London’s Kurdish Cultural Centre delves into the past to secure its future

ERBIL, Kurdistan Region – London’s Kurdish Cultural Centre (KCC) has opened its archives to the public for the first time in its 35-year history as part of wider plans by its new leadership team to return the centre to its former glory.
 
A free-entry event took place at the centre in Lambeth, south London on January 25 with an exhibition of archive pieces, musical performances, and an evening social. 
 
“The event is to demonstrate the significance the KCC has played in our history since its inception in 1985,” Miran Hassan, a member of the centre’s new leadership team, told Rudaw English via WhatsApp.

Under the Conservative government’s austerity policies since 2010, funding for charities and community groups across the United Kingdom has been slashed, dealing the KCC a severe financial blow.
 
Miran and his team now hope to reinvigorate the centre and expand the services it offers London’s Kurdish community, with an advisory board set up to “take these ambitions forward”.
 
Most urgently, the centre needs help repairing the damage caused by heavy rain over the past year. Its archives also need money and manpower to help catalogue the thousands of items in its collection.
 
The collection began when the KCC was first established and has steadily grown thanks to donations and various purchases. “The library was established to provide a source of information to the future generations of Kurds in the UK,” Miran said. 

The collection was never entirely shut off from public view, with visitors able to request access for research purposes. Now the leadership team hopes to make the archive a permanent open resource. 
 
Miran estimates there are three to five thousand items in the archive, spanning Kurdish dialects and geography. The writings of political movements from the “PKK to KDP to PUK and Komala and more”, news clippings from western media sources, UN memorandums, and KCC meeting agendas offer unique primary sources on how decades of conflict in Kurdish areas were addressed across institutions of all sizes. 

There are also dozens of academic publications in English and other languages covering Kurdish history, language, and archaeology.

Photo albums packed with black and white photos offer intimate and joyful glimpses of Kurdish life, strikingly juxtaposed alongside images of the Halabja genocide.


 
The archives play a particularly important role in educating the UK’s Kurdish diaspora, now generations deep.
 
“It’s essential to provide a source of information for the Kurds who have grown up or were born in the UK who may want to know more about their history and identity,” Miran said.

It is especially important to preserve these artefacts given the routine destruction of documents, the prohibition of cultural practices, and the criminalisation of the Kurdish language through history in their homelands. 

Although disconnected to some extent from their place of origin, the relative safety enjoyed by diaspora Kurds in the UK allows for the collation and catalogue of history and the preservation of cultural practices.
 
“We are also at an advantage to document our history and culture due to the privilege of stability we have in the UK... we wouldn’t expect the UK government to confiscate and burn down our library or criminalise our cultural identity,” Miran said.

Kurdish cultural centres in the diaspora are still vulnerable to attack. Centres in Europe with perceived affiliations to the Kurdistan Workers’ Party (PKK), which is designated a terrorist organisation by the European Union, have been subject to raids and crackdowns. 

Three members of the armed Kurdish liberation group, including PKK co-founder Sakine Cansiz, were killed in front of the Kurdish Institute in Paris in 2013.
 
The London centre is not immune to the political and ideological schisms among Kurds themselves.

“A lot of partisan politics have been exported from Kurdish parties,” Miran said, but this will not obstruct the centre’s political activities and ambitions.
 
“We want to push for more strategic political lobbying on issues that affect the Kurds in the region, but also Kurds here in the UK and Europe. Rather than limiting ourselves to foreign policy issues we should be tackling domestic policies on immigration, welfare, education, et cetera, as they affect our community the most. We should also be campaigning on key issues which affect minority communities such as anti-Semitism and Islamophobia.”

The centre’s redevelopment will not only focus on cultural preservation but also on the needs of refugee and migrant Kurds in the diaspora, continuing to provide immigration support, advice, and English language classes. 

Its leadership team hopes to supplement its services not only with Kurdish-language classes for a diaspora less exposed to their mother tongue, but also to support the wider professional and personal development of Kurds in the community.

“We want to engage the younger generation more and provide the support needed to our entrepreneurs, academics, artists, et cetera, whether it’s through financial support or simply by providing a place to study or grow their business,” Miran said.

Having moved to the UK as a child from the Kurdistan Region of Iraq in 1999, Miran has a personal attachment to the centre. 

“The centre was a source of comfort for me and my parents, so I’ve always had an attachment to the place,” he said.
 
Although fundraising for the center’s redevelopment is ongoing, last month’s event was free to enter. Many more are planned in future to help raise awareness. “We wanted people to see the significance and want to contribute their support at their own accord,” Miran said. 
 
One woman, a third-generation Kurd, who attended January’s event, said entering the exhibition was like “finding home”. 

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