Finding Home: Leicester’s Ugandan Asian Story at 50

Finding Home is a series of new plays that mark 50 years since the Ugandan Asian exodus and celebrate the Ugandan Asian community in Leicester. My own family arrived in the UK from Uganda after Idi Amin ordered the Asian population to leave the country within ninety days in 1972, seizing their properties, business and possessions. In total, almost 80,000 Asians were forced to flee Uganda and seek refuge in countries all over the world. Despite an advert issued by Leicester City Council urging Ugandan Asians not to come to Leicester, many came to the city to find a new home and rebuild their lives.

It is a story I’ve always known but never truly understood and Curve Theatre’s latest series of plays, combined with the new exhibition at the Leicester Museum, have been an emotional and enlightening journey through my family’s history and the history of a community which is now part of the very fabric of Leicester – often heralded as the UK’s most diverse city.

These specially commissioned pieces movingly and unflinchingly reflect the experiences of Ugandan refugees in Britain

– The Guardian

Rukah, Ninety Days and Call Me By My Name make up the ‘Finding Home’ collection and are written by Chandni Mistry, Ashok Patel and Dilan Raithatha respectively.

Dilan Raithatha (Little India, Theatre Royal Haymarket) is an alumnus of our Leicester-based drama school Urban Young Actors. UYA alumni truly lead from the front with Rav Moore starring in Ninety Days, Octavia Nyombi as assistant director, and Manas Kotak, one of our current actors, taking a lead role in Call Me By My Name.