Panjab Connections
The National Museum of Scotland received £16,400 from the National Lottery Heritage Fund to work with young people from the Scottish Sikh community.
The Panjab Connections project focused on the complex story of Maharaja Duleep Singh, widely regarded as the first Sikh resident in Scotland. He was a Maharaja aged five, but by the age of fifteen Duleep Singh was deposed and exiled to Britain, where he spent his teenage years in Perthshire.
Using personal objects belonging to the Maharaja Duleep Singh, now in the national collections, we supported the group to research the history of the Maharaja Duleep Singh and work with professional artists to produce creative responses. The group created three films, a series of portrait photographs of members of their local community and new jewellery pieces.
Some of the project outputs then went on display in our Learning Centre in June 2016.
Thanks to O-Pin who supported the group to produce their own jewellery pieces in their workshop inspired by traditional Indian techniques and contemporary Scottish Sikh identity.
Thanks to Stills Centre for Photography who worked alongside the participants to develop their photography skills and create a striking exhibition of portraits of photographs of members of Glasgow’s Sikh community out on location.
Read more about our collections relating to the Maharaja Duleep Singh.
For more information on the project or if you have any questions please get in touch.
Image gallery
Panjab Connections films
The following films were scripted, filmed and edited by a group from the Panjab Connections project, working with Basharat Khan of Bash Art Creative.
The group researched the life of the Maharaja Duleep Singh and chose locations and people to interview and film.
With support from Bash, the group learned film-making and interview techniques and used creative writing to imagine dialogue between the Maharaja Duleep Singh and his mother, Maharani Jind Kaur.