The dress was made by a group of teenage girls from the travellers’ community. Part of a project run by the school’s travellers unit and staff from the Library service, the dress is made up of pictures which illustrate the girls’ life as travellers.
The dress is on a mannequin. She is called Esmeralda; in her back pocket she has a CD and a CD player which tells the girls’ stories in their own words. Esmeralda speaks with many voices. The mannequin has no head so no face. This upset three younger girls. A traveller needs a face and these girls set themselves the task of using their computer and their arts and crafts skills to give Esmeralda a face. Now Esmeralda has long flowing hair made up of words and phrases that have significance within the traveller community.
Esmeralda is well travelled. She has been to the Appleby Fair and travelled the length and breadth of Lancashire. She is much admired wherever she goes. Mayors, local councillors and community leaders all want to meet her.
For those who made her she is the product of their creative skills and an expression of what it’s like to be a traveller and lead a traveller’s life. For me as a senior manager, within the County Council, she is a model for how to go about engaging with hard to reach communities.
Gypsies and travellers are the most disadvantaged minority within our society. They are officially recognised as an ethnic group. A long history of prejudice makes them very wary of officials. Bullied at school and a tradition of working with father means that formal education often ends at 11 with the transfer to secondary school. Discrimination and lack of formal education means job opportunities are limited. The schools travellers’ service aims to continue education and the Library service seeks to promote literacy. Together they wish to present the friendly face of officialdom.
There are parallels with other minority communities. The focus on family values, marrying within the community, traditional roles for women as mothers and wives, attitudes to sex outside of marriage, different fractions or groups within the community who don’t get on, myths, negative stereotypes and discrimination.
So what can we learn from Esmeralda about engaging with minority communities? We can recognise that the way into communities is through those who are already accepted, that it takes time to build up trust and progress is slow so expectations should be realistic. That we need to find creative ways of listening to people and helping them express themselves. We need to find ways of helping them to educate us about their lives. We need ensure colleagues understand and support what we are trying to do. Encouraging youngsters into the library and museum could have fallen at the first attempt if the staff who work there had reacted to the noise and boisterous behaviour with a ‘not in here you don’t’ attitude. Instead time was taken to raise staff awareness about this community, what to expect and why it was so important to be welcoming and understanding to people who are expecting to be rejected and ejected.
We can learn that it takes a lot of effort, creativity and time to engage with minority communities but not necessarily a lot of money. Esmeralda was created out of a budget of just £200.