Runi Khan

Runi Khan (born 16 July 1943) is a Bangladeshi activist, CEO, and creative producer based in London. She has played critical roles in myriad films, festivals, stage productions, and musical events. She is the founder and director of Culturepot Global; a non-profit working to bring together emerging and establishing multi-cultural music, art, literature, and theatre. 
==Life==
===Personal life===
Khan was born in Calcultta (then Kolkata), India on July 16. Following the partition of India, the family moved to the port city of Chittagong in the new state of Pakistan. She studied in London in the 1950s and 1960s, attending the University College London, before returning to Bangladesh. 
Upon the Indo-Pakistani War of 1971, Khan, along with her husband and three children, fled Bangladesh. Khan had escaped by disguising them as religious pilgrims on their way to Mecca and then flying from Jeddah.Abed, Fazle Hasan (2022) Hope Over Fate, MacMillan p. 49 The family permanently relocated to North London, where they remain.
Khan has three children; Viquar Chamoun, Simone Sultana, and Kishon Khan; and two grandchildren through her daughter Simone and son-in-law, Andrew Feinstein. Khan's family is a self-professed cultural mix, with her children growing up in London surrounded by Bengali culture. Khan strongly identifies with being a 'Londoner'.
===1970 Bhola Cylone relief efforts===
Khan was a central figure in relief efforts following the 1970 Bhola Cyclone in Bangladesh (then East Pakistan). Initially, no large scale relief efforts existed. Fazle Hasan Abed (who would co-found BRAC two years later) was prompted by Khan to initiate relief organisation. This culminated in the setting up of HELP, which would orchestrate large scale relief operations, raising millions in relief funds and sending manpower to Manpura Island.Abed, Fazle Hasan (2022) Hope Over Fate, MacMillan pp. 40-44 
In an interview with the Dhaka tribune, Khan was described as “much too humble to comment on her own work.” 
==Career== 
===Early career=== 
After moving to London in 1971, Khan became a banker, a profession which she remained in until 1991. Working for the Bank of Credit and Commerce International, Khan was their first female branch manager. She then became assistant manager of the main City branch. Following revelation of the BCCI's financial crimes through the massive regulatory battle of 1991, Khan suffered both as a mortgagee and a banker, and proceeded to be openly and extensively outspoken about the corrupt bank. She affirmed that "through no fault of ours, we have lost our jobs, we are not being compensated and our future has been absolutely destroyed. Criticising the financial regulatory authorities and their lack of oversight, Khan scrutinised the role of the Bank of England, stating that "the Government knew at least a week before the Bank of England closed it down. They were party to it".https://www.linkedin.com/in/runi-khan-45123018/?originalSubdomain=uk 
 
From 1993, Khan joined Bangladesh-based branch of BIL Logistics International Ltd, working as a marketing consultant. From 1997-2002 she returned to Bangladesh to oversee company operations as managing director. She has been credited as a director in Capitol Exports Limited. 
===Creative production===
After retiring from her career in banking and international trade, Khan shifted focus to large-scale cultural endeavours. For decades, Khan has been promoting the arts from behind the scenes, and is now considered “one of [the] foremost cultural exponents of Bangladesh’s cultural heritage in the UK, which has its natural overflow into the rest of Europe.”
From 1996-2008, she was appointed as the South African Honorary Consul in Bangladesh, tasked with 'open[ing] up cultural dialogues and possibilities for cultural exchanges'. 
 
Khan has been credited as the creative producer for numerous events and projects bringing global focus to largely Bengali music, dance, theatre, and film. In 2006, she established and organised the 'From Bangla-Beat to Afro Beat' concert presented by Asia House, which was held at the Queen Elizabeth Hall in London’s South bank Centre to celebrate the musical heritage of Bangladesh. Khan is noted as the originator of the idea for the concert, which incorporated a vast range of music; including folk, modern Bangladeshi music, and global fusions. Performing artists included Abdur Rob Fakir, Shahjahan Munshi, Shayan Choudhury, Sahana Bajpaie, and Lokkhi Terra. The Bangladesh High Commissioner to the UK, Sabihuddin Ahmed, noted that the concert worked towards a goal of “placing Bangladeshi music on the roster of mainstream performances in the UK". 
Khan then worked as the Senior Bangladesh Production Consultant on the 2009 film The Last Thakur, narrating the story of a a lone gun-man who seeks to take revenge on the person who raped his mother during the Bangladesh Liberation War. The film premiered in 2008 to a sold-out screening at the London Film Festival. 
====Culturepot Global====
In January 2010, Khan established Culturepot global, a UK-based organisation working to bring together emerging and established artists in literature, dance, theatre, spoken word, film, photography and music. Through Culturepot Global, Khan "produces groundbreaking global collaborations across art forms, unleashing the unheard and unseen onto the world stage.”
As the CEO of the organisation, Khan worked to foster collaborations between Bangladeshi artists and those from South America, Africa, Europe, and across the Indian sub-continent, whilst also raising awareness of social and political issues within the art form itself or by association with advocacy partners. 
In July 2010, Culturepot Global, with Khan as creative director, presented a semi-stage adaptation of Tahmima Anam's award-winning novel A Golden Age. The production showed in the Southbank Centre, with Khan credited as producer. 
In 2011, Khan sought to create a festival which unified a vast diversity of cross-cultural music in Bangladesh. After seeing the political and social impact of world music in her youth, through The Concert for Bangladesh held in Madison Square, New York in 1971, Khan had the idea to arrange the concert's 40th reunion. Although the reunion itself proved logistically difficult, Khan's idea of a concert in which world musicians performed in their mother tongue appealed to telecommunications giant, Grameenphone, who were looking for an event to represent the UNESCO celebration of International Mother Language Day. The festival, "Music without Boundaries", took place in February 2011, and crowds in Bangladesh saw a large-scale, organised concert of music fusion on their soil for the first time. Khan stated that "The most universal language in the world is music. It unites, it talks; you don't have to understand the language. You just need to understand it with your heart and soul,". 
In November 2013, Culturepot Global presented Robi's Garden, a play directed by Rebecca Elfasi and produced by Khan narrating the story of a small group of children on an excursion
to Jorasanko; the location of Rabindranath Tagore's ancestral home. The play showed in Rich Mix theatre in Shoreditch, London.https://www.towerhamletsarts.org.uk/uploads/5245/BDrama13.pdf 
Khan attributes her impressive dedication to the arts to her place at the centre of a cultural melting pot of the 1960s British-Bengali community. In an interview with the Dhaka Tribune, she explained “In 1965/66 people like Ali Akbar Khan used to come to our place. We would just sit and listen to music. There were concerts all the time.” The Dhaka tribune labeled her residence in this period “a cultural melting pot in the truest sense of the expression.”
===Other cultural endeavours===
Khan later worked to express her intimate connection with and passion for British-Bangladeshi cultural fusion through art. In April 2016, an exhibition entitled Reclaimed on a Frame displayed Khan's artwork, which referenced 'cultural fragments' of Bangladesh through re-assembled fabrics and wooden printing blocks, arranged in geometric unity. 
Khan described herself and her work: “I have been a professional all my life. But all throughout my professional life, which was in finance and banking, my real passion was in culture and arts.”
Category:1943 births
Category:People from Kolkata
Category:Bangladeshi activists
Category:Chief executive officers
Category:Producers