Cultural Information

This part of the site provides cultural and religious information about the various communities living in the UK. Many organisations want to improve their services to ethnic minority communities, but are not really sure how to go about doing this. By providing this resource, we are hoping that organisations will be able to improve their understanding of customers from ethnic minority communities which in turn help them to make sure their sevices are more inclusive.

Cultural Profiles

The Cultural Profiles provide cultural and religious information from a selection of different ethnic groups in Britain. The cultural profiles are based on the life experiences of people who were kind enough to share their experiences with the public.
Select a Cultural Profile from the menu below.

Brief Guide To Major Religious And Cultural Observance In the United Kingdom

This section is a general guide designed to give you an introduction to each major religion. It is very brief and gives an overview of the particular faith. If you would like more comprehensive information please go to our Useful Links page.

Useful Links to Ethnic Minority Websites

Click Here for our Useful Links page. The links include cultural and linguistic resources for a wide range of cultures and languages. In providing these links to other sites, Newham Language Shop, takes no responsibility for the contents of those sites. No endorsement of the sites and/or their contents is implied. These links are provided as a service, in good faith, to sites that may be of interest to our multicultural communities/individuals.

Cuisine from Around the World

Language Survey

With more than 30 ethnic communities in a population of approximately 235,700 people, the London Borough of Newham is one of the most culturally diverse areas in the UK. Just five miles to the East of the City of London, it is now estimated that over half of the population is from Black and Asian communities (with the proportion higher amongst younger residents). Large sections of the local population do not have English as their first language.

Language can be a serious barrier to the effective provision of services. As part of their strategy for addressing this problem, Newham Language Shop has commissioned Abacus Research Ltd to analyse the results from this year’s Community Language Survey.

Below are links to the full findings of the research across all of the ethnic groups involved in the research. Separate summary reports have been produced to report exclusively, on each of the different communities.

Glossary of Terms

While often taken as synonymous, the words "culture", "ethnicity" and "religion" express different concepts. It is helpful to define such terms and the following is adapted form advice given in the Cabinet Office Publication "Outreach-Building Links with Ethnicity Communities".