BlackInk: Black Arts, Heritage and Cultural Politics

ISSUE 1 OCTOBER 2020

THE BLACK MANIFESTO! HOW DO WE LIVE AND BREATHE IN REVOLUTIONARY TIMES? nora chipaumire

BLACK HISTORY MONTH: BLAK HISTORY MONTH SOLIDARITY WITH ABORIGINAL AND TORRES STRAIT ISLANDERS Sam Cook

#BETHEPEACEWALK

SEEDING GOODNESS IN THE WAKE OF GENOCIDE Hyppolite Ntigurirwa

THE HOLE IN THE WALL: CURATING BASQUIAT'S DEFACEMENT Chaédria LaBouvier

LAUNCHPAD

ARTISTS FORGING NEW CREATIVE LANDSCAPES Ade Coker Tolu Coker Stephen Anthony Davids Shangomola Edunjobi Ana Paz

BlackInk Issue One, October 2020 Published by Serendipity Serendipity 21 Bowling Green Street Leicester LE1 6AS

CL00.14 Clephan Building De Montfort University The Gateway Leicester LE1 9BH

+44(0)116 482 1394 info@serendipity-uk.com www.blackink-uk.com www.serendipity-uk.com Copyright © Serendipity Artists Movement Ltd 2020 Company registration number in England and Wales 07248813 Charity registration number in England and Wales 1160035 Editor-in-Chief — Pawlet Brookes Contributors — Mistura Allison, Pawlet Brookes, Maya Brookes, nora chipaumire, Ade Coker, Tolu Coker, Sam Cook, Antonio C Cuyler, Stephen Anthony Davids, Shangomola Edunjobi, Tyrone Huggins, Samwel Japhet, Stella Kanu, Sarah Kelly-Olatunji, Fred Kuwornu, Chaédria LaBouvier, Hyppolite Ntiguirirwa, Ana Paz, Kenetta Hammond Perry, Paulette Randall, Cathy Tyson, Aysha Upchurch, Patricia Vester, Kathy Williams, Boston Williams Cover Wrap Image — Patricia Vester Researchers — Mistura Allison / Amy Grain Design — The Unloved Credits — Alamy Live News, Alamy Stock Photo, Alan Burrows, Ana Paz, Archivart, Bob Daemmrich, Cathy Tyson, Channel 4, Christian Barnett, Claudio Furlan, Edwin Remsberg, Ellie Kurttz, Fred Kuwornu, Getty Images, Gramercy Pictures, Hyppolite Ntigurirwa, Islington Local History Centre, Jimmy Mathias, Joe Bird, Jonathan Mortimer, Julian Finney, LaPresse, Leon Rehman, Mukesh Mistry, Patricia Vester, Sam Cook, Serendipity, Shangomola Edunjobi, Stephen Anthony Davids, Stephen Lawrence Research Centre, Stuart Hollis, Tate Modern, Terry Cryer, The Box, Tristram Kenton, 세종국제무용제, Helen Murray Special Thanks — Leicester Gallery, National Education Union, Northern School of Contemporary Dance, Paul Brookes, Writing East Midlands ISSN: 2634-4270 All rights reserved. Whilst every effort has been made to provide accurate information, Serendipity cannot accept responsibility for any inaccuracies contained within this publication. The views expressed in BlackInk are those of the contributors and do not necessarily reflect those of the editors or publishers. No part of this publication may be reproduced except for purposes of research without permission from the contributors and publishers.

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Contents 6

Editor’s Welcome — Pawlet Brookes

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Insight: Black British Theatre

A Concise History of Black British Theatre’s Interaction with Arts Council England: A Personal Perspective — Tyrone Huggins Is There a Future for Black Theatre? — Stella Kanu A World Beyond Liverpool 8 — Cathy Tyson Road to Success — Paulette Randall

26 Afrofuturism

Black Manifesto! — nora chipaumire 25 Years of Hate — Maya Brookes The Hole in the Wall: Curating Basquiat’s Defacement — Chaédria LaBouvier Achieving Creative Justice Across the African Diaspora — Antonio C Cuyler Skin and Colour — Patricia Vester

50 Launchpad

Beware the Tokoloshe — Shangomola Edunjobi Sombre — Ana Paz

No More Tears — Stephen Anthony Davids (SAD) Irírí — Ade Coker

Through Their Eyes — Tolu Coker

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Arts and Culture

Whoa! There’s Something About The Groove: Reflections from The Dancing Diplomat on Hip-Hop Dance’s “Special” Powers — Aysha Upchurch Things Fall Apart - On Public Monuments — Mistura Allison The Origins of Australia’s Blak History Month — Sam Cook

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Activism and Identity

Black Lives Matter — Boston ‘The Orator’ Williams

Finding a Home in Dance — Samwel Japhet #BeThePeaceWalk — Hyppolite Ntiguirirwa

Who is Black Italian? And Above All Who is an Italian? — Fred Kuwornu

Research, Engagement and Impact - The Stephen Lawrence Research Centre One Year On — Kennetta Hammond Perry

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New Writing

Yemi Can’t Swim: Something in the Water — Sarah Kelly-Olatunji

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2020 In Numbers

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Serendipity Publications

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Calendar Highlights

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Coming Soon 2021

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The Interview — Kathy Williams

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EDITOR’ WELCOM 6

Editor’s Welcome — Pawlet Brookes

’S ME

Welcome to the first edition of BlackInk, a new incisive magazine focusing on Black arts, heritage and cultural politics. The context of this magazine is rooted in the events of 2020; a year that has been shaped by the tremendous impact of Black Lives Matter, the unforeseen changes COVID-19 has made to our everyday lives, the ongoing Windrush scandal and the loom of Brexit. BlackInk seeks to be a tangible document to the here and now.

In the curation of BlackInk, we wanted to create not just a magazine but a window into seeing different art forms and perspectives in the absence of the opportunity to share physical space during Black History Month 2020. Through both the physical magazine and the digital content, we have brought together a range of interconnected international voices from across the African and African Caribbean Diaspora and indigenous communities; exploring Black British Theatre (the theme for Black History Month Leicester 2020 in recognition of a legacy of over sixty years), arts and culture, Afrofuturism, activism and identity.

The introduction of Launchpad is a new incarnation for BHM Live (Serendipity’s platform for emerging Black artists) featuring the work of five artists and BlackInk’s new writing competition, with short stories from three writers.

The importance of naming for ourselves is considered throughout, as language continues to shift and evolve, we have provided space for each contributor to use the terminology that they see best, whilst also recognising that language and terminology are evolving in real time.

I hope that BlackInk has relevance that reaches beyond October and with some permanence beyond the usual ephemeral nature of magazines. Most of all, I hope that you will enjoy reading this collection of art, history (both past and in the making) and discourse, and that these pages will spark further conversations, learning and unlearning.

Pawlet Brookes

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INSIGHT BLACK BRITISH THEATRE 8

Insight: Black British Theatre

T: H E

Now more than ever, it is essential to recognise the legacy of more than 60 years of Black British theatre. BHM2020 Leicester honours and recognises the seminal works of the 1950s, through to the shifting cultural landscape of the 1980s and a contemporary renaissance. The current impact of COVID-19 has left stages empty, but Black British creativity, recovery and resilience continues to chart a journey through uncertain times; of changing terminology, funding and visibility.

A Concise History of Black British Theatre’s Interaction with Arts Council England: A Personal Perspective — Tyrone Huggins Is There a Future for Black Theatre?

— Stella Kanu A World Beyond Liverpool 8 — Cathy Tyson Road to Success — Paulette Randall

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A CONCISE HISTORY OF BLACK BRITISH THEATRE’S INTERACTION WITH ARTS COUNCIL ENGLAND: A PERSONAL PERSPECTIVE

TIME IS PASSING. AND THE INSTIGATORS OF BLACK THEATRE ARE PASSING AWAY. IN THEIR TIME, THE LANGUAGE ENCOMPASSING THEIR WORK HAS ALSO CHANGED. THE NEGRO THEATRE COMPANIES BETWEEN THE 1940S AND THE 1960S GAVE WAY TO ORGANISATIONS WITH MORE EMBLEMATIC NAMES LIKE KESKIDEE, TEMBA, DRUM, DARK AND LIGHT THEATRE OF THE 1970S. BY THE END OF THAT DECADE BLACK THEATRE CO-OPERATIVE HAD BEEN FOUNDED. SPILLING INTO THE 1980S ALONGSIDE COMPANIES LIKE AFRICAN DAWN, BLACK GRASS, BLACK THEATRE WORKSHOP, CARIB, L’OUVETURE, SASSAFRAS, THEATRE OF BLACK YOUTH1. THE SHIFT FROM NEGRO TO BLACK HAS CONTEMPORARY ECHOES IN THE MOVEMENT TO DISENTANGLE BLACK FROM BAME.

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Insight: Black British Theatre A Concise History of Black British Theatre’s Interaction with Arts Council England: A Personal Perspective — Tyrone Huggins

The Negro Theatre Workshop, organised by the great Edric and Pearl Connor was probably the first Black led organisation to receive Arts Council of Great Britain (ACGB) funding amounting to £300 in 1966. The first Black theatre company to receive annual Arts Council of Great Britain subsidy was Temba in 1974/5. Then in 1976 a group of artists formed what subsequently became known as the Minority Arts Advisory Service (MAAS). They wanted to do a study into whether immigrants had cultural activities that should be known about by funders and secured sponsorship from Arts Council, Gulbenkian Foundation and the Community Relations Commission. That group were actors Norman Beaton and Taiwo Ajai, musician Peter Blackman, Asian Youth leader Ravi Jain, Gujarati dance group leader Shantu Maher, artist Ossie Murray and academic Stuart Hall, who were peripatetically led by Nassem Khan. The result of Khan’s national research was The Arts Britain Ignores: The Arts of The Ethnic Minorities of Britain2 . Khan’s report was published late in 1976.

Between then and 2006 the Arts Council has created at least sixty reports and strategic initiatives addressing many of the same issues. There have been many more since.

In 1986 the Arts Council’s Ethnic Minority Arts Action Plan sets quotas (4% of budget) for Minority Ethnic work.

The consensus was that it did not work and encouraged tokenism. Black and white artists criticised the report.

In 1989 the concept of cultural diversity was adopted, identifying that culture and tradition are factors alongside finance. A dedicated access unit was established to cover all the marginalised areas of the arts. This augmented overall budgets, but was perceived to absolve specific departments from integrating this work fully into their thinking. By the 1990s multiculturalism had become seen as confining people behind racial divisions. A Black Arts Development Proposal was made in 1993 aimed at increasing the resources of already established ethnic minority companies in the regions.

Shannon Hayes and Donna Berlin, in The Gift at Eclipse Theatre and Belgrade Theatre Coventry, 2020, photographer Ellie Kurttz

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Then in 1994 the Arts Council of England was formed out of the Arts Council of Great Britain as the nations of the United Kingdom took charge of their own arts strategy. In that year also, the Arts Council Regional Black Initiative in Theatre (RBIT) was set up building on emerging regional need expressed by venues. This scheme included bursaries for directors to be attached to identified companies, short term courses for Black and Asian directors in regional theatres, audience and artist development programmes, outreach and education work, commissioning, producing, touring and youth group support and in 1997 establishing the National Rural Touring Forum.

In 1999 Arts Council of England commissioned a Report on the Roles and Functions of the English Regional Producing Theatres, generally known as the Boyden Report3, which led to a £25 million uplift in provision for theatre. In that same year an Arts Council of England review reconfigured RBIT into BRIT – the Black Regional Initiative in Theatre.

The pace of work on cultural diversity increased following the Next Stage, a consultation on how to allocate these additional resources leading to a national policy for theatre in England, which allocated strategic funding to BRIT. A range of companies received fixed term funding at this time, including Rasa, Black Arts development project, Peshkar, Tiata Fahodzi, Kali and Yellow Earth. Money was allocated for a Black theatre company in Birmingham, but was not distributed in that way.

Additional BRIT funds meant expanded policies around rural touring for Black artists, technical skills development with BECTU, Creative People (identifying the aspirations of individuals), expanded audience development programmes, the establishing of a South Asian Theatre Touring Consortium, writer development through Stages of Sound with BBC Radio Drama and, in the shadow of The Stephen Lawrence Inquiry, a conference in 2001 – Eclipse, developing strategies to combat racism in theatre. Out of this emerged Eclipse Theatre Company, first as a collaborative project between regional repertory theatres, then as an independent producer and employer. Decibel Performing Arts Showcase was another Arts Council England initiative in close collaboration with BRIT, running biannually 2003 to 2011, which had many measures of success, but did not break established structures.

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In 2003 the Arts Council of England became Arts Council England as it absorbed the Regional Arts Boards into a single unified organisation. At the same time establishing a national diversity department monitoring compliance with the Race Relations (Amendment) Act 2000. This drew on the best practice evolving in the theatre department through BRIT to develop a Race Equality Action Plan in 2004. In 2005, BRIT launched Black Theatre for the Twenty-First Century which became the largest artist led initiative on diversity the Arts Council has ever supported.

A national consultation leading to the Whose Theatre…? report, launching Sustained Theatre, which at its peak actively engaged approximately 300 arts practitioners in nine regional hubs. After six years of this ten-year programme, which had developed a national business plan for a financially viable independent Black theatre sector, there was a new government with an unspoken philosophy of ‘creative destruction’ underwritten by austerity. In 2011, against this backdrop, Arts Council England withdrew support for Sustained Theatre and the possibility of fundamental change was lost. This pattern of initiation and withdrawal on the brink of delivery is an underlying blueprint for most diversity and Black theatre programmes in the Arts Council’s strategic history.

2011 saw the first iteration of the creative case for diversity published in Beyond Cultural Diversity4. In 2013 the Arts Council underwent another restructuring to reduce administrative costs, taking most of its operations online and reducing the contact time of staff with arts practice.

The current policy is an attempt to embed diversity into structural practice - an optimistic use of compressed resources. The specific issues of Black theatre practice have been merged into the diversity of societal pressures in search of resources and the reclassification of art as culture.

But as recent events have highlighted the issues facing Black people globally are far from resolved and very particular.

A reality that Black arts practitioners, Black audiences and global opinion are currently expressing in the statement Black Lives Matter.

Insight: Black British Theatre A Concise History of Black British Theatre’s Interaction with Arts Council England: A Personal Perspective — Tyrone Huggins Footnotes 1.

Chambers, C., (2017) Black British Plays Post World War II – 1970s. National Theatre and Sustained Theatre Black Plays Archive. [online].

Available at: https://www.blackplaysarchive.org. uk/featured-content/essays/black-british-playspost-world-war-ii-1970s-professor-colinchambers [Accessed: 23/07/2020]

2.

Khan, N., (2017) Everywhere Is Somewhere.

Bluemoose Books Ltd. ISBN 978-1-910422-39-7

3.

Peter Boyden Associates and Arts Council of England (2000) Roles and Functions of the English Regional Producing Theatres 2000, Peter Boyden Associates.

4.

Appignanesi, R., ed., (2010) Beyond Cultural Diversity – The Case for Creativity, ISBN 978-0-947753-11-5

The Keskidee Centre in Gifford Street, photographer Islington Local History Centre

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seven methods of killing kylie jenner Rehearsal at Royal Court Theatre, 2019, photographer Helen Murray

Insight: Black British Theatre Is There a Future for Black Theatre? — Stella Kanu

IS THERE A FUTURE FOR BLACK THEATRE? AS WE GET COMFORTABLE IN A NEW DECADE, BLACK THEATRE CURRENTLY APPEARS TO BE IN A STRONG, HEALTHY FRONTFACING PHASE. PUSHED BY THE DISCOMFORT AND THE DAILY PURSUIT OF ONLINE ‘DRAGGING’ (PUBLICLY CRITICISING) OF WHITE-DOMINATED THEATRE VENUES AND ORGANISATIONS THERE IS A SHARPER THAN EVER FOCUS ON TACKLING THE DESPAIRING PERSISTENCE OF ANNUAL STATISTICS THAT CONTINUE TO SHOW LOW-TOZERO ETHNIC REPRESENTATION. LANGUAGE AND HOW WE TALK ABOUT OURSELVES IN THE CONTEXT OF BLACKNESS AND THEREFORE WHAT IS ACCEPTABLE FOR OTHERS TO CALL US HAS BROUGHT A SHARP FOCUS ON WHAT IS BLACK THEATRE?

Above all this well-meaning intention, and political redefinition, those of us on stage, backstage, in our offices, on our boards and leading in our executive teams have continued being excellent, building collective resilience, honing our individual imaginative know-how and just simply doing what we do. To talk about the future, we need to know where we are now and how our unique ecosystem is being reimagined and constructed as we speak.

Let me give you the Venn diagram of Black theatre and break some myths.

