TRAUMA IN BLACK BODIES Exhibition and Therapeutic Space

A panacea for our lived experience

The artist, Cornelius Toks Browne, is a therapeutic art practitioner using art in medicine.

An extraordinary art exhibition that explores art and culture’s efficacy in delivering Public Health.

This encounter offers an affordable and accessible panacea for the lived experience of African and Caribbean Community members in the UK.

These memorable images originate from Cornelius Toks Browne.

‘Adumaadan’, the brand name given to his monochrome style, is a Yoruba word meaning ‘Black Man/Woman thrive and shine’.

Trauma in Black Bodies is his final project for the Creating Healthy Communities Digital Badge Program of the University of Florida Centre for Arts in Medicine.

Racial trauma is an ongoing lived experience within the African diaspora.

It’s a neurological fact that if you were traumatised at some point in your life, you would have formed a network in the form of memory. (The visual memory, the emotion, the sound, smell, etc. are all stored in a neuronal network in your brain.)

• Trauma, or any negative experience that is not properly processed, can remain dormant as a programme or a network until it is triggered and starts to replay. It can also remain buried deep down for years, silently causing all kinds of pathological processes in the body. It chronically affects behaviour, how we perceive life, what we expect from life, what we allow people to do to us and get away with and causes a lack of fulfilment.

• We need to stop being driven, controlled and directed by self-sabotaging, selflimiting and faulty thinking, but instead cultivate healthy, productive networks.

• Faulty programmes in the brain have been rewritten in minutes, simply by changing the mind — a wilful act.

• The G.Y.M. — psychoeducation.

• Expressive and creative writing.

• ART — observing and creating art can bring about neuroplasticity.

In addition to the impactful life-changing images that will meet your gaze, some of the mind management tools above will be available in the therapeutic space to help fill the vacuum of these unmet needs.

TRAUMA IN BLACK BODIES

3rd – 12th November 2023

10am – 8pm

2 Casings Way, Fish Island, Hackney Wick, London E3 2TH Nearest station: Hackney Wick Overground

The women of the Windrush generation were raised as British citizens in their Caribbean islands, and felt they knew Britain – even though they had never visited it. Their Christianity and educational systems were all influenced by the ‘Mother Country’, and they answered the call to help rebuild Britain after the Second World War.

These women emigrated from several islands, including Jamaica, Grenada, Barbados and St Vincent and the Grenadines, and their bravery generated benefits and challenges. We are attempting to capture these stories in an oral history project.

One of the women, who we’ll call Bea, deviated from the typical narrative, by arriving in the 1960s to take up a place on a nurse training programme. Like many at the time she was the only Black person on her training course, where she was seen as a novelty. In her predominantly white workplace, she experienced racism and spoke of kind colleagues who tried to shield her from racist colleagues and patients.

She leaned on her faith and prayers to sustain her. Gradually she became a well-respected member of her NHS hospital team and continues to contribute to her community. She remains humble about her achievements.

A second lady, let’s call her Betty, embarked on her journey as a single woman, with no specific job or education course lined up. Betty’s aunt was a dressmaker who had already settled in London, so she knew where she would be living and had left her two children, aged 1 and 4, with her mother back home. Even though this was a hard decision, Betty felt she had to try this path.

Eventually Betty met and married someone from her island who was already known to her family. In time she had a couple more children and invited her older children to join them in England.

Betty’s recollections were that this was a difficult time when she would keep herself busy, trying to build something here to send money back home. She couldn’t allow herself to really think about being separated from her children. She shared how hesitant her children were towards her once they arrived in London, but slowly and patiently, they were able to reconnect and build a relationship.

Another elderly lady in her 80s, who we’ll call Edna, came from a tiny island in the Caribbean where they not only learned British history, but they had images around her school of King George VI and of soldiers fighting in World War II. She even remembers a song they sang in her primary school with the words ‘You could be a soldier too…’!

Knowing so much about Britain, she was surprised to meet people who had no knowledge of where she came from. After a few basic jobs she was introduced to a man who would later become her husband. As he was an in-demand tradesman getting a regular wage, they could begin to think of having a family. With hard work, the wisdom of the pardner system, and a determination to purchase their own home, they secured a mortgage.

As well as working part-time she became the primary parent for speaking to her children’s teachers. When her children were being misunderstood or mislabelled, she realised she needed to stay in close contact with school to avert any disasters.

She has fond memories of the family doctor who supported her with her pregnancies in the 1960s. He was from Ireland and remained interested in her family’s welfare long after he retired.

All these women are now widows and grandmothers. They remain connected to their Caribbean islands, but their older family members have now passed away and their husbands are buried here in England. Their grandchildren are also here in the UK, the country which is now their home.

Two of the women have remained in the first home they bought in the 1960s! None of them see themselves returning to the Caribbean after more than 60 years away and express no regrets around their choice to stay here.

None of these women were quick to share their story, having carried their experiences privately for decades. It seems that their belief in God and their commitment to looking after their families gave them something to lean on and people to fight for.

We can admire their perseverance. They built small communities – home, church, gatherings – to sustain them when the days were difficult and scary. They avoided spaces of confrontation and tried to live a quiet life. It was a pleasure to hear their stories.

I would like to take this opportunity to highlight the WINDRUSH STORY to commemorate 75 years since the arrival of Caribbean people to the UK on board the HMT Empire Windrush. I believe this story must be told to children now and to future generations, as it is an aspect of Black history in Britain that must not be wished away. It needs to be well-documented - through workshop activities, art, storytelling, video presentations and documentaries. There is an exhibition of my illustrations (like these above) adorning the walls of Camberwell Library in south-east London - TAYO FATUNLA