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World on Your Doorstep

Peter Lazenby | 09.05.2007 08:53

A music festival in celebration of diversity is to be staged at Calder Holmes Park in Hebden Bridge in West Yorkshire on Saturday and Sunday, July 21 and 22.

When the Trades Club at Hebden Bridge in West Yorkshire showed the football World Cup matches on its cinema screen last year, it also celebrated the cultures of the different countries taking part.
Volunteers served food ranging from Portuguese stew to Brazilian kebabs. And after each match a live concert featured music ranging from an Iranian folk singer to a family of Roma violinists from Eastern Europe.
Remarkably all the musicians were part of ethnic minority communities in West Yorkshire and East Lancashire.
So volunteers at the Trades Club - an independent socialist club built by the trades union movement - decided to go for something more ambitious. They are to stage an open-air festival entitled "The World on Your Doorstep." The event will be a celebration of the diversity of music and food which exists in the region thanks to the presence of people from around the world.
While the free festival is a celebration, it is also a statement of opposition to racism, and to organisations such as the BNP which use diversity as a reason for hatred.
The World on Your Doorstep festival has its own website, as does the Trades Club. Volunteers are being sought - around 70 are needed each day for security and other work. Organisers will also welcome approaches from musicians from the different communities of northern England.

Peter Lazenby
- e-mail: peter.lazenby@ypn.co.uk