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– WHERE ARE WE? Actors with strong roots in theatre like Judith Jacobs, Michaela Cole and Sharon-Duncan Brewster and Cherelle Skeete’s acting collective Blacktress are bursting like supernovas across theatre, TV, web series, radio and blockbuster films. We have been spoiled for choice with astonishing ethnically significant writer/director teams with Award winners Jasmine Lee Jones and Milli Bhatia (seven methods of killing kylie jenner, 2019) and Natasha Gordon and Roy Alexander Weise with Nine Night (2018), Inua Ellams and Bijan Sheibani with Barbershop Chronicles (2017) and Ellams again with Nadia Fall with Three sisters (2019) with production manager Mekel Edwards, composer Femi Temowo and a full production team led by Moji Elufowoju.

All Black duo Dawn Walton and Testament for Black Men Walking (2018) and numerous works at The Bush Theatre and the work annually showcased on our regional stages.

The vital resurgence of Winsome Pinnock’s gigantic personal canon, encouraged by Simeilia Hodge-Dallaway in her capacity as artistic director at Artistic Directors of the Future, and first to the delightful pick and mix was artistic director of the Bush at the time, Madani Younis.

Artistic leadership from people like Amanda Huxtable, Shawab Iqbal and Roy Alexander Weise in the North, Natalie Ibu with Tiata Fahodzi in the South East, Deborah Sawyyer at Mercury Theatre in the East and Yamin Choudury, Lynette Linton, Gbolahan Obisesan, Kwame Kwei-Armah OBE and Karena Johnson are finally all leading some of London’s best loved venues. All this theatre leadership and creativity is aptly supported in a circular motion by 100s of the most talented Black cultural workers across all generations and ages, especially in design, producing, stage management and technical roles. In 2020 I remain the only Executive Director in the top 50 Arts Council England funded organisations.

Further, is a wider outer structure, that Black Theatre crisscrosses with, as British theatre influences other sectors as it renews its own civic role – Coventry City of Culture, new cultural quarter Woolwich Works and in London’s newest theatre set to open in 2021, Brixton House, and the Birmingham Commonwealth Games, – people like Titilola Dawudu, Annika Brown, Monique Baptiste-Brown and Raidene Carter are often unsung in their contribution to city wide cultural renewal through theatre and culture but they are there working away.

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Wider still there are those holding up the next generation of talent through teaching like Julie Saunders and Topher Campbell. The Clore Leadership programme is now under the careful and inspired leadership of Hilary Carty and, from a board level, David Bryan after decades and decades is still supporting Black organisations to become more dynamic and leading white dominated organisations into a new diverse light.

Movements like Eclipse Theatre’s Revolution Mix and Black Womxn in Theatre show Black theatre is repositioning itself to be able to play a vital role in nurturing the imagination of future generations, nurturing a creative and inclusive nation while inspiring other Black people to enter the industry, stay and progress within its new possibilities.

– NO QUICK FIX: THE CHALLENGES AHEAD This looks like full on positive news. And it is. But alongside this we work within a cultural sector that in 2020 remains rife with exploitation and nepotism by some organisations and ineffective or career driven leaders.

I recently shared a panel where an Equity union official, having spent a year working on theatre sector cases – refer to it as a being “run like a cartel”. I stared at him eyes wide, but I knew it was true. Rights of fair pay for freelancers, equal access to work, contractual and copyright issues are the bloody red threads that weave across our working relationships.

Every production or person listed above is heavily re-owned by the venues that they appear or work in or by the companies that help tour the work. It has the effect of bolstering their own diversity credentials while swallowing whole hunks of individual efforts; especially when our successful white counterparts are quickly embraced by the wider eco-system of TV, film and international scenes for higher paid work and greater profiles when they undertake the exact same work as us.

The legacy of the white gaze and white centring in theatre has had a devastating, distracting effect on our individual right as creators in our own lives. These ingrained professional habits in our working spaces means even the most well-meaning and willing white person has failed to recognise that while their own professional experience involves a lack of ‘ethnically other’, there is not a single Black, Asian or ethnically diverse person in the whole of the UK who hasn’t worked in white-dominated environments – for most of us it has been our whole career.

Insight: Black British Theatre Is There a Future for Black Theatre? — Stella Kanu

“You always told me it takes time. It has taken my father’s time, my mother’s time. My uncle’s time. My brother’s and sister’s time.

My niece’s and my nephew’s time. How much time do you want for your progress”?

Our learning about the systemic structures that have inhabited whiteness (as a system not a people or a single person) is keen and intricate. This is the reason we must desire a seat at the table. It cannot just be to get a higher paid job, to push incompetent white people out of the way. The talk around words like ‘revolution’ and the talk of ‘burning the system’ and ‘coming with matches’ is predicated on the collective laser-like knowledge that Black and brown people have about every nook and cranny where structural inequalities and relational power imbalances hide out.

We are acutely aware of how much self-learning it has taken us to unlearn our own social conditioning let alone see it, name it, change it, live it. If we must wait until our white colleagues, collaborators and even allies see what we see – we are all going to be deceased before that day arrives because many Black people have seen that it takes so long to see what must change within ourselves; how many more generations of white people remain unfamiliar with their past and how the present is built on its foundations.

Every charity, every large institution that exists is already working within rules created one or two centuries ago.

The distance from book reading to inner wrestling with our own repressed socialised issues is years and years.

While this is to happen, we must remain ‘separate never equal?’ As the great writer James Baldwin says “You always told me it takes time. It has taken my father’s time, my mother’s time. My uncle’s time. My brother’s and sister’s time. My niece’s and my nephew’s time. How much time do you want for your progress”?

– THE HORIZON AHEAD Whether we change theatre from the inside or the outside, twenty-first century Black theatre needs twenty-first century innovation that bridges the gap between both grassroots leadership (individual accountability; community and use of networks, action focused, innovation in raising money, resilience) and mainstream ways of doing things. In dismantling the structural inequalities in the current theatre system, we can maintain a focus on creativity for all and in all; scaling up our ambition and reach; and working to create an eco-system where everyone who should has a stake and a say in the road ahead.

The Arts Council England’s new 10-year strategy Let’s Create offers us the opportunity actively to succeed at a monumental pace of change that may allow us to call ‘time’s up’ in James Baldwin’s grandnieces and nephew’s time. Let’s see what happens.

Tonderai Munyevu, Trevor Laird and Tyrone Huggins in Black Men Walking at Royal Court Theatre, 2018, photographer Tristram Kenton

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A WORLD BEYOND LIVERPOOL 8

I WAS AWARE AT A YOUNG AGE THAT CERTAIN THINGS WERE EXPECTED OF ME BECAUSE I WAS BLACK. IT WAS ASSUMED THAT I WOULD BE GOOD AT RUNNING, DANCING AND SINGING. THE VISIBLE BLACK ROLE MODELS AT THE TIME WERE IN SPORT, MUSIC AND SINGING, AND OF COURSE, I WAS PROUD OF THEM, BUT I REBELLED AGAINST THESE TYPES. I WANTED MY WORLD TO BE EXPANSIVE. I BECAME AWARE OF THE VASTNESS OF THE WORLD FROM AROUND THE AGE OF FOUR AS MY FATHER LIVED FOUR AND HALF THOUSAND MILES AWAY IN TRINIDAD AND TOBAGO. THERE WERE BLACK AND WHITE PICTURES OF MY HALF BROTHERS AND SISTERS BATHED IN SUNSHINE AND WEARING SUNGLASSES. 18

Insight: Black British Theatre A World Beyond Liverpool 8 — Cathy Tyson

A far cry from England and the 1970s blackouts. I grew up in a home with a picture of my father (he never lived with us) in a barrister’s gown and wig. I was called the N-word by strangers and by other children I knew. My only defence was to say “my dad’s a barrister and yours isn’t”. They, nor I, knew what a barrister was, but he looked important and I took refuge in that. There were books in our home in our workingclass neighbourhood. They were delivered by post, and every two months felt like Christmas as the parcels arrived.

I opened the pages on a world beyond Dingle, Liverpool 8.

Cathy Tyson, photographer Kammy Darweish

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Diversity encompasses fairness of opportunity. Fairness is a quality that we are taught as children by our parents and the wider world. Why should we abandon this quality as adults?

My first trip to the theatre was to see Swan Lake at Liverpool’s Empire theatre. It was an all-white cast wearing all-white costumes. But I felt part of it. The experience of the music, sitting in the audience in the dark. I expect as a child the darkness of the auditorium had an excitement of night about it. As night-time for a child is forbidden. My dear white mother had a love of theatre. She was never a stage mum, but I was exposed to performance in many different ways; the circus whilst on holiday, the visiting clowns to the caravan camp and school musicals about religious figures.

I even remember seeing Ken Dodd at the Empire and hearing him tell a racist joke about Indians not being able to eat a choc ice because they mistake their fingers for the chocolate covering. I remember hearing the laughter of the white people around me and feeling ashamed. I wasn’t even Indian but I had the same brown skin and its harsh for a child to experience that, it affects your sense of self-esteem and identity. Years later, I met Dodd on a train. I never brought it up. He treated me with warmth and I him. As a child, I wielded little power, but adult status afforded me it automatically. The reality is that respect needs to be there from the get go.

Nearly all the performances I attended I may have been one of a handful of Black people in the audience. The performers were always white. So, seeing my life through a white perspective began very early for me. There is a quote I heard years ago from an actor I respect, Burt Caesar: “White people never see themselves through our experience but we as Black people do through theirs.”

This had a profound effect on me. Why was this so and to a great degree is still the case? Fortunately, with the recent attention on the Black Lives Matter protests, we’ve witnessed a real interest from white people on an international scale, to read, learn and listen to Black peoples’ experience. It’s not just the intellectuals that are interested but the ordinary person.

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When I entered into the theatre industry in the early 1980s I heard from one prominent agent that, “There aren’t many good Black actors.” She has been proven wrong, and I knew back then that this was incorrect. I’d seen great Black talent at interviews. The late Joanne Campbell, myself and others did a workshop audition for Ntozake Shange’s For Colored Girls Who Have Considered Suicide/When The Rainbow Is Enuf. As a seventeen-year-old the words suicide and coloured in the title, scared me. But it also resonated with me. Here was writing that spoke of my story as a Black woman. As I have said earlier I had only been exposed to white narratives. Okay, every Saturday night there was Shirley Bassey. But it was like watching a silent movie, I never heard her talk about her experiences of being Black.

She was impossibly glamorous and her message was that you could have wealth and success. She looked like a Black person without problems. So, I couldn’t really relate.

I watched Joanne Campbell in the audition and felt proud and taken aback as the competition was tough.

She went on to play the lead in the Josephine Baker Story at Theatre Royal Stratford East. I guess there have been three generations of Black British actors. The 1960s with Mona Hammond, Errol John, Chloe Sylvester, Ram John Holder, Norman Beaton, Carmen Monroe and the late Louis Mahoney. The 70s and 80s with Angela Bruce, Burt Caesar, Doña Croll, Victor Romero Evans, Ellen Thomas Paul Barber and myself. 2000 to the present day with Adrian Lester, Daniel Kaluuya, Tanya Moodie, Michaela Coel and John Boyega. With each of these periods there has been progress and a testament to not only the quality of Black performers’ works but to the quantity. At the moment, more actors aspire to work in America. The type of work has a wider breadth than when I started out. There’s a need to be familiar with African accents. Learning the differences between each African country’s accent.

Insight: Black British Theatre A World Beyond Liverpool 8 — Cathy Tyson

I see the opportunities afforded Black actors of America.

But I want this to be the case here in Britain. Film and TV feature more in America, but I love theatre and this is why I have chosen until now to remain in Britain. I would miss theatre so much. I began writing this article prior to the announcement of £1.57 billion to be given to the arts in various grants and loans. Now that I know this, I feel somewhat relieved. But there are still fears that the money will not reach smaller venues and that London will take the large bulk of it. However, the government is listening.

Yes, they haven’t offered the € 50 billion that Germany did back in March, but a start is being made. I also wonder if other countries’ responses to theatre operations will inspire people to travel to other places for work? South Korea, for example, didn’t shut theatres. They did a track and trace system and managed to locate thousands of people after the virus had an outbreak during a run of a show. The audience and cast were quarantined and after fourteen days went back to work. This is impressive stuff and it makes me ask will we see new centres of theatre emerge after COVID-19.

Back to my dreams for the industry in Britain. As a mature Black actor, I’d like to play roles that are going to utilise my experience. These are also the happiest years of my life so far. I have a confidence that wasn’t there when I was younger.

As I hope many mature actors of colour now also have too.

I’d like to make people laugh. I’ve spent a lot of my career playing characters with troubled backgrounds. I wonder why that is?! I’d also like to see more lead roles for younger people of colour (POC). Its great seeing Michaela Coel on the front of the Radio Times, and well deserved, as she is a fantastic role model. But seriously, we need to see another actress of colour on the cover not in ten years’ time but this year. I’m in favour of quotas. Trying them out for a ten-year trail period and see what the effect has on the number of artists and writers that are nurtured and importantly to see what effect this has on the greater society.

These quotas should be about obtaining lead and substantial roles. Futile, if they are only about the small parts. As this doesn’t really allow for progress. We as creatives need to have the courage on a regular basis to ask organisations if we can work there. Tell them the plays we’d like to do and see if they are interested.

We need to be imaginative and not wait for someone else to give us the permission to be creative. I was fortunate to be part of this discussion last year in BlackChat at Curve as part of Serendipity’s programme for Black History Month.

How do we build a theatre infrastructure with better representation? After playing the white Polish scientist Marie Curie in 2015, I asked myself “why hadn’t I done this before?” why hadn’t I played a historical character of a different race. We need to be aware of limiting ourselves.

As performers, we have entered into a career that though challenging also offers us a lot of freedoms. We are not nurses that have to abide by a certain set of rules in order to administer the correct medicine. The currency we have is our imagination. For that you don’t need a lot of money. But drive and belief. I know the disappointments get us down. I have just failed to get an audition that I really wanted. But the failure did not take away my imagination. As an actor, there is a culture of waiting for the next opportunity. But whilst we wait, be productive.

My dreams for diversity have been with me since I became a professional in 1984. Whilst playing Marie Curie, a fellow actor questioned how I could play Marie Curie as there weren’t any Black people in Poland at the time. I said to him that Black people have been all over the world, maybe not on mass but you find us everywhere. We had a calm discussion about diversity. I’m glad I didn’t get angry. In my opinion, the actor was truly perplexed not racist. After a few weeks of the show, the same actor said that I was the ‘essence of Marie Curie’. I was flattered. He had been open to listen and had changed his mind.

Perhaps ten years ago, I would have felt apprehensive talking about diversity. For fear of being shot down by fellow artists who have a hard-enough time finding work as it is. But for a few years now I talk about diversity with confidence and aspiration. I have been helped because there is a culture of acceptance around the need for diverse work places within the arts.

Diversity encompasses fairness of opportunity. Fairness is a quality that we are taught as children by our parents and the wider world. Why should we abandon this quality as adults?

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ROAD TO SUCCESS MY CAREER FROM STAGE TO SCREEN

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Paulette Randall, Bernadine Evaristo and Patricia St. Hilaire, 1982, 2019

Insight: Black British Theatre Road to Success — Paulette Randall

I went to The Rose Bruford School of Speech and Drama, at the age of 18, to train as an actress. I really had to push myself, as I didn’t actually enjoy the acting thing that much. Towards the end of my third year, myself and two other students began writing. On leaving drama school, Patricia Hilaire, Bernardine Evaristo and I, went on to form a company of our own, called Theatre of Black Women.

We really felt that the industry was not producing roles or plays that we were remotely interested in. You know; a nurse, a single mum, etc. Our first individual plays went on to be included in a season of rehearsed readings at The Royal Court Theatre, called Talking Black and my play, Fishing went on to be a competition winner. The prize was a professional production of an extract of your play at The Royal Court Theatre, directed by Danny Boyle, then director of the Theatre Upstairs.

It was during rehearsals of Fishing that I realised I was more interested in what Danny was doing than I was in my own play! I told him, “I think I want to do what you do” and eventually, I became a trainee director, assisting Max Stafford-Clarke, who was then artistic director of the Royal Court Theatre. I assisted Max and Danny on productions, and was included in script meetings, castings, and anything that involves putting on a play. You also had to do a shift working at the stage door, and answering the phone. It was one of those old-fashioned affairs where you answered the phone, and then, hopefully, plugged the caller into the correct extension. The contraption was so old and dodgy, that you would get horrible electric shocks from it throughout your shift!

Back in the 80s I went to the recording of the first episode of No Problem! a new C4 sit com, created by Black Theatre Co-Op, and written by Farrukh Dhondy and Mustapha Matura. One of the things I loved about it was, it felt like a hybrid of theatre and television, with a live audience, but recorded. I guess I knew at some point, I would like to have a go at working in that medium. The opportunity arose some years later, when in the 90s a new BBC sketch show, with a Black and Asian cast were looking for an assistant producer.

