootton Waven in July. It was set in rolling green fields and some lovely horses and old wagons were there. Families came together and stories were shared. The fair will be in its third year next summer and will take place at the same site off the M40 on the weekend of 4th/5th July. All are welcome and anyone interested can contact Jimmy on 07884 494754.

For more information or to obtain high resolution images please contact mail@obliquearts.co.uk  or  call 07834557090.