The Ulfah Blog

The world premiere of Ulfah Arts’ most ambitious Artistic production Hakawatiyyah – the storyteller at DAM Music Festival, Kosovo was a resounding success and now the artists are getting ready for a week long tour of the UK in May !

This milestone feels like almost a dream due to the experiences I’ve had establishing the organisation over the course of tough but very interesting five years. Ulfah was started with a view to empower Muslim women and introduce arts and music in their lives. I had several reasons to set up Ulfah, but the primary objective was to change the status quo against women participating in Music and art within the Islamic culture.

Ulfah Arts faced several set backs in the beginning, and I was turned way from almost every avenue of both the third sector arts and the male dominated Islamic arts scene, often at the expense of facing prejudice from the very members of Islamic community who act as flag bearers of Islamic arts scene in the country. It was disappointing to hear and experience this gatekeeper attitude shown towards the concept of encouraging Muslim women and music, but it also gave the Ulfah team the motivation needed to work even harder and bring down these barriers.

Thankfully artistic community also has individuals who understand the importance of arts, and creative development for Muslim women, most of who often never get a chance to express themselves creatively due to cultural and religious taboos. It wasn’t long before Ulfah started attracting helpful and genuine supporters both from the arts industry and the Muslim community.

The struggles have continued but the conviction and the passion of everyone at Ulfah Arts towards elevating the position of Muslim women in the creative sector has been unshakeable. Therefore over the past five years Ulfah has been able to not only help scores of Muslim female artists established themselves and find their place in the arts and music sector, it has also single handily stared a wave of organisations now working with Muslim women in creative context .

  Click to visit campaign website

A fact, which not only makes us proud of what we have started but more importantly it strengthens our hope towards the future of Muslim women as artists and arts consumers.

One of these initiatives is the next edition of Tuned On, which is local arts organisation, Punch Records’ free seminar program. The seminar is taking place on 26 April at Birmingham’s Symphony Hall. ‘Islam and Women in Music’ will discuss the cultural barriers that have affected Muslim women from being involved in the music sector.

Fore more information and to book free tickets go to

Ulfah Arts is delighted to supports the above initiative, and we would like to advice more arts organisations from all genres of art to work with Muslim women in artistic capacity. It is a social group with immense creative potential; it has just been suppressed for too long to be openly evident. Like always Ulfah is happy to advice and support any such enterprise.

Events like this not only makes us proud but is almost like achieving salvation for every drop of sweat and tears shed by the volunteers and staff of Ulfah over the years, campaigning tirelessly for the creative rights of Muslim women, often without fancy salaries or fat artistic commissions.
 
Mashallah, even though Ulfah Arts often works on show string budgets and the generosity of volunteers, all of our artistic initiatives focused on the development of Muslim women as artists and arts consumers have borne substantial results. One of the success stories is our all-Muslim women choir, which was founded in 2005 and has grown in to an institution itself.

The Ulfah Collectives first live tour was in 2006 and they now perform a repertoire of spiritual music from various faiths, across Europe.

Another one of our projects, the Muslim Women Music Makers (mwmmusic) campaign which we started in 2008 at World Music Expo 08 has not only been successful, leading to a second edition this year, but has managed to inspire one of our project partners to start a brand new arts organisation in Denmark focusing on Muslim women and music in western Europe !

The campaign continues this year with a brand new artistic production, Hakawatiyyah – the storyteller which was jointly developed by grass roots Muslim women from UK and classical musicians from Republic of Kosovo lead by Ulfah Arts.

Hakawatiyyah- the storyteller is a seamless mix of traditional Arabic storytelling and western classical music, and takes inspiration from the powerful and often poignant stories of women from Islamic history and the holy Quran.
 
Visit mwmm.co.uk for tour dates and book tickets.
Ulfah Arts will continue to develop its creative programme and help nurture the artistic aptitude of Muslim women and young people not only in Europe but also across the world. We are extremely grateful to everyone who helped us start this unique movement and empower Muslim women by simply introducing the concept of artistic expression in their lives.

Hopefully it will not only reap economic benefits by introducing creative arts as a viable form of employment for Muslim women, but will also bring together our society through the beautiful works of art and music they produce, inspired by Islam but created for the entire community.

Until next time,
peace and light,

Naz