I didn’t really know what the job entailed, but surely some of the skills I had by now acquired would be transferable. The job included script editing, casting, and learning how you make a show from start to finish. The show was The Real McCoy. We had a fantastic time, and I wanted to get more experience of working in television. I asked the BBC comedy department if there was anything else I could work on, and I was told, “There really isn’t anything for you right now”. So, I said “You mean you’re not making any more comedy shows?” and the reply was, “of course, just not for you”.

After spending a year and a half at the theatre, I was asked if I wanted to continue for another year. I felt ready to direct and could they guarantee me a production in the Theatre Upstairs? I was told no. I went about finding a theatre where I could, the Octagon Theatre, Bolton as Assistant Director. I directed main house productions with no assisting. From there, I went freelance, and directed plays for companies like Temba, Talawa, and Black Theatre Co-Op.

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“you understand TV and you’re a director, you can do this, everything else you will pick up and learn as you go on”

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No Problem! TV show, 1983, Channel 4

Insight: Black British Theatre Road to Success — Paulette Randall

Desmond’s, a very successful C4 sit-com, was looking for a script editor. I got myself an interview, and landed the job. I loved it. We had a team of eight writers, and I worked alongside my Executive Producer Humphrey Barclay, in developing the scripts from a two-lined idea, to the finished product. It was at this point that Humphrey asked me if I had thought about producing, or directing for television, because it was a studio-based show with multi cameras, I thought, this be might a stretch too far for me. In theatre, I just used my eyes, and I knew how to pull the audience’s focus, etc.

Having to view my cast through a lens just felt too removed.

I opted to continue learning about television producing. I was still able to direct plays, so it felt right. I became the Associate Producer, and subsequently also script edited and produced. Then other shows followed.

So, I was a now a television producer and a theatre director.

But I kept thinking about pushing myself towards directing for the camera and produced a series of six short films for Lenny Henry’s company, Crucial Films. Watching the directors in action using a single camera, felt so different from the multi camera TV studio set up and much closer to what I would have done in the theatre. I didn’t go looking for a course, and remembered that Max Stafford-Clarke had directed a drama for television with only theatre experience.

When I was approached to consider directing for Holby City, I was nervous. I was reassured by the producer who said, “you understand TV and you’re a director, you can do this, everything else you will pick up and learn as you go on”. I went for it. I loved it! I directed my first two episodes of Holby. I continued directing for the theatre, as I still loved that too, but had to find another television directing job, so that I wouldn’t forget all the things I had just learnt. I eventually did a few more blocks; two episodes equals a block; and then went up to Glasgow to do River City. Since then, I have continued to work as a television director.

– BEING A DIRECTOR IN THEATRE AND TELEVISION What are the differences between directing for the stage or the screen? Well, to begin with, there’s the casting. In theatre, I am used to seeing and casting actors who are not absolutely what I’m looking for, but believing that after a four-week rehearsal period, they will have ‘arrived’. In television, you have to find the actor that is closest to what you need, as there is basically no time to rehearse. You get to block the scene, i.e. get the actors in the right positions, and with your DOP, (Director of Photography), you decide how you will shoot it. You are on a tight schedule to get the day completed, so time is of the essence! Of course, you still have to make the time to speak with your actors as you do in the theatre. The timescale is different but how I treat the actors is the same.

The wonderful thing is, you still work closely on the scripts for television with a script editor, as in the theatre if you are lucky enough to have your playwright in the rehearsal room. Without my theatre background and training, I would not have had the confidence to pursue a parallel career in television and to become an awardwinning television director.

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AFROFUTURIS 26

Afrofuturism

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What is the future we envisage?

How do we connect? How do we live together?

The future is now, and the science fiction of a previous generation is becoming a reality.

At the intersection between Black arts, culture and technology, there is a renewed opportunity for accountability, to be unapologetic, to create the spaces we claim for ourselves.

As we navigate prevailing challenges, we also imagine Black futures rooted in our shared Diasporic experiences.

BLACK MANIFESTO! — nora chipaumire 25 Years of Hate — Maya Brookes The Hole in the Wall: Curating Basquiat’s Defacement — Chaédria LaBouvier Achieving Creative Justice Across the African Diaspora — Antonio C Cuyler Skin and Colour — Patricia Vester

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BLACK MANIFESTO! IN THE WAKE OF GLOBAL PANDEMIC, AND “BLACK SPRINGS” EVERYWHERE, I ASK MYSELF WHAT I CAN DO TO BE GENERATIVE AND CONTRIBUTIVE. I OFFER ANOTHER MANIFESTO! ON HOW TO BREATHE AND LIVE IN REVOLUTIONARY TIME.

1. THINK, darn it!

2. Shape shift! You can 3. Free the feminine in u 4. Refuse to dumb it down 5. Recognise state craft* for the witchcraft it is 6. Édouard Glissant said it, I repeat - Opacity - own it 7. Platform yourself and know when to de platform yourself comrade 8. Family is all who can THINK with you 9. Race matters - remember who created it - long live James Baldwin 10. READ! Will ya! Educate your damn self

*Stolen from Julia Rayhnam

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Afrofuturism BLACK MANIFESTO! — nora chipaumire

nora chipaumire, in LDIF18 Launch: 100% POP at 2Funky Music Cafe, 2018, photographer Stuart Hollis

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nora chipaumire and Shamar Watt, in LDIF18 Launch: 100% POP at 2Funky Music Cafe, 2018, photographer Stuart Hollis

Afrofuturism BLACK MANIFESTO! — nora chipaumire

BLACK MANIFESTO! THE TEN COMMANDMENTS: BLACK WOMEN SPEAK OUT PODCAST Introduced by Pawlet Brookes and hosted by nora chipamuire the Black Manifesto in the guise of the Ten Commandments is voices of Black women from around the world making the invisible visual whilst they continue to deal with refocusing and reshaping a new world in which they are seen and heard.

The podcast series will be a collaborative conversation between revolutionary women reflecting on their unapologetic practice, and active role in platforming Black art. Each episode features a guest artist, interviewed by nora chipaumire and Pawlet Brookes, with questions following a theme drawn from the manifesto. The podcast will provide a resource for educators and self-educators to reimagine learning, moving away from standardised approaches to creative paths.

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25 YEARS OF HATE IT’S 1995 AND THE WORLD HAS BEEN HIT WITH A PIECE OF CINEMA UNLIKE ANYTHING ELSE THAT CAME BEFORE IT: KASSOVITZ’S LA HAINE. THE RAW, GRITTY FILM FOLLOWS THREE YOUNG MEN, SAÏD (NORTH AFRICAN), VINZ (JEWISH) AND HUBERT (BLACK) THE DAY AFTER A FRIEND OF THEIRS IS KILLED BY THE POLICE. THE FILM WAS MADE DURING A DARK TIME IN FRENCH SOCIETY WHERE DOZENS WERE KILLED BY POLICE BRUTALITY AND RIOTS WERE ARISING IN EVERY UNDER-FINANCED, DEPRIVED NEIGHBOURHOOD AROUND THE COUNTRY AS PEOPLE FOUGHT FOR THEIR BASIC HUMAN RIGHTS. 25 YEARS ON, LITTLE HAS CHANGED.

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Still from La Haine, 1995, photograph © Gramercy Pictures

Afrofuturism 25 Years of Hate — Maya Brookes

La Haine is a timeless classic. However, it isn’t just the use of black and white photography that gives it this quality; what really makes La Haine feel as if it was made only yesterday is its message. The situation portrayed is the one that we currently face. You can be going about your day and suddenly you have to deal with the burden that someone like you was killed for no reason, and then it’s all you can think about. The film starts with a montage of Parisian riots to Bob Marley’s ‘Burnin and Lootin’, and if you didn’t know the film’s year of release it’s likely you would think it was footage from the 1995 French riots, or those of 1997, perhaps 1998 or even the 2005 Banlieu crisis. The point is that no matter how loud we speak, no matter how often, we are still not heard. People are fighting for the same fundamental rights of equality, the one France so proudly states in their motto (Liberté, Egalite, Fraternité), as they have for centuries, yet their voices aren’t listened to. Instead we continue to live in a society that promotes the oppression of our people, our culture and our beliefs.

What we must remember is that the story of La Haine is not exclusive to France. In fact, it perfectly reflects the global situation in which hate exists everywhere. The film was inspired by the death of Makomé M’Boule, a 17-yearold boy killed by the French police in 1993. Years into the future, in the midst of the coronavirus pandemic, protests have emerged across the globe as the Black Lives Matter movement is put into action once again. Starting in 2013, Black Lives Matter seems to be a recurring trend on our Twitter feed this time following the death of George Floyd.

The fact that Black people felt inclined to protest, yet again, for two weeks during a pandemic that is more likely to kill them than their white counterparts shows the severity of the situation. For the Black community the racial pandemic is becoming a matter of life or death, when they are frequently let down by a system that says it’s there to protect us.

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The central metaphor of La Haine is of a man who falls from a building. As he falls he says “ jusqu’ici tout va bien” (so far, so good) but as Hubert says “mais l’important n’est pas la chute, c’est l’atterrissage’ (how you fall doesn’t matter, it’s how you land)”. We live in a society that continues to fall into a worse and worse state, yet people consistently turn their backs on the issues that matter and it’s not until the very worst happens that people start to take action.

People are blind to racism. We allow positions of power to be occupied by racists, we listen to their speeches filled with hate and discriminatory language and we don’t do anything.

It required an 8-minute, 48 seconds video of a Black man dying at the knees of a white police officer for the world to stop and realise the error of their ways. Black people face discrimination day by day but until a graphic video hits the mainstream internet, everyone is silent on the issue. Then for two weeks, Black lives seem to matter, momentarily.

People re-post pictures of Beyoncé and Tupac, the parts of the culture they have always enjoyed appropriating, or they simply post a plain black square, and then they move on, the trend passes and once again, racism continues with little done about it. The film emphasises a vicious circle that our society has created. It ends with an officer putting the gun to Vinz’s head, and as the camera goes off, so does the gun.

It reflects how in our society these unjust killings by the police never seem to stop and how we go round and round in circles, yet making little impact. Black Lives Matter is not just a trend.

History continues to repeat itself. In France during the 90s it felt like every week a new name was added to the list of Arabs killed by the police. Now here in 2020, the list of Black victims of police brutality is extortionate. The signs have always been there but until the system, changes the same mistakes will continue to occur. The film shows how People of Colour (POC) are powerless in the face of the police as white privilege is ever-present. In a scene where the three are leaving a luxurious Parisian apartment, they are stopped by the police. Vinz manages to get away by claiming he was just visiting an aunt, whereas Saïd and Hubert are taken into police custody where they face brutal, inhumane beatings and torture as the police mock them in front of a trainee as their need for authority and power overrules their morals.

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The message of the film is that hate leads to hate. Black people are stereotyped by the media for being aggressive and angry but when they live in a world where they aren’t respected and literally being killed in broad daylight it is no surprise that this is a common feeling. This stigmatisation only fuels a negative feedback loop, in which their lack of accurate representation effects their access to equal opportunities. The film was made to show how it’s not just POC against the police, it’s everyone against the police, hence the casting of a diverse trio. To make a difference it requires everyone to wake up and see the light. In order for real change we need to do more than just an Instagram respost, we need to put an end to a corrupt system built on racist values. From the frequent racial profiling of stop and search laws, to the unjust use of force, whatever the gravity of the situation, a new system needs to be put in place.

Afrofuturism 25 Years of Hate — Maya Brookes

La Haine was revolutionary with its vision. It opened the way for a new genre of cinema whilst simultaneously changing public discourse on a variety of important subjects.

By highlighting the social divide in France, it gave us a microscopic view of what we have on a global scale. When it won best director at Cannes, the police on duty literally turned their backs on Kassovitz and the crew, viewing the film as anti-police. However, Alain Juppé, Prime Minister at the time, organised a private viewing for his cabinet. The film resonates with people internationally. They can connect with the same feelings of marginalisation and oppression, living in a society that doesn’t value their worth. La Haine does not stop by showing the systemic racism of the police force but ventures further by showing how such hate exists in every aspect of our society. The film is set in the Banlieues of Paris, the big housing estates on the suburbs of large cities, areas that are tossed aside and forgotten. These estates are often homes to immigrants and ethnic minorities and are often inadequate and unsuitable for living, yet it’s the harsh reality for many to this day. In 2017 we saw the tragic Grenfell Tower fire incident, yet three years on, tens of thousands of people are still living in unsafe housing.

These houses are home to some of the most marginalised members of our society and just like the French banlieues, the government casts these people aside.

Still from La Haine, 1995, photograph © Gramercy Pictures

In a world where Black lives continue not to matter, where racial prejudice continues to be present, where white privilege continues to be of importance, La Haine continues to be relevant.

In a world where Black lives continue not to matter, where racial prejudice continues to be present, where white privilege continues to be of importance, La Haine continues to be relevant. Filmmakers continue to use it as inspiration and the world continues to look past its deeper meanings. It is time that people finally wake up to the issues around them and see these great films as more than just cinematic art, but as a reflection of the unjust society that has been created.

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THE HOLE IN THE WALL: CURATING BASQUIAT’S DEFACEMENT BASQUIAT’S DEFACEMENT: THE UNTOLD STORY WAS AND REMAINS A HISTORIC EXHIBITION THAT IN THE CURRENT SURGE OF THE BLACK LIVES MATTER MOVEMENT HAS A PARTICULAR RESONANCE. AS THE CURATOR OF THE EXHIBITION, IT WAS MY HOPE TO CREATE SOMETHING THAT WOULD REACH ALL AUDIENCES, BOTH THOSE THAT WERE REGULAR MUSEUM ATTENDEES, AND THOSE THAT WERE NOT.

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Afrofuturism The Hole in the Wall: Curating Basquiat’s Defacement — Chaédria LaBouvier

As the first Black curator to curate an exhibition in the Guggenheim’s 80-year history, as well as the first Black woman, I was never not aware that the museum space is often unwelcoming to non-white people, and all people outside of the upper-middle class ranks. In creating the exhibition, I purposefully used materials and practices such as ephemera and filmmaking to create what I believe was a visually and more emotionally accessible show for everyone, and one which challenged curatorial norms that centre on whiteness and the upper-class, or at the very least, those aspiring and/or trafficking through elite educations.

My graduate background is in cinema, and very specifically screenwriting and costume design; I received my MFA in the former from UCLA and studied and researched under Deborah Landis as a part of my scholastic practice while at the film school. As such, one of the key elements of filmmaking was something that I sought to experiment with, or at least incorporate.

When the audience walked into the exhibition, the first thing that they saw was a facsimile of a hole in the wall, and Defacement on a separate wall, in a split-level fashion.

The hole in the wall is quite literally meant; it was a superimposed image of the Polaroid that was found in Keith Haring’s studio, presumably taken by Haring before it was moved into storage in the late spring of 1985. By having Defacement next to the origins of the painting, I was rifting off the old filmmaking adage that a good movie will, in the first 30-45 seconds, tell you exactly what the movie is about.

The filmmaker does not communicate this explicitly usually, but rather through a visual cue or framing, or even unique camera angle that is specific to the film’s story, plot or visual techniques. One of the most elegant and discreet examples of this unfolding – or foreshadowing, rather – is the opening scenes of The Godfather (1972).1 The director, Francis Ford Coppola plays with this 30-45 second rule himself; Don Corleone (Marlon Brando).

Basquiat’s “Defacement”: The Untold Story, at Guggenheim Museum, 2019, photographer Joe Bird/Alamy Stock Photo

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We must first acknowledge that Blackness, or any non-white identity operates as a currency within cultural capitalism, that is both hoarded and exploited.

By splitting the exhibition space, I sought to challenge and complicate the idea of the standard three spatial categories – background, middle ground and foreground. To be fair, they are standard means of gridding and understanding visual space. However, curating the scholarship presented its own conundrums, and telling the story immediately, was a way of bridging these paradoxes. It was a Basquiat exhibition, but also a group show. The narrative of the exhibition and the scholar began with the creation of Michael Stewart’s afterlife, yet by including his artwork, I hoped to bring him and his work to life. It can strongly be argued that there was no arch of the show; the inciting incident, as one would say in film, is not the subject of the painting. It would have been performative and exploitative to create an exhibition about Stewart’s death, when the afterlife and responses to his murder were wholly another chapter, and the reality that the subject of his death was more a political and legal matter – and deserves its own treatment all together. The decision to address that curatorially was axed very early on.

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Cinema and cinematic extensions and intentions cheat death; the celluloid and its facsimiles preserve for all time. What if those same methods of immortal alchemy were distilled on a technical level and used to “cheat” the ephemeral of exhibition and curating? Meaning, an exhibition as material, does not exist in an immortal realm.

It can live on through cultural and institutional memory, through photographs and video – cinematic extensions – but not in an unmolested or filtered state. There was very little.

It’s not necessary for the audience to have a background in film theory, but there is already an intuitive relationship of it, whether they knew it or not. I felt it would be more beneficial to build on this, rather than re-orient the audience into a visual and spatial practice and theory. Without taking a film class, nearly everyone that consumes moving image media understands the Kuleshov effect, whether it’s being watched on YouTube, Tik Tok, Netflix or basic television. If the aim of decolonising museums is a priority of an exhibition, then the decolonisation of gallery space must first be considered.

