Important note: This workshop is part of AWARE’s Growing Up Indian initiative to foreground the voices of Indian women in Singapore. It is therefore intended primarily for Indian women participants in Singapore. If you are not an Indian woman but interested in recording oral histories of Indian women in Singapore, however, you may sign up. If you have questions about this, please email projects@aware.org.sg.

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To be human is to tell stories. Do you know a woman in Singapore whose life experiences you would like to bear witness to—whose stories you believe to be worthy of record?

In their introduction to the AWARE anthology What We Inherit: Growing Up Indian (2022), editors Shailey Hingorani and Varsha Sivaram write, “Indian women’s everyday lives… deserve to be witnessed in their own right.” Over the centuries, however, women’s experiences have been lost to the historical record. Even as history writing expanded from a record of great men and their exploits to include women and other marginalised groups, minority women’s histories have often been given short shrift.

Whether published in print, streamed as a podcast or delivered in yet another innovative medium, oral history—an organic mode of doing history by eliciting stories through interviews—can be an incredibly effective tool for validating the experiences of minority women. Join us for an interactive two-hour workshop with writer Mandakini Arora to explore the beauty and importance of oral history, and how best to engage in it in the Singapore context. As a participant, you will share your ideas on interesting interview subjects, brainstorm possible questions to ask of interviewees, and formulate an outline of your own oral history project. You too can be part of the great work of enriching our country’s archives and centering otherwise forgotten narratives.

Please note this workshop will take place in person. Participants will be emailed some reading materials and other preparation instructions beforehand.

We want our workshops to be accessible to everyone, and require your generous contributions to make programmes like this possible. While you are welcome to give any amount you wish, we suggest a minimum of $15 per person. No tax deduction will be provided. Note that Eventbrite requires a minimum contribution of $1. If you require a waiver of this minimum contribution, please email media@aware.org.sg.

We are unable to accommodate transfers and cancellations if participants are unable to attend after payment has been made.

Date: Saturday, 8 April 2023

Time: 10AM – 12PM

Venue: AWARE Centre (5 Dover Crescent, #01-22, S130005)

Entry Fee: Contribute-what-you-can. Suggested contribution of $15 per person.

Register now!

About the Facilitator

Mandakini Arora edited Small Steps, Giant Leaps: A History of AWARE and the Women’s Movement in Singapore (AWARE, 2007) and Jean Marshall’s Pahang Letters, 1953–54: Sidelights on Malaya During the Emergency (Ethos Books, 2017). A historian with postgraduate degrees from Duke University and Jawaharlal Nehru University, Mandakini is completing a book on home, gender and identity based on oral history interviews with British women in Singapore.