Tom Wipperman’s ‘Driving with Dignity’ is a VSO funded exhibition documenting the lives of ten Bangladeshi rickshaw pullers living and working in the slums of Dhaka. It has recently had a four-week showing at a gallery in East London. Here, Tom describes how ‘Driving with Dignity’ came about and the stereotypes it is successfully challenging both here in the UK and back in Bangladesh.
‘So many people in the UK just think of floods when they think of Bangladesh,’ says Tom Wipperman, a VSO Youth for Development (YfD) volunteer who spent 15 months working in Dhaka, the sprawling capital of Bangladesh. ‘Natural disasters are the only thing that ever make the news. I think the exhibition has shown people the Bangladesh beyond the floods and famines.’
The exhibition Tom refers to is ‘Driving with Dignity: the Rickshaw Pullers of Bangladesh’, which has just completed a four week stint at Oxford House in Bethnal Green. Evocative photographs – all Tom’s own work - and moving narratives vividly depict life for the pullers, who face derision on a daily basis and are forced to remain on the bottom rung of Bangladesh’s social ladder.
Tom and his colleagues engage with Dhaka’s rickshaw pullers
The idea for an exhibition was borne back in Dhaka, when Tom was working with a small policy, advocacy and research organisation called Neeti Gobeshona Kendro (NGK). In order to raise awareness among Bangladeshis – particularly the middle class and decision makers – about how rickshaw pullers really lived, he and his colleagues spent three months photographing, interviewing and holding discussion groups with ten pullers aged from a shocking 12 to 75 years.
‘To get the pullers’ stories, my colleagues from NGK used the participatory research approaches that I had taught them, then wrote the notes up in English. I turned the notes into narratives, and then my colleagues re-translated them back into Bengali,’ explains Tom.
The rickshaw pullers speak up at the exhibition launch in Dhaka
Dhaka’s rickshaw pullers work cripplingly long hours and often struggle to earn just 200 Taka (£1.45) in a day. The ten participants were paid for taking part in the research and for attending the opening of the exhibition, which was attended by several ambassadors, representatives from the prime minister’s office and the directors of charities Oxfam and Concern. As well as raising NGK’s profile – 24 newspaper articles came later – the event gave the rickshaw pullers the rare opportunity to make their voices heard.
Only three of the ten pullers Tom and his colleagues profiled were literate. But that didn’t dilute their impact. ‘One puller, Kamal, was incredibly articulate – a really powerful speaker,’ remembers Tom. ‘He couldn’t read or write but given a platform he was really able to express his views. And it had an impact. All these people who were there - newspaper editors and people with influence and power - sat silently and listened to him. The project didn’t change the pullers’ standards of living – they still had to go home to their slums, they still had to drive people around all day, but for those couple of hours, they mattered.’
With the help of a VSO grant, Tom raises awareness among an East London community
When Tom returned to the UK, he successfully applied for an Action Grant of £1000 from VSO so that he could hold the exhibition again –this time in Bethnal Green. The grant covered the costs of printing, framing and hanging the photographs, photocopying questionnaires, printing publicity material and refreshments for the preview evening. The gallery in the busy community centre Oxford House was free. ‘I was lucky to have found Oxford House,’ says Tom. ‘Other galleries in the area would have charged £1000 for a four day showing! I spent what was left of my grant on a donation to the centre.’
Tom chose Bethnal Green because of its large Bangladeshi community. ‘One of my objectives was to try and engage British Bangladeshis with development news and organisations like VSO. Two of the receptionists at the gallery are from Bangladesh and at first they weren’t too interested – perhaps because the exhibition represents something they were trying to escape. But there’s been really positive feedback since then – people have been genuinely excited by the exhibition. Just last night I heard of a Bangladeshi admitting that he hadn’t realised that rickshaw pullers didn’t like their work.’
Tom’s second objective was to expose non-Bangladeshis living in Bethnal Green to the country many of their neighbours come from – to the country behind the flood reports in the news.
‘People have been introduced to a country, a people and an occupation of which they may have had little or no knowledge,’ says Tom. ‘They’ve considered their relationship with Bangladesh’s rickshaw pullers, and taken the time to discover the real conditions of their lives.’
Will ‘Driving with Dignity’ motivate 400 people to take action?
Tom hasn’t been able to sit in the gallery all day every day counting his punters, but the piles of completed feedback questionnaires indicate that at least 100 people have attended and been affected by ‘Driving with Dignity’. For those who didn’t fill in the questionnaire add 50, plus the 200 who attended the exhibition in Bangladesh.
That’s 400 people who - perhaps just for half an hour - have stepped into the well-worn shoes of Dhaka’s rickshaw pullers. The onus is now on them to take action – by spreading the word, by volunteering, by supporting charities working in Bangladesh - to help pull the rickshaw pullers out of poverty.