In the future, I can imagine that I will write a treatise on this topic, but for now, I offer questions as answers and the beginnings of solutions. To decolonise a physical space means to make it accessible in all the ways that accessibility can be levelled. Going into the making of the exhibition, I knew that many potential visitors felt unwelcomed at the Guggenheim; months prior, I received tweets or messages from people expressing how proud they were of me as the first Black curator, and also how unwelcome they had felt at the Guggenheim, if they had been at all. It was foremost in my mind to make the space feel open to them, and doing so would require more than just art by Black people in the space. (Basquiat’s Defacement: The Untold Story only had artwork by two Black artists, Jean-Michel Basquiat and Michael Stewart.) I used cinema to communicate visual associations and to unify non-linear storylines, something that audiences could surely follow if they had ever watched a movie before. I did not want the audience to spend their time trying to get comfortable in the space, but rather absorbing the work – when curatorial practices are used without inquiry into if they are translatable or comfortable for the audience, there is also the added emotional labour that we are asking the audience to perform or expend – and who is this for? How does this add to their experience in a value additive way?

Afrofuturism The Hole in the Wall: Curating Basquiat’s Defacement — Chaédria LaBouvier

Perhaps the first key into decolonising gallery space and curatorial practices is to attack the idea of “vocational awe”, defined by Fobazi Ettarh2 as believing that “… the set of ideas, values, and assumptions…have about themselves and the profession that result in the notion that…institutions are inherently good, sacred notions.” If curators, educations, writers and at times, artists are products of the museum system – and often times, entry into such is considered the apex or most elite level of practice – then what ways are the modes of production? This is of course is to say nothing about museum practices – are they furthering colonial agendas, while on the surface, brandishing in the currency of anti-racism and anti-white supremacy? We must first acknowledge that Blackness, or any non-white identity operates as a currency within cultural capitalism, that is both hoarded and exploited. Thus, it can be used to “buy” access, cultural capital, cultural legitimacy or quite literally space. What we do with this space is of grave concern to our relationship with the public. I believe that the White Cube is not only out-dated, but is a product of curatorial era that though developed during the decline of empire, is very much an imperial product with its insistent upon stripping the four walls of socio-political context that is not inherent to the works. Of course, that is an essay in and of itself that will not be had here. In my training and practice as a filmmaker (of sorts, my specialism is television), I chose to identify the techniques that speak to a wider audience in my visual and technical practice of anti-colonialism in creating and deconstructing space.

Jean-Michel Basquiat, Notary, 1983, photographer Archivart/Alamy Stock Phot

1.

The Godfather (1972). [film] Directed by Francis Ford Coppola. USA

2.

Ettarh, Fobazi (2018). Vocational Awe and Librarianship: The Lies We Tell Ourselves.

[Online] Avaliable from: http://www. inthelibrarywiththeleadpipe.org/2018/ vocational-awe/ [Accessed 25 September 2016].

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ACHIEVING CREATIVE JUSTICE ACROSS THE AFRICAN DIASPORA 40

Afrofuturism Achieving Creative Justice Across the African Diaspora — Antonio C Cuyler

IN 1998, PALMER STATED THAT, “THE MODERN AFRICAN DIASPORA CONSISTS OF THE MILLIONS OF PEOPLES OF AFRICAN DESCENT LIVING IN VARIOUS SOCIETIES UNITED BY A PAST BASED SIGNIFICANTLY BUT NOT EXCLUSIVELY UPON “RACIAL” OPPRESSION AND THE STRUGGLES AGAINST IT; AND WHO, DESPITE THE CULTURAL VARIATIONS AND POLITICAL AND OTHER DIVISIONS AMONG THEM, SHARE AN EMOTIONAL BOND WITH ONE ANOTHER AND WITH THEIR ANCESTRAL CONTINENT; AND WHO ALSO, REGARDLESS OF THEIR LOCATION, FACE BROADLY SIMILAR PROBLEMS IN CONSTRUCTING AND REALISING THEMSELVES.”

Black Lives Matter, in Austin Texas, 2020, photographer ATXN via Bob Daemmrich/Alamy Live News

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“centuries of alienation and subjugation have left their marks on the personality and psyche of the African being.”

As the killings of Ahmaud Arbery, Breonna Taylor, Dreasjon Reed, George Floyd, Tony McDade, and Rayshard Brooks have compelled global protest for racial justice, no greater time exists to reflect on the racial oppression and the struggles against it that have characterised the lives of people of African descent. Although the unity showed by people of African descent and their accomplices to dismantle anti-Black institutional and systemic racism heartens me, I find myself pondering how we might heal from centuries of racial injustice, and culture’s role in realising that healing? Indeed, Sarr (2019) argued, “centuries of alienation and subjugation have left their marks on the personality and psyche of the African being.”

I have also contemplated the question, what is the role of culture centered in an Africanist aesthetic in healing people of African descent? In times such as these, it makes sense that people of African descent would pivot to the balm of dance, music, theatre, and visual art of their making to soothe, compel, and empower them to fight the good fight for racial justice one more day. History has shown this. I also agree that, “if there is a space where the potential for the dissemination of the African diaspora’s brilliance exist and remains completely intact, it is that of culture” (Sarr, 2019). Not for the free market exploitation of this profound cultural capital, but for its potential to embolden people of African descent to own responsibility for their creative justice. I wonder, then, what role should people of African descent play in actualising their creative justice? In this context, I define creative justice as people of African descent living creative and expressive lives on their own terms through the intervention of culture about, by, for, and near them. Rejecting the notion that white people can or will liberate people of African descent culturally and choosing their ownership of achieving it is critical for collectively placing people of African descent on the path to healing creative justice.

If the positive values of Africanist culture are present and persistent; then it is necessary to explore and make use of the dynamics and the creative, moral, physical, and spiritual resources that they contain inside them (Sarr, 2019), particularly when envisioning intersectionality’s ability to inspire a plethora of beautiful stories about the lived experiences of people of African descent. The Soloist, Belle, Moonlight, Hidden Figures, and Pose have all proven this true. But, what might people of African descent across the diaspora achieve by uniting their assets, networks, resources, and talents? How might all people of African descent living in different cultural contexts across the Diaspora benefit from a concerted effort made by one global collective to actualise creative justice for all people of African descent?

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Afrofuturism Achieving Creative Justice Across the African Diaspora — Antonio C Cuyler

Through their statements that Black Lives Matter, though what they mean is Black Dollars Matter, some corporations, foundations, and individuals have signalled their philanthropic interest in dismantling anti-Black racism.

If such a collective existed, I envision naming it, the African Diasporic Cultural Collective. The collective could jointly tackle such questions as: how can people of African descent (1) enhance the leadership and management of cultural institutions about, by, for, and near them, (2) benefit from their cultural capital, (3) develop more Arts Management programmes across the Diaspora, (4) increase their representation within the global creative and cultural workforce, and finally (5) protect their cultural contributions to humanity through UNESCO’s intangible cultural heritage programme? Through their statements that Black Lives Matter, though what they mean is Black Dollars Matter, some corporations, foundations, and individuals have signalled their philanthropic interest in dismantling anti-Black racism. But, the “about, by, for, and near mantra,” suggests that the collective might seek to sustain itself through Black philanthropy. Given the Fund II Foundation’s focus on cultural conservation and preserving the African American experience, if only we could get Mr. Robert F. Smith’s attention. That would make a good start.

References Palmer, C. (1998). Defining and studying the modern African Diaspora. https://www.historians.org/ publications-and-directories/perspectives-onhistory/september-1998/defining-and-studying-themodern-african-diasporaA Sarr, F. (2019). Afrotopia. University of Minnesota Press.

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SKIN AND COLOUR A THEMATIC EXPLORATION OF COLOUR AND DIVERSITY, PATRICIA VESTER HAS WOVEN PHOTOGRAPHS OF BLACK FRIENDS AND COLLEAGUES INTO HER ARTWORK, SHOWCASING THE RICHNESS OF BLACKNESS, AND CELEBRATING THE SPECTRUM OF BLACK BEAUTY ALONGSIDE APHORISMS OF BLACK RESILIENCE.

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Commissioned by Serendipity, two of Patricia’s artworks adorn the cover of BlackInk and Black History Month Leicester 2020. Patricia Vester is an illustrator and artist based in Potsdam, Germany. Alongside commissions, her personal projects include her spot a day blog, which she describes as a Black German’s diary about lines and circles, visions and time.

Afrofuturism Skin and Colour — Patricia Vester

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Afrofuturism Skin and Colour — Patricia Vester

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Afrofuturism Skin and Colour — Patricia Vester

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LAUNC 50

Launchpad

CHPAD Nurturing talent and shining a light on the work of artists from across artforms, BHM Live celebrates its eighth year in a different semblance. Launchpad presents the work of five Black artists from across the UK. From visual art, to photography, manga and illustrations, spoken word and dance, drawing influences from the historical to the contemporary, this curation is an ever-relevant reflection of our times.

Beware the Tokoloshe – Shangomola Edunjobi Sombre – Ana Paz No More Tears – Stephen Anthony Davids (SAD) Irírí – Ade Coker Through Their Eyes – Tolu Coker

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BEWARE THE TOKOLOSHE ENCLOSED WITHIN BLACKINK IS A MANGA COMIC FROM SHANGOMOLA EDUNJOBI BEWARE THE TOKOLOSHE, INSPIRED BY A CREATURE WITH ITS ROOTS IN ZULU AND XHOSA MYTHOLOGY.

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Launchpad Beware the Tokoloshe — Shangomola Edunjobi

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SOMBRE PLAYING WITH THE IDEA OF DARKNESS, ANA PAZ EXPLORES, THROUGH POETRY, CAPOEIRA AND DANCE, THE ONGOING ALIENATION AND TRAUMA THAT BLACK PEOPLE EXPERIENCE AS THEY OCCUPY WHITE SPACES.

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Launchpad Sombre — Ana Paz

I come from the darkness Is it possible to feel something so deeply you feel nothing?

Vacant and low but nothing Not nothing like something clear white light nothing like foggy dark night without the moon.

Eclipse syringe plugged into my veins I’m sedated slowly fading like memories or the colour on your black jeans.

I come from the darkness like ashy black knees or the damaged blood cells deep underneath the skin no pain no gain They won’t understand more than 6 weeks to disappear it may take I’m come from the darkness As dark as the circles underneath my eyes from the grind, 9 to 5.

As dark as if you were to look into my eyes and if you were to look into my eyes you would see how far they would go

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As far to see the extraction of darkness The dilution The dismantling To form a foundation For something so broken to be created This intrusion that has caused me to be fully dilated I come from the darkness Like head pounding Like mouth dry Like stomach empty no clue eyes closed Can’t feel. like scars on black skin that don’t heal like scars on black skin that don’t heal like scars on black skin that don’t heal like scars on black skin that never heal mental scars that are beyond real.

What do you see when you see yourself?

I come from the darkness Yet I’m never still Always moving

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Launchpad Sombre — Ana Paz

I travel quicker than sound like a strong mother you will never see my frown but you might hear my cry.

I come from the darkness Constantly reflecting separating like fragments of broken glass I’m vast like s t i l l moments That Teach lessons and answer questions before you ask them.

I come from the darkness I’m the signals Jumping hurdles Traveling through dark matter Racing to Running for centuries But some start further away from the finish line That they never see the day of light They will never understand what to finish looks like.

Knees on our neck Bullets on our back If they say it only exists only in our minds I have to wave the white flag And only reason with what will keeps me alive.

Even when my true nature is light. you don’t seem to fully see me for everything that I am I come from the Darkness that’s where I am from.

As in the beginning of time As in what always has been The invigorator for life That before birth after death and everything in between.

I was always first to appear.

Who told you to be afraid of the dark Who taught you to look at me with fear I was already here...

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NO MORE TEARS EVER RELEVANT AND POIGNANT, NO MORE TEARS IS A VISUAL COMMENTARY FROM ARTIST SAD (AKA STEPHEN ANTHONY DAVIDS) ON POLICE BRUTALITY AND HIS FIRST-HAND EXPERIENCE SEEING THE IMPACT ON YOUNG BLACK MEN AND THEIR SUFFERING.

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Launchpad No More Tears — Stephen Anthony Davids

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Launchpad No More Tears — Stephen Anthony Davids

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Launchpad No More Tears — Stephen Anthony Davids

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IRÍRÍ INSPIRED BY HIS FATHERS LIFE AS A SOCIAL ACTIVIST AND PHOTOJOURNALIST, ADE COKER PRESENTS NEW NARRATIVES OF BLACK BRITISHNESS THOUGH THE STORIES OF LONDON’S WEST AFRICAN COMMUNITY.

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Launchpad Irírí — Ade Coker

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Irírí Essentially, we don’t actually have a backbone here, I think that’s the main point.

Nigeria itself, Britain in a sense was used as a vessel to go to a higher place, it was a docking station essentially so everyone that stays here still feels as though they’re passing through because everyone before them passed through so it’s like we’re the first people to fully stay here, my mum came in ‘91 to stay and we were born ‘99.

We stayed here together, it’s not like our grandparents have stayed there from then until now. That’s why I feel we’re only now coming together and finding our backbone, plugging in these holes and being confident.

If you’re looking at how transparent things are becoming it’s very easy to not feel wanted here or fully a part of here or respected here and in that same breath I don’t speak Yoruba I’m not fully in tune with the Nigerian part of me as id want to be so there’s alienation in that respect as well. So I do actually feel stuck in the middle.

When we moved areas and changed school the school changed names and used the second name that was on their birth certificate (Angelica / Emmanuel). Which I didn’t oppose as long as they were comfortable with it.

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Launchpad Irírí — Ade Coker

When growing up as a young lad born here from an African parentage, when you’re so young you don’t see yourself as Black.

Did you realise that from the beginning? Going to school with white kids you think you are all the same. But when you grow up you understand.

I reclaimed the name Kehinde. It’s a shame we’re identified by something that wasn’t our choice or our family choice, which I find a little bit uncomfortable to an extent because having a different name you’re addressed differently and with that it dictates my whole experience of life.

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It’s important for you to be the author of the terms of your identity. Not a form. Once you decide who you are that’s empowering. I think every Black person should go through a process of decolonisation.

There’s a thing about superiority that people from the continent feel over their Caribbean and African American counterparts and it needs to die because it’s so divisive and it’s so ugly. As if out of oppression all these cultures have sprung up cultures which everyone around the world imitates including people directly from the continent. So, to create a divide with all these diaspora wars, it’s counterproductive, it’s rooted in ego. And it speaks to a lack of recognition of their struggle.

You can’t divorce them from their African-ness and their Blackness because they’ve created new things.

Inventing new ways of being themselves under extremely oppressive regimes. To deny them that link makes me sad.

Educate and enhance our value in society. There are Black people who fought in World War II. Our influence radiates through everything, but that’s not taught at all, that’s not highlighted. We have a lot of work to do in regard to educating ourselves about our continent educating our kids.

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Launchpad Irírí — Ade Coker

I know myself; I know what it means to be Black and I know what it means to be African. I don’t really call myself Black a lot; I mostly identify as Sierra Leonean if someone asks me “where are you from”. It depends on the conversation.

Mostly in secondary school I started identifying myself as a Black female because I started noticing more about the world.

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THROUGH THEIR EYES THROUGH THEIR EYES IS A STUDY OF THE LIFE IN THE NEIGHBOURING VILLAGES OF RWANDA AND THE DEMOCRATIC REPUBLIC OF CONGO, SPECIFICALLY FOCUSED ON THE DAILY LIFE OF WOMEN AND CHILDREN THAT TOLU COKER MET ON HER TRAVELS THROUGH THE REGION.

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Launchpad Through Their Eyes — Tolu Coker

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Launchpad Through Their Eyes — Tolu Coker

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ARTS AND CULTUR 74

Arts and Culture

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Art reflects life, and so it stands to reason that artistic and cultural platforms are a voice for both issues and expressions of joy, whether it’s the manifestation of hip-hop dance as a physical embodiment of young people’s expression in our times or an interrogation of the contemporary relevance of public art and monuments. To consider Black history and heritage is to consider the contextualisation of art from the African and African Caribbean Diaspora and also for the international indigenous communities whose journey for justice is a shared one.

