Stories have the power to bring us together. In this guest blog series, we share real experiences of people and community groups across Milton Keynes – celebrating diversity, highlighting resilience, and showing how everyone can make our City stronger and more welcoming.
This is a guest blog by Andy Gilbert from the One World Club, exploring how performance and culture can create safe, welcoming spaces in our communities
I’ve never ceased to be grateful to this country for letting my grandparents in as refugees from Poland. Had they stayed behind they would likely have perished in the gas chambers of Auschwitz along with my parents, and I would not have been born. Their relatives who chose not to leave all disappeared without trace.
But coming from a minority faith was not all plain sailing. I was 13 in1964 when I first experienced antisemitism. My classmates were no longer mates at all. My name appeared to be ‘Jew-boy.’ If I sat at the front of the class I would later find the back of my jacket covered in spit. I was the butt of everybody’s jokes. It was as if I had grown horns but didn’t know it. I was sufficiently streetwise to know that if I reported it things would only get worse.
I dreaded going to school and counted the days till I was fifteen and could get out for good. I was happy to leave without a single qualification other than a gymnastic award, just pleased to escape the constant abuse. The cruelty of children to other children never ceased to amaze me; I wondered whether they had a conscience which they suppressed or simply didn’t have one. Either way I was free.
But antisemitism didn’t stop with my leaving school, it simply lay dormant for a while. Word had spread around the council estate that we were Jewish. Groups of young thugs would congregate on the corner by our house shouting racist chants. We would be sitting in the lounge watching TV when suddenly ‘BANG!’ A missile would hit the window. I´d jump out of my skin! In the summer when windows were open, a noose came flying in through a bedroom window, followed by the sound of running footsteps. I’d open the front door in the morning to see “Jew” daubed on it in marker pen.
The nightmare was back, but this time in reverse. I could escape it during the day but suffered it at home. Eventually we called the police. A stocky young officer visited while the crowd were gathered outside and told them what was in store for them if they didn’t stop. Nothing changed, and a week or so later he was back. I don’t know what he said to them this time but the racism stopped dead and didn’t come back. Antisemitism had ceased for me but had left its mark.
As an ethnicity, Jews enjoy a luxury that people of colour do not; we can choose to whom we disclosed our ethnicity. Apart from the ultra-religious Jews who wear black coats and hats we don’t look any different from a bog-standard white Christian. When we meet someone new we weigh up whether we can trust them with our ethnicity. I moved to Luton where nobody knew me and started a new life. Witnessing how people of colour suffered racism I felt the need to do something about it, and started staging multicultural shows which could be a sanctuary for minorities.
One day in 2009 I met a man carrying a guitar on a railway platform and told him about my shows. He told me he was involved with something similar in London: One World Club. The organiser, Jon Skinner, phoned the next day and inspired me to join forces and start the Milton Keynes One World Club, “Promoting cultural harmony through performance.”
I wanted it to be a place of sanctuary for both performers and audience alike by virtue of their ethnicity, who felt outsiders to the society we live in.
A local function hall, Cruck Barn, agreed we could use their venue for free provided the shows were on Mondays, when they had no weddings, and the bar took at least £300 each show. It was less than ideal as people from the Muslim communities were no doubt put off by the bar, but at least we had a free venue so could offer free entrance.
I paused the shows around 2015 whilst looking for a different venue as we weren’t always able to hit the £300 drinks target. Unlike so many English folks, on a night out our audience don’t tend to be drinkers. I’m the same, I want to go home remembering every moment of joy I’ve just experienced!
During that period, in 2015, terrorists attacked The offices of the magazine, Charlie Hebdo, in Paris, and a synagogue in Copenhagen. Following these attacks I feared the Muslim community would suffer Islamophobic backlash despite playing no part in the aforementioned attacks.
Local Muslim leader, Anouar Kassim came to our house, asking what we could do to bring the Muslim and Jewish communities together.
“Stage a show with all Muslim and Jewish performers,” I replied. My wife came up with the name “One Voice.” The Interfaith organisation backed it and paid for the hall. Despite our aim to stage just Muslim and Jewish performers, we had to include at least one other faith in order for MK InterFaith to sign the cheque, so a Sai Baba children’s band did a 10-minute act and a Father, not just any old dad, but one wearing a dog collar, came along and read a poem to represent the Christian community. We put out 100 chairs but more and more people filed into the hall till it was backed to bursting at 180, the majority of them coming from the Muslim community. We staged more shows under the name One Voice, presenting acts from different faiths and cultures.
One World Club was on hold while we sought a new home but resumed in 2023 in Gt. Linford Memorial Hall, which I have to pay for, but put out a donations box, which, thus far, has always collected enough to cover the hall hire. The shows are still staged there today; a caterer provides all vegan refreshments and there is no alcohol on sale. My biggest challenge is finding performers who represent any kind of minority; if that sounds like you or someone you know, please text or WhatsApp me on 07860 962586
Our shows were, and still are, packed out every time with performers representing every minority you can imagine. They run about 4 times per year, are still free and you can always find information about performances on Facebook at https://www.facebook.com/groups/131864290185985 or send me an email at a.gilbert19@outlook.com The next show is 28th March 2026, 7.30-9.30pm at the aforementioned Gt. Linford Memorial Hall. Everyone is welcome and there is still no charge!
To this day I feel an affinity with anyone who has ever been picked on for being ‘different.’ I remember what it feels like with crystal clarity.
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Together, by raising our voices, we can focus on what unites us, not what divides us.