ECDP Radio features interviews with a range of ECDP commissioned artists, diverse artists, arts organisations and past and present projects. In this inaugural show Nita Jhummu interviews artist Arooj Khan, who creates community arts spaces for radical practice and dialogue. Nita and Arooj talk about art, activism, music, and her recent Essex Cultural Diversity Project commission in Grays, Thurrock.

About ECDP Radio

ECDP RADIO compliments our recently launched ECDP TV, which features a range of new content related to our work across Essex and the East Region, housed on our website, YouTube and other online channels. Over the last few months we’ve also been working in partnership with BBC Essex, appearing regularly on Essex Voices, their weekly radio programme that focuses on community.

“ECDP RADIO is an exciting opportunity for us to create new digital content for our online platforms, allowing us to engage and keep connected with our audiences. It builds on our bank of digital experiences created during lockdown, which will have a long lasting legacy for all to enjoy” Indi Sandhu, ECDP Creative Director.

About Arooj Khan

Arooj Khan is an artist-researcher interested in the ways in which the lived experiences of those from a global majority background residing in global minority countries intersects with a colonial past and a decolonial future within an imperialist built environment. Her work often involves providing ‘alternative provisions‘ for people to make sense of their space across and beyond what they see.

She is particularly interested in the relationships between ancestral knowledge, theoretical knowledge and everyday knowledge. For example, drawing parallels between colonial atrocities and everyday racist experiences (How does the practice of line drawing boundaries in the context of colonial conquests manifest itself into everyday negotiations of space?)

Another aspect of her work has been reviewing how white supremacist, neo-colonial, homophobic and anti-womxnist actions of gentrification have flattened the landscape of sex within the built environment and how its associated concepts can be used as an alternative epistemological prism for interpreting our lived geographies. Asking, amongst other things, if colonial lands were sought after fetishes, what aspects of these lands could be perceived as satiable kinks?

Arooj’s work takes the form of audio pieces, texts, games, workshops, publications as well as generally speaking things into existence.  Her work often manifests within art and educational institutions, online and in public spaces.

She is keen to collaborate with other researchers from a global majority background in order to manifest shared dreams and amplify important causes.

https://www.aroojkhan.net

About Nita Jhummu

Nita Jhummu is an award-winning radio broadcaster having won “Presenter of the Year” at the HBA National Hospital Radio Awards in Bolton in 2017, as part of the Hospital Radio Chelmsford team. She currently presents popular show, “City Talk” on Monday nights on Chelmsford Community Radio (CCR 104.4FM) and has a real passion for radio – be that talk shows or feel-good music.

Aside from radio broadcasting, Nita has a background in financial services and data analytics. Nita is a graduate of the London School of Economics and having worked for prestigious companies such as Citibank, Deloitte and Lloyds Banking Group, Nita is now working for a specialist lender who focus on niche mortgages, development, construction and asset finance.

Nita is from Brentwood and her heritage is from Mauritius. Her parents were instrumental in setting up the Essex Hindu Dharma Society which was a group set up in Brentwood in the 1990s and is still going strong today from it’s base in Witham. Nita’s favourite foods are her Mum’s dholl puri and her Dad’s rougaille – both yummy traditional Mauritian foods.

Nita is looking forward to joining the Essex Cultural Diversity Project and presenting for ECDP Radio!