Whoa! There’s Something About The Groove: Reflections from The Dancing Diplomat on Hip-Hop Dance’s “Special” Powers — Aysha Upchurch Things Fall Apart - On Public Monuments — Mistura Allison The Origins of Australia’s Blak History Month — Sam Cook

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WHOA! THERE’S SOMETHING ABOUT THE GROOVE: REFLECTIONS FROM THE DANCING DIPLOMAT ON HIP-HOP DANCE’S “SPECIAL” POWERS

WHOA! EVERYBODY IS DOING THE WHOA. NO, SERIOUSLY, I THINK THE NUMBER OF FOLKS PUNCTUATING VIRAL DANCE CHALLENGES WITH THIS MOVEMENT HAS TO BE STATISTICALLY SIGNIFICANT. EVEN BEFORE THIS GLOBAL HEALTH PANDEMIC, VARIOUS MANIFESTATIONS OF HIP-HOP DANCE - PARTY DANCES, GROOVE, AND TECHNIQUE - WERE LIGHTING UP OUR SCREENS OF CHOICE VIA COMMERCIALS, MUSIC VIDEOS, COMPETITION SHOWS, AND OTHER RECORDINGS OF DANCE JAMS AND CHOREOGRAPHY. 76

Arts and Culture Whoa! There’s Something About The Groove: Reflections from The Dancing Diplomat on Hip-Hop Dance’s “Special” Powers — Aysha Upchurch

COVID-19 has sent the world away from the live, in-person gatherings so native to hip-hop culture where bodies not only were the punctuation to beats and verses laid down

by DJs and MCs, but also were a kinaesthetic tongue for a language so universal and primal that it allowed dialects (styles and steps) to be shared and remixed. And while the academic world (of which I am a part) may label these gatherings as sites of “informal learning,” I know experientially - which is an essential epistemology - that the type of social, emotional, and cognitive intelligences and processes utilised in these spaces form the essence of what it is to be human - connection and membership.

And hip-hop dance, as an element of hip-hop culture, operates out of these fundamental tenets. Making connections to one another and establishing membership into a collective space, practice, or culture inform much of what we do and why. So, when our routines of social connection are interrupted, we (perhaps first freak out and then) discover or invent other ways to feed this foundational human need. With dance studios, clubs, and even open-air spaces closed, it is not surprising that people, hungering for that same membership to the “club of cool,” have turned to social media platforms. Replacing cyphers and dance classes are 15-60 second video snapshots of people sharing, teaching, learning, and miming trendy dance moves and routines. And regardless if you ever attempt or post any of these sequences, more than likely you have watched, liked, and shared and possibly spent unintentional copious amounts of quarnan-time as a smiling, laughing, or shocked audience member.

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There is something in the two-step, the bounce, the groove of hip-hop party (or social) dances that draws people in.

What is it that makes these dances so special? What gives them this almost supernatural power to connect people, live and virtually, from various racial, ethnic, gender, class, ability backgrounds and contexts? And whatever this “force” is, is it potent enough to literally and metaphorically pivot from dance movements to activism movements?

These are questions I have been asked explicitly and implicitly as a dancer, choreographer, youth worker, and professor. Moreover, the air of radical possibility in these questions is what drives me as a performer and educator who sees the stage and classroom as remixes of each other, where hip-hop dance is the feature. Without being too simplistic, because indeed hip-hop culture is nuanced, I do believe there is a certain something about hip-hop dance and that it possesses a power to facilitate transformative social interactions that are the bedrock to social change. By no means am I suggesting that oppressive systems and norms that were forged with intentional disregard of whole people’s identities can be dismantled by one viral dance challenge.

But after over two decades as a performer and teaching artist, I am inviting lovers of hip-hop dance to consider the deep, liberating work that makes hip-hop such the elixir that beckons bodies to dance floors and cell phone screens.

Even before people were becoming Zoom-bies in the virtual learning sphere that is the “new normal,” I have been advocating for more dance and movement in education (and even traditional workplaces). Moreover, I campaign for decolonised dance curriculum and framings around the moving body. I have witnessed the fear and even aversion people have of their own bodies and of dance more broadly - there is no bop of the head, no bounce of a shoulder, and definitely no sway of the hips. Instead, I observe bodies trying to be invisible, bodies that have imbibed “rules” that dictate being silent and upright is how to demonstrate power and status. Anything, and therefore any bodies, leaning into each other in kinaesthetic and spiritual communion that are undulating their torsos, rounding their backs, dropping their weight low, or shaking the anatomy that lives between the lower back and thigh, is therefore loud, uncultured, less than, and in need of containment and control. Indeed, one of colonisation’s weapons of choice is to label bodies, and the cultures and traditions they hold, as inferior and wild and something to be tamed or removed.

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Have we not experienced the ongoing colonisation and policing of these “loud” bodies? Schools and classrooms are built to contain embodied ways of knowing, of connecting, and of affirming one’s identity with physical layouts, lesson plans, and behaviour policies that glorify the silent, invisible body. We see policies in corporate offices and even public parks meant to actually police certain bodies into compliance - overwhelmingly the goal has been to force Black “loud” bodies into white “silent” norms in order to maintain a status quo built on racism.

So, here’s what it is about hip-hop dance - it quite literally knucks and bucks, Milly Rocks, and Wops against all of that. As a manifestation of its African roots, it engages the ground, requires collectivity, and invites all body parts to move to their fullest facility - yes, shake it, roll it, drop it, etc. Moreover, it was created by youth of colour as an act of radical joy and self-determination to be and thrive in spite of systems that criminalised them. And they created this genre and techniques in community with each other, with an invitation for it to offer all who find it joy and liberation from the colonised body and oppression.

Lifting from this knowledge, we may be able to appreciate how hip-hop dance has been an on-ramp to greater love for our own bodies and has invited us to embrace decolonised mindsets around movement. Then, perhaps, we can begin to not only enjoy those 15-60 second video clips, but we can begin to honour hip-hop dance as something that is simultaneously an outlet for creative expression, an invitation to connect and find membership, and a part of a culture whose roots and evolution should always be acknowledged and appreciated (even if it means your social media caption is long.) Whoa!

Arts and Culture Whoa! There’s Something About The Groove: Reflections from The Dancing Diplomat on Hip-Hop Dance’s “Special” Powers — Aysha Upchurch

What gives them this almost supernatural power to connect people, live and virtually, from various racial, ethnic, gender, class, ability backgrounds and contexts?

Jesse Lingard’s ‘Milly Rock’ dance celebration, at Emirates Stadium, 2017, photographer Julian Finney/Getty Images

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THINGS FALL APART - ON PUBLIC MONUMENTS 80

Arts and Culture Things Fall Apart - On Public Monuments — Mistura Allison

Just like in a game of dominoes, one after another, they toppled down. The debate surrounding public monuments glorifying figures historically known as oppressors of Black bodies is one that often resurfaces; and the dilemma is always the same: to remove or not to remove?

Public monuments are typically placed in streets and squares by local authorities, to commemorate and honour a figure tied to the local history. In its traditional form, the monument is a figure, which publicly highlights the themes of memory and remembrance; that same memory, from the Latin monumentum, also includes a “letting know” and “warning”.

The monument can generally be characterised in three ways: most evidently, is its verticality; raised on a plinth, a figure that interrupts the ordinary course of the space, thus creating a strange intertwining between above and below.

A second character is its location. Whether it is surrounded by flower beds or cordoned by chains, the monument is always defined in an area, serving as a sort of aura that frames the (white) figure, the fact and the date. Finally, what characterises the monument is the material with which it is produced, materials such as bronze or marble (deemed “eternal materials”), purposed to outlive history.

FROM SOUTH AFRICA TO BRITAIN, PUBLIC MONUMENTS HONOURING COLONIALISTS, RAPISTS AND RACISTS HAVE BEEN FALLING DOWN. WE ARE IN THE MIDDLE OF 2020, AND AMIDST A GLOBAL PANDEMIC AND A TENACIOUS CIVIL RIGHTS MOVEMENT, PUBLIC MONUMENTS HAVE ALSO BEEN MAKING HEADLINES: ANOTHER CITY HAS REMOVED A ‘PROBLEMATIC’ STATUE THAT FOR CENTURIES HAS AFFIRMED ITS SUPREMACY, TAKING UP SPACE.

Thomas J Price, ‘Numen (Shifting Votive One)’, 2016, photographer Jonathan Mortimer / Alamy Stock Photo

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In relation, or oppression, to Black bodies public monuments have always been political. Of course, anywhere in the world, when we think of the glorified traces of a racist, misogynist and homophobic past represented by the many monuments dedicated to white men placed on plinths in times of tension, juxtaposed against Black bodies fighting for freedom, demanding rights – it leaves a bitter taste.

Somehow these monuments, these dead objects, represent the roots of the living. They are therefore also a material force of political, religious or cultural power. Removing a monument is more of a symbolic gesture. It does not erase the intellectual heritage of a figure, which is handed down with their works and definitely not via bronze or marble.

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Indro Montanelli, monument, 2019, photographer Claudio Furlan/ LaPresse / Alamy Stock Photo

Arts and Culture Things Fall Apart - On Public Monuments — Mistura Allison

I can’t help but wonder, if the monument’s purpose is to mark a milestone in the urban narrative, what happens then when history changes direction? Surely, placing a monument in a public space can’t be a neutral action limited to the sole idea of homage or memory; a monument in a public space is a dominant voice, a narrative that prevails over others, often that of authority and power. How can an urban space, that is not neutral and exalts oppressors, exist in juxtaposition to the destruction of Black bodies?

Revolutionaries have always demolished the symbols of power against which they rebel. Therefore, monuments are not works of art per se, but rather symbols. Unlike artworks, monuments should perhaps be judged ethically rather than aesthetically.

In the same spirit of revolution, as an Afro-Italian woman, it is encouraging to witness real and active discourse around the decentring of white supremacy within an Italian context as opposed to the faux solidarity that is (rightly) extended to African-Americans, whilst adamantly ignoring the actual Black people they share a country with. Who would’ve thought that inspired by the current civil rights movement, a figure such as Indro Montanelli (1909 – 2001), would resurface in public discourse and actually unanimously1 be a villain? Montanelli, prior to becoming the glorified journalist of the nation, was a fascist officer; who in 1936 during the Ethiopian campaign and in his words, took on a “lease”, a twelve-year-old girl to marry and sexually abuse. Of course, this was frowned upon, and of course he never regretted his perverseness; in fact, in front of a live audience during an interview in 1969, he boasted that it was an accepted practice in Ethiopia2 . Nonetheless his past, fast-forward to 2006 and the then mayor of Milan, Gabriele Albertini, decided to commission a monument dedicated to Montanelli, in one of the most important parks in the city.

The irony lies in the fact that while alive Montanelli, was against commemorations, as he said “monuments are made to be demolished”.

As an Afropean, living in the UK, vicariously sharing the triumphs of Black British people, I am encouraged to witness the commitment, through funding from councils such as Hackney’s, who on 22 June 2020 announced the commission of Black British artists Veronica Ryan and Thomas J Price to create two new individual public artworks celebrating and honouring Hackney’s Windrush Generation, the first permanent public sculptures to do so in the United Kingdom.

Like Chinua Achebe, I too recall that “until the lions have their own historians, the history of the hunt will always glorify the hunter.” As they stand and fall, monuments are precisely the aesthetic impositions through which power self-certifies and celebrates itself.

Revolutionaries have always demolished the symbols of power against which they rebel.

Therefore, monuments are not works of art per se, but rather symbols. Unlike artworks, monuments should perhaps be judged ethically rather than aesthetically.

Footnotes 1.

With the exception of Italian politicians who are more concerned about passionately denouncing the red paint thrown at Montanelli’s statue, a thing, than defending a Black child’s dignity, a human.

2.

Montanelli, I. (1969) L’ora della verità [Television] Available at: https://www.youtube. com/watch?reload=9&v=PYgSwluzYxs (Accessed 14 August 2020)

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THE ORIGINS OF AUSTRALIA BLAK HISTORY MONTH AUSTRALIA’S BLAK HISTORY MONTH WAS FOUNDED IN 2008. THIS CAME FROM A PROCLAMATION RELEASED ON THE 26 JANUARY 2008, RECOGNISING THE TWENTIETH ANNIVERSARY OF SURVIVAL DAY (ALSO KNOWN AS INVASION DAY), THE ABORIGINAL AND TORRES STRAIT ISLANDER REFERENCE TO THE ANTITHESIS OF WHAT COLONISERS TERM AUSTRALIA DAY.

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Arts and Culture The origins of Australia’s Blak History Month — Sam Cook

F A’S In it, Australia was called to ‘Blak Out’ July as an opportunity to host positive community led events, individual offerings and social media campaigns without the alignment to Government subsidy or bureaucratic agenda.

Primarily it saw itself as a people’s movement, one in which the Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander communities throughout Australia (and Diaspora overseas) could shape, drive and participate freely, looking to their own capacity to populate outcomes, events and actions annually throughout July.

Sam Watson, poster, Blak History Month, 2020, courtesy Sam Cook

The proclamation recognised that Blak History Month had come from a legacy of significant historical celebration and also a history of political boycott, protest and mourning.

Prior to the 1920s Aboriginal rights groups actively boycotted 26 January, as a conscious protest against Australia Day and the wider treatment of Aboriginal people.

By the 1920s, it became apparent that the protests and boycotts held little carriage in the wider Australian domain and were largely unnoticed.

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I initiated Blak History Month as I wanted positive change and I wanted to be a catalyst of positive change. It was this desire that won out in the end.

And so, it began.

On 26 January 1938, a large protest took to the streets of Sydney and through consensus called on Australia Day to be recognised as Australia’s National Day of Mourning.

From this, a delegation led by William Cooper presented then Prime Minister Joseph Lyons with a national policy for Aboriginal people. This was rejected by the government on the technicality that Australia did not hold constitutional powers in relation to Aboriginal people. From 1938’s action, it was widely considered this should be a regular event and William Cooper set about on a campaign to garner support to promote it as a national annual event.

Between 1940 until 1955, Australia’s National Day of Mourning was held annually on the Sunday before 26 January’s Australia Day celebrations and was known as Aborigines Day. In 1955 Aborigines Day was moved to the first Sunday in July after it was considered that this day was more than a protest but could also be viewed as a celebration of Aboriginal culture. In 1956 the National Aborigines Day Observance Committee (NADOC) was established through the support of community organisations and individuals. At the same time, the second Sunday in July became a day of remembrance for Aboriginal people and their heritage and the beginnings of a potential week of commemoration had begun to unfold.

Originally a group of Aboriginal and Non-Aboriginal membership, in 1974 the NADOC committee had for the first time an entire Aboriginal membership. It was under this leadership the NADOC committee decided that the event should cover a week, from the first to second Sunday in July.

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In 1984 NADOC asked that National Aborigines Day be made a national public holiday, but again recognition at Government level has eluded the community. NADOC operated until 1990, then in 1991 recognised that Torres Strait Islander communities were also a party to the similar struggle for rights and independence, so it was decided to formally recognise Torres Strait Islander people and culture. The committee then became known as the National Aborigines and Islanders Day Observance Committee (NAIDOC)and the week is now known as NAIDOC. NAIDOC has been run annually, governed by a Canberra based committee who determine annual themes, national focus centres, national NAIDOC awards, and a poster competition. It is now largely tied to government funding and agendas.

Local NAIDOC community activities happen throughout Australia and due to the involvement of the education sector in NAIDOC, the week has become splintered as it largely falls within school holidays. Growing dissent within the community over NAIDOC now sees it as a shift towards a mechanism of government and less about communitydriven agendas. Blak History month has been inspired to return to the grassroots and create a movement that is driven by us for us, to share with the world.

Arts and Culture The origins of Australia’s Blak History Month — Sam Cook

– HOW IT BEGAN The colloquial story of the origin of Australia’s Blak History month begins with the act of one individual - me. The story is as follows; “It was a singular act on 26 January 2008 while I was the CEO of Boorloo (Perth), a Western Australian based Indigenous theatre company Yirra Yaakin, spurred on by a series of impacts and inspirations colluding in the moment.

While everyone was out on the streets or enjoying the public holiday, I was chained to my desk writing an international grant application due that day and to solicit financial support from the Commonwealth Foundation of all things. The more I wrote, the more I became begrudging that I couldn’t be enjoying a day off like the majority of people and that this was my sacrifice for trying to keep the doors open at my theatre company.

I started to question why we Aboriginal people were constantly in survival mode and how unfair it was that the burden of basic enjoyment and celebration were constantly reduced. How we were reduced. How there was limited access to positive information about us generally - we were framed by oppressive racist tropes, negative headlines and grim statistics. It absolutely didn’t help that my desk faced a rather large window looking out to a main street of Boorloo’s (Perth’s) CBD and Australia Day was being thrust down my throat by a sea of patriotic Australians draped in flags and assorted paraphernalia kept streaming by.

I found myself drifting from the task at hand and, being slightly distracted, began reading Wikipedia threads on psychology, the premise of which was around if you tell people something exists, often they just believe it and will follow.

The second important element was that as I was doing this, I could see a poster for Survival day in my office saying it was the Twentieth Anniversary. My thinking drifted between psychology to the concept of Survival day being an affirmation.

It then took me to a recent conversation I’d had with the then National NAIDOC Day committee Chairperson who affirmed they called the National agenda but did not have any representation from my State, which is one third of the country and a significant proportion of Aboriginal community, so therefore how nationally representative was NAIDOC?

