Swadhinata Trust

The Swadhinata Trust is a Bengali community organization established in 2000 by a group of community workers to raise youth awareness about Bengali history, culture and heritage by creating resources for the British Bengali community and the general public in education, research and the creative arts. The Trust also carries out oral history projects and research to document British Bengali community history, culture and diversity in order to enhance the lives of British Bengalis living and working in Tower Hamlets primarily, but also in other London boroughs and across the UK, and to promote community cohesion. The need for the Swadhinata Trust arose from the absence of documentation and social data representing Bengalis’ heritage, historical presence and achievements in the UK. As part of its goal to promote secular Bengali culture for a wider national and international audience, the Trust’s long-term goal is to establish a centre whose main activity will be in the fields of culture, research and education.

In 2019, Brick Lane 1978: The Turning Point, a major heritage project, was launched, supported by the National Lottery Heritage Fund and in collaboration with Four Corners and Paul Trevor. The project explored the May 1978 anti-racist uprising organized by the Bengali community around Brick Lane. With the help of volunteers and the original activists, it created a record of this watershed moment as told by local people. In 2022 it launched the Bengali photo archive project in east London, again in partnership with Four Corners. The archive will be deposited in the Tower Hamlets Local History Library and Archives. In 2023 it launched the Bengali Music and Musicians in the UK project in collaboration with the British Library Sound Archive. This project collects oral histories of people and examples of Bengali musical involvement that demonstrate the life of music in the community. The Swadhinata Trust also runs Bengali history walks in the East End.