Singing the Stories of Crawley: My Tribute to Iffat
Transcript: ‘How I created my artwork for Crawley Stories’
“I was lucky enough to be paired with Iffat for the podcast Crawley Stories. I'm a singer-songwriter from just up the road, from Crawley, and it was lovely to be involved. On meeting Iffat, straight away it was clear that she had so much great stuff to say, and we talked a lot about her poetry, about her work as a young politician, about growing up in Crawley, [and] about her position as a young Muslim woman. And we talked about all of these things and all of her special places in Crawley, and I wanted to include as much of this as possible in the song.
[I included] The places and the way that she's developed in Crawley over the years, from someone nervous to start talking about her poetry, to somebody who is getting braver and more outspoken and more in tune with who she is and what she wants to say all the time. And I wanted to include that as much as possible as much as I could, but also I wanted to reflect that back on Crawley. To say to Crawley, you need to listen to this wonderful woman who has grown up in your town and has loved it, feels real warmth towards Crawley. And people of Crawley and everyone around, you need to listen to what this young girl has to say, because it's women like Iffat who are going to make change happen.
So I wanted to get all that in. And I then threw in the pigeons because they were everywhere as we were walking. And also I thought they're pretty common in town centres. So I thought other people in other town centres would potentially be able to identify with not just Iffat, but the pigeons too.
Yeah, that's where it came from. I kind of started off with a big sheet of A3 paper, writing down everything I could remember from our talk. Everything I could remember from all of the places that Iffat had shown me in Crawley that were special to her. The way we talked about her poetry and how that was developing, and how she was getting bolder and bolder with all she was doing. And I wrote it all down on a huge piece of A3 paper which is how I do things, and then I kind of go back to it and highlight bits that I think are important. And from that, I get then a direction of where the song is headed, and that was my process.
Then I pick up a guitar and I play around with some chords and I just start to sing the words in front of me over the chords, and I see how that rolls. And I just keep going until I've got something I feel works, says what I want to say and is hopefully hummable too, all in three minutes. So that's my process.”
Listen to 'Poet in Queen Square' a song by Anna Howie inspired by her experience working with Iffat on the Crawley Stories podcast.