I thought about the constraints and the limitations of the NAIDOC movement and how I felt it was being diluted. I also thought about the way in which activities kept falling outside of the annually determined dates, providing outcomes throughout July and apologies for not being in the formal NAIDOC window. Then it struck me, why can’t we just move to a month, similarly to the widely accepted Black History Months throughout the world. My distraction then turned toward a review of Black History Month, to look at dates. I noted that both the USA and Canada held theirs in February.

To me, all I saw was that this was the shortest month of the year, and again it kept bringing me back to July, its proximity to existing National events and that it was 31 days. I also noted Ireland, the Netherlands, and the United Kingdom observed Black History Month in October, but while this met the 31 day criteria, it didn’t have the same historical gravitas for Blak Australia. July just made sense.

What didn’t make sense to me was the ‘ how’, which is where the psychology came into play. I had at the time somewhat of a profile and a great database. Through social media, I was also in touch with the world. What I didn’t feel I had was ‘authority’ to initiate. This is tied to the common heard sentiments “who gave you permission”, “what right do you have” etc. So, in rebellion to what I felt was “copping it in all directions”, I decided that I would draft a proclamation, and that I would receive this by fax, then translate it to email and mass distribute through my networks. So, it was faxed (to me from me, because I did want to tell the truth on receipt of fax, which in a skewed way, made sense). I received it and then distributed the proclamation through the networks advocating for it so that people would support it. The response was immediate and a sea of resounding support. It was clear that I wasn’t alone in wanting to amplify our wonderful people and the great acts of achievement buried away in the annals of time.

I initiated Blak History Month as I wanted positive change and I wanted to be a catalyst of positive change. It was this desire that won out in the end. And so, it began.”

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Blak: a term used by some Aboriginal people to reclaim historical, representational, symbolical, stereotypical and romanticised notions of Black or Blackness. Often used as ammunition or inspiration.

– WHY BLAK NOT BLACK

– OUR CONNECTION WITH THE WORLD

Taking ownership of language is a fundamental stage in any People’s journey towards self- determination. Historically the word black has been used to connote something negative and disempowering for the people who have been at the receiving end of race-based insults. The term Black was used to denigrate the cultural and racial origin of an individual or community. An example of this was in a highprofile case where racist and labelling language was used to express domination.

Creating the safe space to amplify our incredible acts of achievement and cultural legacy recognises that the plurality of Indigenous Black First Nations in identifying with Black and also Indigenous postcolonial histories, is a global story that binds us together. It is accurate to say that Australia’s Black Civil Rights movements would not exist without the impact and influence of Marcus and Amy Jacques Garvey in the way in which he utilised merchant seamen to spread their thoughts and ideologies to Black people worldwide. Because of the Garveys, Aboriginal people were able to establish the Australian chapter of the Universal Negro Improvement Association and the first united organised Aboriginal political group, the Australian Aboriginal Progressive Association (AAPA) in the early 1900s.

Like recent moves by some community organisations from Indigenous back to Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander and/or language names, Blak is an expression of taking back power and control within a society that doesn’t encourage Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander Peoples as an opportunity for self-determination as individuals and communities.

“Blak” is defined as: Blak: a term used by some Aboriginal people to reclaim historical, representational, symbolical, stereotypical and romanticised notions of Black or Blackness. Often used as ammunition or inspiration.

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Arts and Culture The origins of Australia’s Blak History Month — Sam Cook

Aboriginal Civil rights would continue to remain bound to global affairs - from Martin Luther King, the Freedom Bus Rides, Malcolm X and the Black Panther Party, to which Australia’s Black Panther Party Chapter was founded in 1971 in Meanjin (Brisbane), Queensland Australia.

And we continue to this day to align with our Black and Indigenous brothers and sisters worldwide, as part of Black Lives Matter and within this, creating space for our own political and activist movements such as Black Deaths In Custody, Warriors of the Aboriginal Resistance (WAR), FISTT, Grandmothers Against Forced Removal and #SOSBLAKAUSTRALIA.

Blak History Month was, is, and will always be a People’s Movement and in this way, serves as its own act of resistance. It is not designated to be owned by successive governments, it is instead a way for organisations, communities, families and individuals to opt in and participate in a community positive action, to illuminate the deep and rich hidden history of the legacy upon which we stand.

With our brothers and sisters of the Stolenwealth (Commonwealth), we share a deep scar of genocide, theft and illegal occupation - we are making steps to build a classaction against our invasion - and Blak History month plays a significant role in unearthing key information hidden in the trove of documents, oral histories and images.

Blak History Month was, is, and will always be a People’s Movement and in this way, serves as its own act of resistance. It is not designated to be owned by successive governments, it is instead a way for organisations, communities, families and individuals to opt in and participate in a community positive action, to illuminate the deep and rich hidden history of the legacy upon which we stand.

“WHITE AUSTRALIA HAS A BLACK HISTORY” - Robbie Thorpe (Aboriginal Activist) 89

ACTIVIS AND IDENTIT 90

Activism and Identity

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“If I didn’t define myself for myself, I would be crunched into other people’s fantasies for me and eaten alive.” – Audre Lorde Journeys of activism are part of a bigger picture of shared experiences, but within this wider narrative there are opportunities for individual voices to be heard, stories to be told and perspectives to be seen. From the contemporary relevance of Black Lives Matter and the impact of COVID-19, understanding the complexities of Diaspora existence, or granting forgiveness in the aftermath of national atrocities, identity and activism is simply put who we are and what we do.

Black Lives Matter — Boston ‘The Orator’ Williams Finding a Home in Dance — Samwel Japhet #BeThePeaceWalk — Hyppolite Ntiguirirwa Who is Black Italian? And Above All Who is an Italian?

— Fred Kuwornu Research, Engagement and Impact - The Stephen Lawrence Research Centre One Year On — Kennetta Hammond Perry

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BLACK LIVES MATTER FROM THE BLACK POWER MOVEMENT TO BLACK LIVES MATTER ARE WE SEEING A RECESSION OF PROGRESS WITHIN THE BLACK BRITISH COMMUNITY?

AFTER THE ACQUITTAL OF TRAYVON MARTIN’S MURDERER IN 2012, THREE AFRICAN AMERICAN WOMEN ALICIA GARZA, PATRISSE CULLORS, AND OPAL TOMETI CREATED THE HASHTAG #BLACKLIVESMATTER.

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Activism and Identity Black Lives Matter — Boston ‘The Orator’ Williams

R Boston Williams, photographer Mukesh Mistry

#BlackLivesMatter went on to become a global movement with protests taking place in the UK in solidarity with the African American struggle. More than an act of solidarity the UK #BlackLivesMatter protests spoke to the injustices faced by those of the African Diaspora currently living in Britain.

The murders of George Floyd, Ahmud Arbery and Breonna Taylor in 2020 reignited the global use of #BlackLivesMatter. As in 2012, protests were echoed across the globe and heard loudly in the UK. In Bristol the statue of slave trader Edward Colston was toppled and thrown into the docks, over 4,000 gathered in Birmingham, 5,000 in Leeds and thousand’s more in London on the first days of political action in the UK since the video of George Floyd’s murder went viral.

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Black British communities have a history of political resistance and protest against institutional racism. The Race Equality Centre in Leicester has been advocating since 1967, born on the back of the Race Relations Act 1965. The Black Unity and Freedom Party (1970-99) fought against the effects of the racist Immigration Acts of 1962, 1968 and 1971. The Black Liberation Front (1971- ) and dozens of local Black organisations across the UK fought against the National Front and hostilities from mainstream British society. Put simply, this is not a struggle new to the Black British community.

So what of progress? What progress? During the 1990s and early 2000s we witnessed a boom in the use of the phrase BME or BAME. An abbreviation standing for Black and Minority Ethnics. The voice of the political Black British struggle was swallowed whole by the collective cries of various melanin donning children of the commonwealth, now commonly referred to as the BME community. This new term has proved problematic in the sense that issues specific to the Black British experience are no longer front and centre when we are addressing government and British society. The realities of British born Asians, African Caribbeans and the Jewish community are not the same.

By replacing just representation at the political table with a single seat labelled ‘diversity’ - the powers that be squashed - intentionally or not - the collective Black British political voice.

Considering the Black British community arguably made greater headway under its own banner prior to the use of BME - is it time we refused to accept the given label? Progress in the BME demographic does not equal progress for the Black British demographic. If we should refuse the term BME, we are seemingly left with ‘Black’. #BlackLivesMatter so we should defend ‘Black’, protect ‘Black’, buy ‘Black’ right? I think so. What culture does ‘Black’ have? What cultural and geographic reference does ‘Black’ point to? As far as my understanding will allow, ‘Black’ points to nothing and nowhere. I consider ‘Black’ a gross mislabelling.

From the 1970s through to the 1990s we had a strong Pan-African movement and the Rastafari movement.

Both movements within our British communities survived on the need to inform our communities about where we are from, where we originate, and the culture indivisible from its people.

Today’s global Black struggles do not wrestle with issues of identity or political Blackness - the #BlackLivesMatter movement champions a very simple philosophy - we, are, equal. All lives will not matter until Black lives matter.

From fair representation in political and business powerhouses - we are now going back to demanding that our lives be valued equally to that of the white man within western society.

Does this mean we’re seeing a recession of progress within our communities? It could be read that way.

There are less grassroots Black organisations, study groups and civic organisations.

If the condition of ‘Minority Ethnic’ community has improved - the view is that life has improved for the Black community also. This problem in practice, e.g. Oxford University announced their 2019 BME undergraduate intake statistics boasting an uptake of more than 22%.

This sounds amazing for the BME community. In practice African and Caribbean admissions accounted for 3.1% of their admissions. A victory for the newly created BME demographic is not a victory for British born Africans and African Caribbeans.

However, we must look through the lens of the context in which we live. Austerity has decimated youth services, support programmes for the most disadvantaged have disappeared, children born in the 1980s have become the first generation since the 1800s to be worse off than their parents. We British born Africans, including but not limited to African Caribbeans form a part of that struggle. As we are not immune to the recessions in quality of life faced by the working-class people - we not only face issues particular to the Black British community but also the weight shared by many working-class white English.

In my experience schemes designed to help address disadvantages are labelled BME. However, statistics on crime and negative portrayals of society always see Black. Black is always highlighted, always stands out, always stands alone.

As social structures go, we are at the bottom of the bottom rung. Tribalism dictates that if a society decides to send help for its working classes - society will help those that look most like them first. It’s not just human behaviour, we see this behaviour in plant biology.

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Activism and Identity Black Lives Matter — Boston ‘The Orator’ Williams

In big 2020 British society as a whole is struggling, so it’s fair to presume the Black British community is struggling also.

However - are the struggles faced by British born Africans overlooked because of the perceived success of the BME demographic? Probably. Does the word ‘Black’ strip our people of a cultural heritage? Most certainly. Is it all we have for the time being? Looks like it.

If we are to surpass the achievements of our grandparents, we must continue to organise, educate and advocate. We must see action as core to our betterment. Community action, political action, direct action, national and international action. Action in whichever capacity can be afforded. And Africa still needs our help.

Black Lives Matter, in Leicester, 2016, photographer Leon Rehman

In my experience schemes designed to help address disadvantages are labelled BME. However, statistics on crime and negative portrayals of society always see Black. Black is always highlighted, always stands out, always stands alone.

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FINDING A HOME IN DANC 96

Activism and Identity Finding a Home in Dance — Samwel Japhet

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I RAN AWAY FROM HOME BETWEEN THE AGES OF SIX AND EIGHT YEARS OLD. I WON’T SPEAK MUCH OF THIS TIME OF MY LIFE, EXCEPT TO SAY THAT I LIVED AS A STREET KID IN DIFFERENT PARTS OF TANZANIA FOR OVER 10 YEARS.

In 2009 I met and joined Makini, which is a Tanzanian non-profit organisation that supports children and young people who live and work on the streets. Members of the organisation would come to us on the streets as part of their outreach programme and gather us to play games and eat together. After a while they started taking us to different art centres and cultural spaces in Dar es Salaam. We would take part in different activities like drama, music, dance and storytelling. We learned how to live together and support each other whilst we were living on the streets. It was a space to reflect and connect, and the activities brought us together.

That was my first introduction to dance.

Over time we started rehearsing for performances. I don’t think that the intention was for us to necessarily become artists, but rather to keep our minds calm. Life on the streets is crazy. There was such a dichotomy between my time at Makini and my time on the streets. When I was at Makini, I would forget about my life on the streets. There was this divide. I never really considered that dance was something that I wanted to do with my life. Before I started dancing and performing with Makini, I didn’t even know what performing was.

As a result of the training at Makini, we eventually started performing on different arts platforms around Dar es Salaam. I was introduced to this new form of life and I met so many people along the way. I started to train more, and in turn, I started teaching dance to other street kids and choreographing performances.

Samwel Japhet, in On The Other Side of Being, photograph by 세종국제무용제

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In 2014, I had the opportunity to begin a three-year professional training course at the MUDA Africa School of Contemporary Dance in Dar es Salaam. Shortly after, in 2015, I got an opportunity to go to Kenya for a three-month residency. There I met other dancers, choreographers and artists and had the chance to learn from them. I started searching more, researching choreographers, investigating and learning different movements, and developing my interest. This is when I started to gain my ambition. I knew then that I wanted to be a dancer and choreographer.

During my training at MUDA Africa, I trained and worked with artists from around the world including Panta Rei Dance Theatre (Norway), Gibney Dance Company (New York), Autin Dance Theatre (UK), and Flusso Dance Project (Italy/USA). Additionally, Zimbabwean artist nora chipaumire came to Tanzania during my training, and she introduced me to a new world of thinking. nora has a voice and vision for what she wants and what she does. I didn’t even know that you could have your own voice as an artist, or really what that meant. It was through working with nora that I wrote my first artistic statement. It shaped my mind.

I started to be more curious. I started to consider what you could do with dance. Following my graduation from MUDA Africa, I have continuously been participating in projects, festivals, training and residencies in different parts of the world. I have trained in South Korea, Ethiopia, Germany, South Africa, Japan, Senegal, Portugal, Rwanda, Russia, Uganda and Kenya. I have worked with prominent artists including, Yolanda Gutiérrez and Projects (Hamburg, Mexico), Aloyce Makonde (Tanzania), and Johannes Wieland (Germany, USA).

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I have so many people to credit for my journey. Through the different teachers and choreographers that I have worked with, I have been influenced in some way. I have gained different mindsets from their backgrounds and each has taught me something unique. I draw from everything in life.

I draw something from each person I meet. I am surrounded by people and I am influenced by people. The work that I make is somehow a reflection of those people. For example, the piece I am developing for Let’s Dance International Frontiers, The Other Side of Being, doesn’t only come from me. This piece comes from the experiences of people struggling with mental health issues and those who have a different understanding of consciousness. What drives me is the people I live with and our shared moments. I want my work to be experienced in the moment, because we all only ever can truly connect in the present moment.

Activism and Identity Finding a Home in Dance — Samwel Japhet

I started searching more, researching choreographers, investigating and learning different movements, and developing my interest. This is when I started to gain my ambition. I knew then that I wanted to be a dancer and choreographer.

At this time, as we are living through the COVID-19 pandemic, we are in a unique situation. We are seeing a lot of things shifting to digital spaces. In June, I took part in an artist in residency online intervention programme by the Forgotten Angle Theatre Collaborative from South Africa and the Pro Helvetia Johannesburg – Swiss Arts Council. It happened through Zoom and we trained and participated in workshops. We also made new works and presented those works to each other, which was really valuable. I watch a lot of work online and I understand that people want to keep doing things. However, personally, I don’t feel as connected when I create a piece for online presentation. It somehow does not feel as inclusive or imaginative. Having said this, I do enjoy making dance films.

I think it is about how you consider and adapt work and how this translates to others. I have recently participated as one of 21 artists from the continent in a feature film Letters from The Continent under the direction of Faustin Linyekula, this was produced by Studios Kabako, which will be released in September 2020.

Samwel Japhet, photographer Jimmy Mathias

Art gave me a new life. I have found a new home in dance, as a dancer, choreographer and director of the Nantea Dance Company based in Dar es Salaam, Tanzania. I just want to keep producing new work, sharing stories, combining ideas, and connecting with people. I am using dance movement and performance as an artistic expression and tool for telling stories and expressing ideas. I hope to address and reflect the things that are happening in our daily lives and within our societies. My hope is that in Tanzania, there will be more platforms for young dancers to perform and present their work and projects. There are very few platforms and I want more young people to have access to the possibilities through dance that I myself have had. Consequently, my work is creating a space for awareness, reflection and discussion through dance and performance. My only hope for the future is to be able to continue the work I am doing.

