Ankur Productions Blog

ANKUR PRODUCTIONS’ PANGAA PROJECT NOMINATED FOR NATIONAL LOTTERY AWARDS 2011

Ankur Productions’ PANGAA project is one of only ten projects (with only one other from Scotland- the Briggait) to make it through to the semi-finals of the National Lottery Awards in the Best Arts Project category.

Voting for the finals starts at 9am on Tuesday 31st May and ends at 12pm on Monday 20th June. Votes can be placed on our dedicated phoneline number: 08448369675 or online: www.lotterygoodcauses.org.uk/awards/best-arts-project/95/

Ankur’s 18-month long PANGAA (meaning ‘chaos’ in Punjabi) project invited young people from across Glasgow’s diverse communities to take part in a broad range of urban arts, including Capoeira, filmmaking, beatboxing, DJing and street dance. The project was aimed primarily, but not exclusively, at Glasgow’s Black, Asian and Minority Ethnic communities and consisted of 17 satellite projects and workshops across the city that culminated in a short film, live music events, mini theatre performances and a final large scale site specific theatre and music production entitled Playback (by Davey Anderson, dir. Paddy Cunneen, the Briggait, Oct 2010), all of which served to bring a host of young people from different cultures together.

Emma Campbell, PANGAA’s Project Manager said “Territorial issues in Glasgow can lead to a lack of socialising between communities in the different geographical areas. Ankur already had some success running projects in different communities and the idea was to bring them together to break down those territorial barriers. National Lottery funding enabled us to take the model we had created with smaller projects and turn it into a much more ambitious, city-wide enterprise.”

The National Lottery Awards are an annual search to find the UK's favourite Lottery-funded projects. The winning project in each category will receive national recognition on a BBC One TV show and, in addition to the Lottery funding they have already received, will receive a £2,000 cash prize to spend on their project.

Shereen Nanjiani, Ankur’s Chairperson said, “We’re delighted to have made it to the semi-finals of the National Lottery awards. The work Ankur has done with the PANGAA project has succeeded in making the arts accessible to a whole group of young people who wouldn’t otherwise have had that opportunity. It’s one of Ankur’s key aims to promote cultural diversity in the arts. If we were to win the award, it would allow us to build on what we’ve achieved with PANGAA and encourage more young people to get involved. I urge people to take a few minutes to vote for us. It would mean so much to the work we do.”

Ankur Productions, along with Pachamama Productions, have also been nominated for the upcoming CATS (Critics’ Awards for Theatre in Scotland) 2011 in 5 categories for their production Roadkill.

Now in their 8th year, the National Lottery Awards aim to recognise the incredible difference that Lottery-funded projects have made to people, places and communities all across the UK. They also celebrate the talent, hard work and amazing dedication of the people involved in running Lottery-funded projects.