2018               Recipient of 3 Arts Council England Awards: Develop Your Creative Practice; 20 + date UK tour of songwriting workshops and performances of Azaadi: Freedom for specialist Black And Minority Ethnic women’s organisations and refuges; and a R&D collaboration with Giuliano Modarelli, Al MacSween and Sukhdeep Dhanjal – new live album to be released by the end of the year

 

2017               Recipient of Arts Council England Award for 20 date UK tour with Azaadi: Freedom with Baluji Shrivastav OBE, Sianed Jones, Sukhdeep Dhanjal and Seemab Gul. Released third album Azaadi: Freedom

 

2016               Recipient of Arts Council England Award for 11 date UK solo tour with Azaadi: Freedom - an Urdu/English autobiographical narrative told in songs, with projected of translations and original visual art.

 

2015               Group Show Platform III at Leyden Gallery, Spitalfields London. Solo performances Norwich Fringe Festival. Paintings exhibited at The Norwich Playhouse. Solo performances Our World Festivals

 

2014               Solo performances Norwich Fringe Festival. Norfolk Open Studios

 

2013               Solo live performance + DVD incorporating music, images, text and dance at Fusion, Norwich Forum. Norfolk Open Studios

 

2012                   Solo exhibition of visual art in The School of World Art Studies at The Sainsbury Centre for Visual Arts. Lead Advisory EAL teacher for Norfolk County Council

 

2011               Paintings exhibited at The Norwich Playhouse. Solo performances Our World Festivals

 

2010                   Solo exhibition of visual art in The School of World Art Studies at The Sainsbury Centre for Visual Arts. Lead Advisory EAL teacher for Norfolk County Council

 

2009                   Group Exhibition Art in a Time of Protest. Workshop and performance at The Sainsbury Centre for Visual Arts

 

2008-9           Finding a Voice, Heritage Lottery Funded multimedia DVD project with young arrivals to Norfolk instigated, created and disseminated to all schools in Norfolk, Suffolk, Cambridgeshire, Hertfordshire, and across the UK

 

2008             Solo Exhibition for Norfolk and Norwich Fringe Festival at the Maddermarket Theatre. Performance for New Writing Partnership’s New Writing Worlds Literary Festival

 

2007-8          Land of Hope and We Sinful Women: shows with live voice, music, video projections and text with Natyapriya Dance group and performances/workshops Wymondham Music Festival. Group exhibition Make Art not War. Norfolk Open Studios

 

2005-6          Performances/workshops at Salthouse Exhibition North Norfolk. Solo performances Our World Festivals

 

2005             Jaago included in new CD compilation Freeness by Chris Ofili played at the Venice Biennale and London Architecture Week. Performances Norfolk Creative Partnerships

 

2004             Release of CD Jaago – Wake Up as part of Norwich Black History Month. Solo performances Our World Festivals

2004-7           BA in Fine Art at Norwich School of Art and Design

 

2004             National tour of India and Kashmir, including Delhi, Ahmedabad, Hyderabad, Kolkata, Trivandrum, Chennai, Mumbai, Srinagar, Jummu with Colours of the Heart

 

2003              British Council funded visit to the Darpana Academy of Music and Dance, Ahmedabad, India, to collaborate with Mallika Sarabhai, adapting own written material in new show Colours of the Heart

 

2002             Commission and solo performance for Sidmouth International Folk Festival. Access to Art course

 

2002             Performances at summer Music World Festival in Tuscany, Italy

 

2000-1           Diploma in Creative Writing at the University of East Anglia. Poetry and Poems published in Tales of Eastern Promise, an anthology of new writing. Performance: Our World Festival

 

2000              Study of Ghazal form in Pakistan with Eastern Arts Board funding followed by development of workshops for children. The Colour of the Heart title lyrics/poem published in the Redbeck Anthology of British South Asian Poetry


 

1999-2000    Performances at Music World Festival in Italy

 

1998             Released CD The Colour of the Heart with Garam Masala

 

1996-2001     Formed band Garam Masala, with Sianed Jones, cris cheek and Sukhdeep Singh. Toured UK regularly with financial support from Arts Council of England

 

1996              Commissioned to write soundtrack to Safar, a new play for Made in Wales Theatre Company

 

1995-6           Toured UK with Slant, in a cross-cultural celebration of poetry and music

 

1994-5           Second band Sargam toured Norfolk. Toured UK with Man Mela Theatre Company with compositions of We Sinful Women

 

1991-4           Began writing own original songs, mainly using the Ghazal form from Pakistan. Solo performances included St David’s Hall, Cardiff, and the Second Black Writers Festival Glasgow

 

1990              Composed music for We Sinful Women, a bilingual anthology of contemporary feminist writing by women in Pakistan. Performances of WSW in London

 

1988-9           Formed first band Awara. Toured UK for two years with Suffolk based Company of Imagination

 

1986 - date    Training in Classical Indian Vocal with Baluji Shrivistav. Secondary and Primary school teaching and workshops on Indian Music

 

                           1983-7           BSc in Pure Mathematics and PGCE (teaching qualification) at the University of East Anglia