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#BETHEPEA

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Courtesy Hyppolite Ntigurirwa

Activism and Identity #BeThePeaceWalk — Hyppolite Ntigurirwa

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FROM APRIL TO JULY 2019, AT THE TWENTY-FIFTH ANNIVERSARY OF REMEMBERING THE 1994 GENOCIDE AGAINST THE TUTSI, I WALKED MORE THAN 1,150 KILOMETRES IN 100 DAYS ON FOOT ACROSS RWANDA COVERING ALL DISTRICTS OF THE COUNTRY ENDING AT THE KIGALI GENOCIDE MEMORIAL - #BETHEPEACEWALK – INVITING EVERYONE TO SEED PEACE AND LOVE. THE STORY STARTED IN 1994

I survived the 1994 genocide against the Tutsi in Rwanda when I was 7 years old. Many of my relatives, friends and people from my family were killed. My dad was killed and I never had a chance to bury him. I survived by hiding under dead bodies, in mass-graves... I lived like a wild animal, hiding in the bush but always expecting that I would be killed.

I knew many of the killers. Some were neighbours, others were our friends. I have played football with their children.

But because of the hatred taught by the government for so long they called us their enemies and wanted to kill us all.

I was a child slave by the killers who said with many other children we were to be killed as their celebration of finishing off the Tutsi of the village. I luckily escaped and was taken to a refugee camp. It was a miserable life with every kind of disease. It was a life with no food and no security. The only wish we had was to die and leave the misery behind. Luckily, I survived it all. But my eyes saw what no child should see and my ears heard what no child should hear.

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I lived like a wild animal, hiding in the bush but always expecting that I would be killed.

When I announced that I was to start the walk, it did not sound right to many. My friends believed I was silly and traumatised. And some told me I was foolish to take unpaid leave from my salaried job. A few encouraged me but many advised me not to do the walk. This, though, reminded me how at the beginning of the genocide, we were not sure if we could make it to another district/province if we walked to exile.

During #BeThePeaceWalk, some of my friends could tell me that I would surely kill myself, walking all across the country in 100 days. But that didn’t bother me because I knew I was doing it for peace and I saw goodness in every step I had to make for peace. With the dedication of my life to peace. I knew there is only one way to peace – deciding to live peace.

I felt strong and sure that I was to experience the grace of people/strangers I could meet. There was much pressure to compromise my beliefs, but I had my family, and some of my friends encouraging me. Months before I started the walk, Dylan Cuddy, a young American man, offered to walk with me and take photos and videos to share with the public.

This was also another encouragement to have someone who helped to share some stories of the walk.

From then on, I was consumed with burning questions: what could cause friends to become murderers? If such things could be learned, could they be un-learned? Could victims and perpetrators find a way to continue living together? Was peace possible?

Through the search for the answers I made a realisation when we seed peace, goodness grows and when we seed hate, the evil spread. After this realisation, I made the most important decision of my life. I chose to forgive those people who killed my father, my relatives, my friends, and all those other innocent people.

When I walked across Rwanda for peace, I covered all 30 districts of Rwanda. I walked in honour of those who were forced to walk long distances before they were killed in the genocide. I was also walking for peace that has been at a good progression well in the aftermath of the genocide.

I walked in the memory of over a million other Rwandans who were killed in the genocide. It was a walking performance piece.

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I did not do fund raising, I had no organisation backing me.

Some individuals offered some money and this helped to buy food. I carried a backpack, with few belongings. At the end of the walk, many of things I carried out were given away so that my bag weighed lighter! Different people from America, Africa and Europe joined for some days. People were invited to write letters of peace to whoever/whatever they have not been able to make peace with and send them to. I read the letters at the end of the walk the Kigali Genocide Memorial.

For example, a Nigerian national living abroad sent a letter of forgiveness. It was the first time she was inspired to forgive the man who killed her mother after raping her. Part of the letter read: “…. I hope you hear this, someway, one way, however, and know that I forgive you. I hope to ignite in you what burns in me now because everyone deserves peace, one way or another…Yours-in-forgiveness” During this 100-day performance, I met and walked with survivors and perpetrators (who finished their prison sentences) of the genocides, I planted trees, I visited care homes for the disabled and elderly to do cleaning, run food and source clothing. I visited genocide memorials and prisons. I regularly met people who rescued Tutsi in the genocide, I met people who accepts their participation in the genocide together with survivors and their children could join me for a day walk and charitable activities. They offered food and shelter without me asking.

Activism and Identity #BeThePeaceWalk — Hyppolite Ntigurirwa

I walked in honour of those who were forced to walk long distances before they were killed in the genocide.

I am now concentrating on continuing the work of Be The Peace Organisation that I found to halt the intergenerational transmission of hate. The organisation has a network of Be The Peace groups where the post-genocide generation come together with their parents (genocide survivors and perpetrators) use different approaches including art, community activities and debating to promote every day peace. Our current project “Be The Peace Gardens� brings children and parents from both sides to build vegetable gardens for each other. We provide cows to families of perpetrators and survivors and they take turns in milking.

Funded by 20% of my monthly salary and the works have reached about more than 5,000,000 Rwandans.

There is goodness in everyone. It may be both polluted and purified. My message remains simple: Peace is what you give and not what you ask others to give you.

Kigali Genocide Memorial in Rwanda, photograph Edwin Remsberg/Alamy Stock Photo

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WHO IS BLACK ITALIAN? AND ABOVE ALL WHO IS AN ITALIAN? I DRAW INSPIRATION FROM AN ARTICLE IN VOGUE WHERE A BEAUTY ISSUE BECAME A NATIONAL IDENTITY ISSUE WHEN A COVER FEATURING ITALIANSENEGALESE MODEL MATY FALL SPARKED RACIST COMMENTS ON ITALIAN SOCIAL MEDIA, AND STATEMENTS THAT A BLACK ITALIAN WOMAN CANNOT EXIST.

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Activism and Identity Who is Black Italian? And above all who is an Italian? — Fred Kuwornu

I remember the same tensions when in 1996 the ItaloDominican Denny Mendez was elected Miss Italy but many people did not want to accept that there could be a Black Miss Italy, many of these were also representatives from the Italian Democrat Party... The same happened with one of the first Black players in the Italian national football team: Mario Balotelli. Italy, when it comes to talks about Blackness, splits in two narrations. A part of the society is racist even if the Italians do not define themselves as racists, and another part, apparently anti-racist, but mainly “paternalist� who consider Black people victims to defend, because they are incapable of denying their own conscience.

This dualism creates a short circuit in which the Italian Black community delays in establishing itself for years compared to other Black communities in other countries of Europe because it is unable to understand a clear strategic path of protagonism in a country that has many shades.

Blaxploitalian, poster, 2016, courtesy Fred Kuwornu

The work that I have been doing for years in Italy is based on building a counter-narrative that has nothing to do with a purpose of destroying the status quo, but simply aims to fill the emptiness of representation that first of all limits self-awareness of minorities and at the same time limits the idea of itself that the nation has. Often the Italian calls himself Italian with the same idea of homogeneity that Sweden thought about themselves in the early 1900s.

Except that, the Italians, before being a biological and ethnic group, are first a political construct.

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In the debates and talks in Italy when television or newspapers are talking about Italian issues, Black people are never invited, although competent, as though they are not part of the country.

A void that is still evident in many aspects of the Italian mainstream can be felt in: television, advertising, politics, state institutions such as public offices or law enforcement agencies. In the debates and talks in Italy when television or newspapers are talking about Italian issues, Black people are never invited, although competent, as though they are not part of the country. This happens also when the conversation is about the current news of Africa or about immigration or post-colonial issues. The Black body is almost totally absent except when it is to be shown as a poor person, a weak person, a victim, a refugee, or a criminal.

Unlike other realities in Europe, the Italian territory has always had a geographical view of the Mediterranean. Over the centuries, this geographical proximity has also become biological and subsequently a cultural proximity. What is an Italian if not a mixture of different chromosomes from Africa, the Middle East, Asia Minor, and Northern Europe?

Thus, it has been for millennial times. Just think of the Roman Empire and its proximity not only to North Africa but also to the Egyptian Empire, an empire which, as we well know, was made up not only of the current Egyptians but also of the Nubians, the backbone of the Egyptian army made up of the current Sudanese.

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Blaxploitalian, still from film, 2016, courtesy Fred Kuwornu

This initial melting pot was then completed in the following centuries and in the various historical experiences of primary importance such as the Renaissance, the Republic of Venice, experiences that made the trade and cosmopolitanism of the time a great asset. It seems paradoxical but what we proudly call “made in Italy� is just a centuries-old elaboration of the intertwining of knowledge, inspirations, contaminations that different bodies and minds have refined and reproduced in art, architecture, food, clothes, and in the Italian forma mentis.

There is no average Italian. Considering that even before the Romans some of the populations that inhabited the Italian territory had different origins, sometimes even uncertain, such as the Etruscans. Certainly, with the Romans begins a period of DNA enrichment of different peoples and the contact with Africa makes the Italic territory perhaps the first in Europe to have this interaction but also a considerable population of Africans in ancient Rome.

From my perspective of Italian-Ghanaian, the work that the Black community in Italy must do must move on two directions.

Activism and Identity Who is Black Italian? And above all who is an Italian? — Fred Kuwornu

There is no average Italian.

Considering that even before the Romans some of the populations that inhabited the Italian territory had different origins, sometimes even uncertain, such as the Etruscans.

Black Italians are not a homogeneous group as they could be in the United Kingdom or France or in Belgium and Holland. First of all, while in the United Kingdom there is a historical origin from the former English colonies, and in France from former French colonies and French departments or Belgium and its former colonies. In Italy, there are African descents from different areas, indeed paradoxically Eritreans, Somali, and Ethiopians (the former Italian colonies) put together are not as numerous as Nigerians or Ghanaians or Senegalese communities. We also consider that numerically the first community in Italy are people from Maghreb.

If this limits the construction of a homogeneous Black community, with its own unity, at the same time it is a great enrichment and resource for Italy. Because the future is not played only on building a European identity but created and cultivating being Italian-Ghanaian, ItalianNigerian, Italian-Senegalese, etc... Generation Z but also the Millennials can have the hope of seeing the African Renaissance and to be protagonists if they manage to be part of the exchanges and processes underway between Africa and Europe.

Let’s not forget that many young Italians emigrate, and try to do that within Europe and North America, but with many difficulties and a lot of competition. Few still venture into the continent in Africa where instead the possibilities for those with medium-high skills are multiplying. There is still an image of a poor Africa when instead one of the few opportunities for young people in Europe is no longer the American Dream but for the geographical area and perhaps and the opportunity to develop demand in all sectors is the Africa Dream. To whom do they sell European overproduction as Europe is aging? Where to experiment new market and culture models if not in the continent with the youngest average age? What happens in Italy in terms of building a Euro-African identity is more similar to the laboratory that happens in European countries bordering the Mediterranean such as Greece or Spain.

BLAQ • IT (Black Italiano) is used to reconstruct a timeline of the Afro descents’ presence of the past but also of the present of Italy.

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RESEARCH, ENGAGEMENT AND IMPACT— THE STEPHEN LAWRENCE RESEARCH CENTRE ONE YEAR ON

THE STEPHEN LAWRENCE RESEARCH CENTRE1 (SLRC) AT DE MONTFORT UNIVERSITY PUBLICLY LAUNCHED ON 9 MAY 2019.

BUT IN THAT SHORT TIME THE CENTRE HAS EMBARKED UPON AN AMBITIOUS PROGRAMME TO SHOWCASE HOW RESEARCH ON RACE AND SOCIAL JUSTICE CAN BE USED AS A TOOL TO ENGAGE WITH WIDE-RANGING AUDIENCES, DEVELOP MEANINGFUL PARTNERSHIPS WITHIN COMMUNITIES, AND TO CREATE IMPACT THAT CAN BE FELT LOCALLY, NATIONALLY AND INTERNATIONALLY.

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Activism and Identity Research, Engagement and Impact—The Stephen Lawrence Research Centre One Year On — Kennetta Hammond Perry

With a public-facing exhibition designed to educate a new generation about the significance of Stephen Lawrence’s life, a seminar room, a mini-library, computer terminals and a connections space designed to stimulate conversation, the SLRC is not your typical academic research centre.

And over the past year the SLRC team has welcomed nearly 2,500 visitors including DMU staff and students, community groups, national and international academic partners, MPs, local school groups and members of the general public for a variety of engagements.

Stephen Lawrence Research Centre, 2019

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In its launch year the SLRC established its signature distinguished lecture series which has brought leading voices to DMU whose research and public profile transcend academia. The 2019-2020 series included lectures from Professor Hakim Adi (University of Chichester) which featured a discussion of his work in initiating the Young Historians Project to support the development of young historians of African Caribbean heritage in an effort to build interest in the subject and create pipelines to redress the dire numbers of African Caribbean History teachers across the UK; Professor Shirley Anne Tate (University of Alberta) who addressed the “Black attainment gap” that structures and produces racial inequality within universities; and Professor Priyamvada Gopal (Cambridge) whose latest book narrates the struggles of colonial subjects against empire, enslavement, racism and the imposition of unfreedom.

While the SLRC’s distinguished lecture series brought members of the local community to DMU to debate new ideas and learn more about some of the cutting-edge work that academics are doing to shape public dialogues about the significance of Black history, institutional racism and the relationship between the imperial past and the postcolonial present, the SLRC team has also been working to develop partnerships to extend its reach in the Leicester community.

In addition to securing a bid exploring the archives of Black history and culture in the Midlands, a collaborative project in partnership with Serendipity, funded by the prestigious AHRC Midlands Four Cities Doctoral Consortium, the SLRC also began a project in partnership with Leicester’s African Caribbean Centre. Supported by DMU Local and the Archives and Special Collections team this project involved training a group of student volunteers to begin the process of creating a community archive focused on the history and heritage of Leicester’s African Caribbean communities.

Building from the first national Stephen Lawrence Day commemorations held in April 2019, in the past year the SLRC has also begun a new stream of work, Teaching To Transform, in partnership with local educators across Leicester. Thus far this programme has entailed listening sessions with local educators to introduce the work of the centre and generate ideas about how to use the resources available at the centre to support teaching, learning and curriculum development; classroom takeovers and assemblies at local secondary schools where the SLRC team delivered lessons on race, identity and inequality; and bespoke visits to the SLRC where students had an opportunity learned more about Stephen Lawrence’s story, the importance of archives and how they too can become agents of social change. In the coming year, the SLRC intends to expand this programme to include working with teachers to develop enhanced racial literacies anti-racist pedagogies so that educators are confident and empowered to address race and racism in the classroom and the larger education system.

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Activism and Identity Research, Engagement and Impact—The Stephen Lawrence Research Centre One Year On — Kennetta Hammond Perry

Building from the first national Stephen Lawrence Day commemorations held in April 2019, in the past year the SLRC has also begun a new stream of work, Teaching To Transform, in partnership with local educators across Leicester.

In addition to deepening its work with communities in Leicester, the SLRC also plans to continue to develop new channels of engagement. In recent months the centre has launched a new webinar series, The Exchange2 which has attracted over 12,000 viewers from around the world to conversations with academics, practitioners, and educators examining the impact of COVID-19 on Black Asian and ethnic minority communities in the UK and within the education system. Conversely, to support knowledge exchange and awareness about COVID-19, the centre has also developed The COVID Files3 , a new digital repository that collates academic research, informed public commentary and critical reflections on how the pandemic is impacting areas including employment, education, racial inequalities and vulnerable communities in the UK and beyond.

In the coming year, the SLRC is excited about welcoming the inaugural cohort of Legacy in Action Fellows who will begin in September. As part of DMU’s wider commitment to recruiting, retaining and progressing a more diverse academic staff, the Legacy in Action Fellows Programme will bring three early career researchers to DMU to begin a journey that will entail pursuing boundary-crossing interdisciplinary research, gaining professional support to advance their academic careers and contributing to the SLRC’s wider public engagement agenda. Whereas many UK universities have not traditionally offered significant institutional support to scholars addressing race and racism in their work, through the establishment of the SLRC’s Legacy in Action Fellows Programme DMU has made a timely investment in research on race and social justice that acknowledges its urgency and its potential to spur necessary action and change. Ultimately, this is the mission of the SLRC—to produce impact-oriented research that engages people with different perspectives in ways that can facilitate positive change that is enduring.

Footnotes 1.

Stephen Lawrence Research Centre, De Montfort University (2020). Legacy in Action. [Online].

Available at: https://www.dmu.ac.uk/research/ centres-institutes/stephen-lawrence-researchcentre/index.aspx [Accessed 13 August 2020].

2.

Stephen Lawrence Research Centre, De Montfort University (2020). The Exchange.

[Online]. Available at: https://www.dmu.ac.uk/ research/centres-institutes/stephen-lawrenceresearch-centre/the-exchange.aspx [Accessed 13 August 2020].

3.

Stephen Lawrence Research Centre, De Montfort University (2020). The COVID Files. [Online].

Available at: https://covidfiles.our.dmu.ac.uk/ [Accessed 13 August 2020].

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NEW WRITIN

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New Writing

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2020 has seen Black writers top best sellers’ charts internationally, but whilst there has been a small step change for major publishing houses seeking to represent Black writers, there are still gatekeepers, barriers and a dearth of opportunities. In recognising this Serendipity and Writing East Midlands have collaborated on a new platform to showcase the work of Black writers of short fiction across genres.

