MAHENDERPAL SORYA - Socially engaged projects

ANALOGUE FILM SCHOOL, SOUTHALL [2025–2026]
Founder / Director / Cinematographer / Editor

Founded Analogue Film School in 2025 with support from the UAL Knowledge Exchange Impact Fund, delivering 16mm filmmaking workshops for local residents, community groups, and schools in Southall. Participants develop and produce original short films on 16mm celluloid, which are subsequently digitised, exploring the area's history, culture, and everyday life.

The programme introduces participants to an original Bolex 16mm reflex camera formerly used by British Pathé for news coverage during the 1950s and 1960s, while providing practical training in directing, cinematography, lighting, and sound recording. Alongside technical skills, the workshops encourage critical reflection on the relationship between analogue and digital filmmaking, positioning film as a creative medium for documenting, interpreting, and experimenting with personal and local narratives.

CULTURE DAY [2025]

Culture Day is one of the first films produced on the project. Filmed with four year 10 pupils at Featherstone High School, this short features pupils at the school reflecting on the significance of culture day and their chosen outfits.

VILLIERS at FIFTY [2026]

Created to mark 50 years of Villiers High School, the film brings together alumni and current pupils reflecting on their memories of the school and what being part of its community means to them. Pupils at Villiers learned to operate a 16mm Bolex camera and shot much of the footage featured in the film.

SOUTHALL POP UPS [2025]

This experimental film showcases pages from a pop-up book co-created with children during workshops in schools for Southall Community Alliance. In the second year of the project, I chose to focus on bookmaking. Alongside a range of 2D and 3D book forms, one of the main outcomes was a large collaborative pop-up book. Each page was created with a different class with themes including: Future Southall, Southall’s Natural History, Southall Style, 1979, The Himalaya Palace Dragon, People in the Community and Southall Town Hall.

1979, Villiers High School (mixed media pop-up page)

Southall Style, Three Bridges Primary

Future Southall, Featherstone Primary School

Southall's Natural History, Khalsa Primary

People in the Community, Featherstone Primary

The Town Hall,

Featherstone High School

Southall Style,

Three Bridges Primary

Southall Style (detail)

Three Bridges Primary

SOUTHALL RESISTS EXHIBITION [2025]

An exhibition of all works produced with children in schools, including the pop ups, were displayed at the 'Southall Resists' exhibition at Villiers High School in July 2025. The exhibition included a number of drawings enlarged in scale to create large posters, concertina books and smaller paintings and drawings.

Plant to Plate [2025]

Director/ Editor

Plant to Plate tells the story of Western Road Urban Garden (WRUG), a space run by Southall Community Alliance, through the perspective of the women who attend weekly sessions here. Participants have witnessed and been part of the site's transformation from derelict land to a space for leisure, food growing and education and also the creation of a safe space for bonding, sharing and learning about grassroots and community oriented environmental activism.

ART ZONE [2025]

Director/ Editor + Workshop Co-ordinator

This short film features highlights from 'Art Zone' 2024 - a programme of summer street events I organise for Southall Community Alliance. Events include a range of creative activity from jewellery making, painting and photography to puppet making, crafts and karaoke run by SCA staff and a team of visual artists.

Title: Big Miniatures: 500 Years of Southall (2024) 100cm x 300cm [mixed media on canvas]

This triptych was painted during a series of art zone events outside Southall Town Hall in summer 2024. The painting was designed and completed collaboratively with a number of local people who each spent varying amounts of time contributing to the work. It's a preliminary sketch for a mural and works chronologically in the top left hand corner with the opening of the Manor House and Henry VIII's donation of a mulberry tree, then covers a range of moments in Southall's local history: such as the 1887 Brickmakers' strike, the Martin Brothers' studios, migration between 1950s - 1970s and ends with the opening ofthe 'Peoples Unite': How Southall Changed the Country' exhibition at Gunnersbury Park Museum. The Grand Union Canal runs through the three paintings.

Participants painting 'Big Miniatures' outside Southall Town Hall [2024]

I ❤︎ SOUTHALL STREET MELA [2025]

Director/ Cinematography/ Editor + Workshop Co-ordinator

Shot on 16mm film, this film documents the SCA street Mela, which took place at the Manor House, Southall on 28.09.24. The Mela included a range of arts and craft activity , a steel drum band and street karaoke. My role also involved designing publicity for the event and producing artwork with people in community that would then be displayed at the upcoming 'People’s Unite: How Southall Changed the Country' exhibition at Gunnersbury Park Museum.

My Message to the World (2024)

As part of the I ❤︎ Southall Mela, I invited 100 local residents to write personal messages to the world on small placards. These were later transformed into a sculptural installation featured in the exhibition at Gunnersbury. Visitors are invited to contribute their own responses on card, adding to the ever-growing, collective artwork.

