FRONT DESK / INTERVIEW
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hat does history have to do with the built environment? According to David Olusoga, author of Black and British: A Forgotten History, it has never been more relevant. “Normally as a historian, the challenge is how do you make history connected to the modern day? But I don’t think that is the challenge, because history has exploded into the present,” he says. “Events from the past, forgotten chapters in British history, particularly to do with colonialism are on the front pages of newspapers. Statues that no one noticed for a century are now being toppled or being defended or being argued and debated about, so history is absolutely at the centre of everything.” He is referring to the statue of slave trader Edward Colston (a man complicit in the deaths of 19,000 Africans) which was thrown into a river during a Black Lives Matter protest in Bristol in June 2020. This paved the way for local authorities up and down the country to review, modify or remove the names of colonialists, racists and slave traders on streets, buildings and schools and rethink the placement of statues, plaques and other memorials. Many of those involved in Black Lives Matter protests (and even the climate-focused Extinction Rebellion demonstrations in recent years) are known as the Generation Y and Z cohorts. Companies have been analysing the needs of these generational groups for years in order to keep workplaces relevant and attractive for incoming graduates and recruits. Those needs have included a greater emphasis on equity and wellbeing within the workplace. Research by apartment search site Nestpick in 2019 described Generation Z – the term given to anyone born between 1997 and 2012 – as a cohort of “digital natives who value security, diversity, and autonomy, and aim to achieve it through pragmatism and determination”. Olusoga says the vigour with
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A shift of consciousness by Herpreet Kaur Grewal
David Olusoga, the British-Nigerian historian, broadcaster and film-maker, is giving a keynote address at the IWFM’s annual conference. Here he explains the challenge to the workplace status quo posed by a new generation
FAC I L I TAT E S EP T EM B ER- O C TO B ER 2021
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03/09/2021 16:39
