Ayser Ali Al-Jawad

Ayser was born in Iraq and lived in Baghdad with her family until 2001, when they came to England. Initially the family lived in Buckingham, where Ayser and her husband worked at the University, but then moved to Two Mile Ash. Back in Iraq, Ayser had trained as an architect and found MK to be a very interesting place architecturally, as all the latest theories are explored in MK’s new buildings. After moving to MK the family made friends in the community through their daughters’ schools and found it to be a much more diverse place than Buckingham.

Around 2006-7 the University had an influx of post-graduate students from the Arabic world who came to the UK with their families, so Ayser and her family initiated social meet-ups for them, enabling everyone to find friends and remain in touch with their home culture in a new place.

Ultimately the new connections Ayser made led to the creation of the Middle Eastern Cultural Group, and later on to the founding of an Arabic school. The Middle Eastern Cultural Group have worked on needlework projects with artists at MK’s Westbury Arts Centre and on poetry and literature projects with MK Lit Fest. It now has over 100 members, who meet to celebrate cultural festivals together and share food. The Cultural Group opened its own food outlet in MK Market in 2011 which ran for a year and Ayser feels that this helped contribute to a shift in the MK food scene.

Recently the Group has taken part in MK Gallery’s annual MK Calling exhibition and have been touring a play about refugees, written by a Group member, around local schools. They take part in MKIAC’s Art In The Park and other large community events such as India Day and the Great Iftar, hosted in Campbell Park by the Parks Trust. Ayser says that when the Group started, they had no idea how big it would get and that she is very happy to have been able to achieve something so useful to the community.