Installation view of my Message to the World at Gunnersbury Park Museum (2024)

COMMUNITY CAMPAIGNING [2025]

Director/ Editor

A film produced for Southall Community Alliance on their Community Campaigning project, which aims to empower local people and organisations to protect vital community spaces from being sold. The project focuses on building the capacity of Southall’s community groups to run effective campaigns, strengthening their economic competence, developing the leadership skills of future leaders, and enhancing advocacy efforts around community asset management.

YOUNG VOICES [2025]

Director/ Editor + Workshop Facilitator

Young Voices is a film produced as part of a programme which aims to promote and teach local history in schools in Southall. History and Art classes for primary and secondary school children focussed on the experiences of migrant communities in the 1960’s and 70’s, especially the discrimination that many encountered while establishing a new life here. Local history classes led by Southall Community Alliance explored pivotal events of the time such as the murder of Gurdip Singh Chaggar, the 1979 Southall Uprising and death of Blair Peach. I led the Art provision - a series of art workshops which focussed on remembering and commemorating local history through a range of visual arts projects and the production of hundreds of artworks. A key outcome was a collaborative series of large silk paintings produced with children. Inspired by narrative painting, each work focussing on an aspect of this history.

All art works were displayed at various sites across Southall including the Town Hall and Villiers High School on 'Southall Resists Day', 23rd April 2024. A selection of artworks were then displayed at an exhibition at Pitzhanger Manor Gallery and at Gunnersbury Park Museum in 2024.

An Online showcase of all works can be viewed here.

Southall Remembers Gurdip Singh Chaggar, Year 6 children from Three Bridges Primary School [2023]

Blair Peach, Year 7 children from Featherstone High School [2024]

The Hambrough Tavern Fire, Year 7 children from Featherstone High School [2023]

Screening of 'Young Voices' at Villiers High School (2024)

Protestors pass the Himalaya Palace Cinema, 23.04.1979 [2024]

Year 6 children from Khalsa Primary School, Southall [Silk Painting]

Silk painting: installation shots at Gunnersbury Park Museum.

Title: DIWALI 79 (2024) 124cm x 94cm [Silk Painting]

Inspired by the series produced with children, the set of silks was concluded with this final painting. Based on archival images and textual accounts, DIWALI 79 reimagines a satirical Ramlila performance staged by Southall Black Sisters at the Dominion Cinema on the eve of Diwali in 1979. The play, held to raise legal funds for protestors arrested during an anti–National Front demonstration, explored racism, sexism, national politics, and local socio-economic issues. It ended with the burning of a ten-headed Ravana effigy in the car park, each head symbolizing a facet of racism faced by the community at the time.

Southall Wheel (mixed media),

Three Bridges Primary School [2023]

SOUTHALL RESISTS EXHIBITION [2024]

Pitzhanger Manor & Gallery Installation shots.

Private View images (04.10.2024)

VIEW THE 'SOUTHALL RESISTS' ONLINE SHOWCASE: CLICK HERE

VILLIERS PSYCHEDLIA [2024]

Facilitation of two workshops for pupils at Villiers High School to produce new works for the 'Peoples Unite' exhibition at Gunnersbury Park Museum. The first workshop involved drawing with light and taking a series of long exposure photographs. The second workshop involved creating a series of silk paintings inspired by the photographs. These paintings then formed the backdrop for a sound system displayed in the exhibition.

STORIES OF SOUTHALL [2023]

Director/ Editor + Workshop Facilitator

Shot during a Street Mela organised by Southall Community Alliance in June 2023, this film documents local people who attended the Mela reflecting on stories and memories of living in Southall. A range of themes emerge including migration, labour, community, friendship, culture, the impact of racism and thoughts and reflections on recent changes in the town. As well as capturing oral histories, the Street Mela consisted of a range of activities for the public to engage with including a street theatre performance, art and craft making, Bhangra dance performances and live music played throughout the day by a steel drum band.

HOW SOUTHALL CELEBRATES [2023]

Film, Photography and Art workshop facilitator

How Southall Celebrates was a year long project funded by People's Health Trust. I ran a series of film & photography workshops for local residents, each coinciding with a festival. Participants worked on documenting the celebration of these festivals, including activities that took place during a series of Art workshops. This experimental film captures aspects of how Southall celebrates through the perspective of project participants.

SOUTHALL EVER AFTER PROJECT OVERVIEW: CLICK HERE

SOUTHALL EVER AFTER [2021]

Community Arts Festival

Researcher and workshop coordinator

In 2021 a series of arts-based community events in Southall and an international workshop conducted online between Wimbledon College of Arts BA Acting and Performance students and students from the University of Hyderabad in India explored themes of personal journeys, notions of home, displacement and assimilation through creative activities and performances. Activities included a community arts festival, photography workshops, exhibitions and performances as well as a seminar involving local artists and community activists.