We are delighted to announce the three winners of this year’s inaugural BlackInk New Writing competition.

To read all the stories, scan the QR code.

Winner – Sarah Kelly-Olatunji Runner Up – Lloyd Harry-Davis Runner Up – Iris Sankoh-Douglas

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YEMI CAN’T SWIM: SOMETHING IN THE WATER

THE FIRST TIME YEMI REMEMBERED HEARING HER MOTHER SAY THE PHRASE, SHE WAS SEVEN YEARS OLD. THE WEIGHT OF HER MOTHER’S HANDS PUSHED DOWN ON HER SHOULDERS AS THE EXPLANATION IS GIVEN BY THE VOICE ABOVE HER, OVER HER HEAD: “YES, NO, YEMI CAN’T SWIM. SHE CAN’T. IT AGGRAVATES HER ECZEMA. VERY BADLY.” God, that eczema. It burned and itched and burned, especially in the sizzling heat, the pin prick pressure of the shower.

“Yemi?”

Especially in the water.

“Where are you going today?” “I’m meeting Gifty at the front.”

Particularly her feet and legs. She could happily scratch till she bled but always resisted the temptation. It was like being cut up by knives, it was so bad.

A pause. Pursed lips. “Hmmph. Make sure you wrap up warm. That sea air is too cold! It will catch your chest.”

Expose that vulnerability to the unforgiving sting of chlorine? No way!

Better leave it as fact – she can’t swim. Yemi can’t swim.

Yemi mused on this as she scooped water from the bucket using an empty margarine tub; better than a shower, since she could control the direction and amount of water. She worked her way down her body, starting from her shoulders, soaping up and then rinsing off the suds with water. Her upper body was fine. There was no suffering there.

She paused with her sponge as she reached her hip. She did it as quickly as possible, scrubbing so quickly she seemed manic. The rinsing action followed by the soothing respite of the towel as it sucked up the moisture and pacified the pain.

Immobilised the itch.

Free from the most torturous part of her day, she moved from the bathroom to her bedroom. Cream (urgh, her mother’s concoction for her eczema stank), a copious amount of body spray, clothes and done.

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“Mmm?”

“BYE MUM,” Yemi said as she left the house and then, under her breath, “So paranoid! Sea air’s supposed to be good for you.”

The breeze off the top of the Channel whipped into Yemi’s eye, producing tears of her own.

“It’ll be fun.”

“No.” “Why not?!”

Yemi sighed deeply. “One: I can’t swim. Two: It’s frigging February. Who goes swimming outside in winter?! Three: I don’t even own a swimming costume. What am I going to do, rock up naked?

Four: Other people – ew.”

Gifty held up a hand in response, and put down a finger for each point.

New Writing Yemi can’t swim:Something in the water — Sarah Kelly-Olatunji

“Fine. Fiiiiiiiiiiine.

I will follow you to my watery death.”

“One: I can teach you, that’s the whole point. Two solves four – the cold will dissuade other people from coming so it’ll basically be empty and for three, we can go shopping!”

Yemi snarled pitifully in response. “I have few regrets in life.

This is already one of them.”

Realising she still had a finger left, Gifty added, “Plus, think how bloody cute you’ll look in lycra.”

Apart from an unimpressed Gifty, there was only one other person: a petite woman in a swimming cap with white and blue flowers on the side.

The problem, Yemi remembered too late, was that Gifty desperately wanted to be a lawyer. Therefore, any occasion for argument or persuasion she saw merely as practice for her future career.

The floral lady drifted by on her back, eyes both kind and tired. “It’s fine once you get used to it,” she smiled encouragingly, before gracefully spinning onto her front into a smooth breaststroke.

“Plus, we can go for sushi afterwards. All you can eat.”

“Surely that’s not applicable for frostbite? Once you get used to it, bits start falling off!” Yemi hissed, as Gifty tugged on her arms.

And Gifty was both crafty and unscrupulous at getting what she wanted. Yemi was a renowned seafood fanatic. When it came to all you could eat sushi, Yemi could eat a lot.

But, she thought grumblingly, her current financial situation contrasted with her desires. Basically: “No can do amiga, I’m as broke as a joke.”

Gifty wiggled her brows alluringly. “My treat.”

There it was, the killer blow. A notorious sucker for free things, Yemi sagged her shoulders in defeat and sighed emphatically. “Fine. Fiiiiiiiiiiine. I will follow you to my watery death.”

Gifty squealed in delight. “You are a fully grown, adult woman. Learning to swim will change your entire life!”

It was nearly empty in the lido, for good reason – the water was cold enough to start Yemi’s teeth chattering in her head as soon she dipped a foot in. She perched stubbornly on the side, furious at herself for agreeing to this.

“You’re not going to learn to float sitting on the side.”

Hands on her hips and head tilted unsympathetically to the side, Gifty looked an incredible sight in her swimsuit, bright patterns splashed across the black.

Simmering with begrudgement, Yemi slipped a whole leg into the water and inhaled dramatically as her entire body tensed up in defiance at the temperature. Then the other leg.

“If you dunk your head under, it helps you get used to it faster!”

Suddenly dropping into the water, Gifty tucked herself in before straightening out her legs to push her off the side and calmly drift a few metres and coming up for air. “See? Easy!”

Doubtful and daunted, Yemi tried to emulate her friend but the shock of being underwater makes a few precious air bubbles escape. Tuck and then push, right?

That’s when the magic hit.

Yemi doesn’t feel like she is floating or drifting. She feels like she is soaring. A jolt of something warm and magnificent spreads up from her feet, past her head until it reaches her outstretched arms, which she then uses to push the water behind her. Her whole body feels golden and glorious. Every time she pushes the water behind her, she feels the glow ooze out of every pore, comforting, familiar, and cosy like a velvet winter blanket. Everything is right.

Then she bumped her head.

“This is s-s-s-ome sh-sh-shenanigans,” hissed Yemi through her clattering canines.

She scrabbled her fingers on the side of the pool to climb out and gently rubbed her head where she’d bumped it. She was on the other side of the pool now and she could see Gifty gaping at her from where she was still stood.

“Get in the water. You’ll warm up.”

“When did you come up for a breath?!”

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“Here.” Yemi grasps her hand, both of them slippery from the water and maybe some other fluid. “You’re not an idiot surprises happen to everyone.

I’m here and I’m not leaving you if you want me to stay.”

Yemi shrugged. “I‘ donno. Shall I come back?” “Yes!” Yemi clasped her hands together; arms stretched above her head and tipped herself gracefully into the water. She feels it again – the warmth, embracing her like a beloved relative.

It is splendid. Was this what swimming was like? Why did anyone ever leave the water?

Gifty examined her with a thoughtful eye before wisely intoning: “It must be because you eat so much fish that you’re turning into one.” She dodged the playful slap coming from Yemi and then they were splashing and shrieking and diving and finding joy in being in the water.

Another week, another Gifty-enforced swim (“You did so well last time! We have to keep the momentum going!”). This week, no floral swim cap lady for encouragement – Yemi went straight in of her own accord.

Yemi’s legs started to itch as soon as she was out of the water.

Fortunately, for her, she always carried around a jar of her mother’s special concoction that worked a treat.

Unfortunately, for everyone else, it stank like a demon’s armpits. Yemi cocked her head to the side as she put the lid back on top of the tub. “What’s that sound?” “My ancestors, gagging,” sniffed Gifty in disgust.

Yemi squats down. In as calm a voice as she can muster, she says, “Hiya! I’m Yemi. You all right there? Wanna tell me your name?”

“Neha,” comes the small reply.

Neha’s eyes are wide, staring down into an anxious void. Her burgundy ends are in a frantic tangle around its band at the back of her head. The strands at the front are slicked onto her forehead by a thin layer of perspiration.

Yemi doesn’t know what to do but finds herself shifting closer to the stall, her hand floating to Neha’s back. She starts to pat the petrified woman awkwardly and then realises that the lump hanging from Neha’s body is not her sagging swimsuit.

It is a bump.

“I…I think I need the loo,” Neha whispers looking from side to side. “But nothing’s coming out.”

A pause. A grunt. A push?

“I think you’re in labour.”

“No, like a whimper or something.”

Whose voice was that? Where was it coming from? Not from Yemi, surely? How the heck would she know if someone was in labour? It had sounded far too full of authority to be Yemi.

There it was again.

“I can’t be. I’m…it’s too early. I’m not due for another 7 weeks.”

Coming from a toilet stall. Yemi knocks and puts an ear to the door. “Hey? Are you alright?” Yemi slides the stall door open and peers in. A woman is on all fours on the floor.

Neha whimpers, bottom lip wobbling in fright and eyes welling up with tears. “What idiot doesn’t know when they’re in labour?”

Yemi pushes an aghast Gifty towards the exit: “Go get help!”

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New Writing Yemi can’t swim:Something in the water — Sarah Kelly-Olatunji

“I don’t fancy going back there, to be honest. Do you think we need to get tested?

Maybe there’s something in the water…?”

“Shut UP. You can’t get pregnant from swimming!

“Here.” Yemi grasps her hand, both of them slippery from the water and maybe some other fluid. “You’re not an idiot surprises happen to everyone. I’m here and I’m not leaving you if you want me to stay.”

And Yemi feels tired and elated but oh so very exhausted, down to her bones, and it is up to Gifty to cluckingly bundle her nearly limp friend up and out of the lido and onto the bus home.

Neha starts doing a deep huffed breathing technique and it takes Yemi a moment before she realises that the woman was mimicking her. They both inhale and exhale deeply every now and then.

Unsurprisingly, Neha’s delivery was on the local news. The next day, sat at home in a blanket and drinking soup whilst watching TV, Yemi caught the news segment, where Neha spoke from a fresh bed about her experience, bubbly and ‘absolutely chuffed to bits!’

The world around them turns soft and blurry.

Was this what hypnosis felt like?

The view out the corners of her eyes sharpens clearly, then blurs again, in waves, ebbing and flowing, timed with when Neha clutches tighter and releases.

Yemi finds herself unable to let go of Neha’s hands and doesn’t fully understand why.

They are clamped together by something strange and wonderful and very, very frightening. The world becomes etched in crystal now, a grating clarity that is unshakeable.

At some point, the medical professionals arrive but Yemi can barely hear them above the rushing of the waves, the sound of the water coming closer.

And then the wave breaks and there is a cry, no, two, and Neha sobs as her newborn baby is suddenly on her side, crinkled and raw, and the medical professionals are bundling up both the baby and the new mother to keep them both warm, their faces scrunched up in surprise and delight at life.

They switched to another woman who seemed vaguely familiar, hands running through her short dark hair as she spoke.

“I’ve been trying to get pregnant for about 7 years. No luck.

Swimming has been something that’s helped me take my mind off it. And after I heard about this, I just – I just knew. So, I took the test. And now…now I’m pregnant! It’s really early days but I just can’t believe this is finally happening. And I don’t know if it’s anything to do with the lido or not, but it just seemed like too much of a coincidence!” She laughed in disbelief at her own story and Yemi recognises her eyes.

She squints some more, trying to force the memory closer.

The news reporter smiled sweetly before turning back to the camera. “A woman who claims that swimming in the lido cured her infertility. That was Katie Yi, and I’m Jodie Ahmed.

Back to you Stewart and Daisy in the studio.”

And then it clicks where Yemi knows Katie Yi from.

From two weeks ago.

It is too noisy and too bright and odd.

First time in the lido.

At that moment, the world is altogether too brilliant.

The lady with the floral swimming cap.

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“Not for me, you idiot. For you, to protect you when my mum found out you’d lost me swimming.” Yemi laughed and threw her arms around her friend reassuringly.

They’re calling it the “Miracle of Marine Parade,” hissed Gifty in excitement, tugging at Yemi’s sleeve as they strolled down the street. Yemi rolled her eyes.

“The Lido’s not even on Marine Parade, technically…”

“That’s not the point! One lady giving birth soon after another lady finding out she’s pregnant means that people are going to believe whatever they want! The line of people outside yesterday was INSANE!” Yemi made a face. She wasn’t looking forward to combatting people to get to the lido. She’d started look forward to their weekly swimming sessions but not enough to queue up for them.

With other people.

The beach is gone.

Instead there is a green-covered bank. Curious, Yemi starts towards the shore, pushing through the plants on the surface till she reaches firmer ground and pulls herself up.

Has the current pulled her out far?

She hears a squeal and turns to meet the big brown eyes of a little girl, eyes wide, mouth in the shape of a perfect ‘O’. She is squatting next to a small hole that she has clearly just dug, small perfect stones sprinkled around her little feet. One hand is still in the hole and the other is rolled tightly into a fist.

Yemi takes a few steps towards the girl who remains frozen in position. Gently, she taps the little girl’s fist and turns it over, indicating she should open her hand for Yemi to see.

“I don’t fancy going back there, to be honest. Do you think we need to get tested? Maybe there’s something in the water…?”

Complying, the little girl gasps in surprise at the small pearl glistening in her palm. Yemi smiles indulgently and carefully closes the girl’s fingers back over the jewel.

“Shut UP. You can’t get pregnant from swimming! It’s fine. We can just go to the beach. It can’t be much colder than the lido and you’re basically begging to get back into that. Just put your feet in – no-one’s asking you to put your head under.”

“You found it, you keep it. A present.” The little girl returns Yemi’s smile twice as wide, beaming brightly before turning to run off, yelling something indeterminable whilst waving her arms in excitement.

The water wasn’t cold. It was freezing.

Yemi sits on the shore, kicking her legs into the water, enjoying the feel of warmth on her skin, basking in the sound of crickets behind her. She starts to feel a pull and she can hear a voice – Gifty’s - calling her name.

Even Gifty looked doubtful after getting in up to her ankles which made Yemi smirk. The familiar warmth is already creeping up her thighs, insulating her from the cold.

“Putting your head under helps you get used to it faster, right?”

Gifty pouts. “You first!”

Yemi literally dives into the water, palms stroking the sand and rocks of the seabed, watching the faded sunlight rays swirl gracefully in the water beside her.

Yemi swims back to break the surface of the water, laughter bubbling up in her chest, delighting in the feeling of her feet pushing back against the water.

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“Coming!” Yemi calls and hops back into the water, sinks her head under the water – She emerges back where she’d left, to her confusion. Surely, currents only went in one direction? Had she not been far after all?

Before she has a moment to process, she was yanked out of the water by Gifty.

“I thought you’d drowned!”

New Writing Yemi can’t swim:Something in the water — Sarah Kelly-Olatunji

And even through the mounting horror of watching swathes of her own skin peel away, still Yemi could not stop scratching until sweet, sweet relief arrived and she could examine the aftermath of her actions.

“Should have called the police then.”

“Not for me, you idiot. For you, to protect you when my mum found out you’d lost me swimming.” Yemi laughed and threw her arms around her friend reassuringly.

Yemi takes a deep breath of realisation, trying to steady her frantically dancing heart. At that moment, she heard a key in the door and the bustling of a thousand plastic bags that meant that her mother was home. She has just opened her mouth, undoubtedly to holler for Yemi when she catches sight of her intended target standing motionless in the sitting room. Mouth still open, her eyes move to the mound of skin and then back up to Yemi’s face.

“I’m fine, you moron. Let’s go home before you freeze to death.”

“I think we need to talk,” Yemi says shakily.

“Don’t be stupid – you need the coastguard to find someone at sea.”

After the trip to the beach, the itching wouldn’t go away, despite generous applications of her special cream. Maybe she hadn’t rubbed the water off well enough?

Was it the salt water making it worse than usual?

By the time she stumbles home, the scratching is unbearable.

She itches like a woman possessed, willing herself to stop yet knowing it is impossible to not grate furiously at the itch.

That was when the first strip of skin came away.

And even through the mounting horror of watching swathes of her own skin peel away, still Yemi could not stop scratching until sweet, sweet relief arrived and she could examine the aftermath of her actions.

The entirety of the skin of her feet, legs and thighs lay in a heap, like discarded vegetable peelings. What was left looked behind like chain mail made of overlapping fingernails, covering her entirely from toes to hipbone. As she shifted to examine her body some more in dark curiosity, wiggling her toes to make sure they were still there, the chainmail nails shimmered in the light of the sitting room.

No, not nails.

Scales.

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2020 IN NUMBER 140 11% Black academic staff working at a Professorial level1

35

of Arts Council England’s 841 National Portfolio Organisation are Black and Minority Ethnic led

Emergency response funding awarded to

2

Black and minority ethnic individuals or organisations by Arts Council England.

of London’s 900 Blue Plaques are for Black historic figures

Black female Professors in the UK2

2,020

Statues of Black individuals in the UK listed

by Historic England3

4% 22 Black MPs

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2020 In Numbers

N RS 0

Black Cabinet Members

150

Black Lives Matter Protests in over

UK Cities

References Adams, R. (2020) Fewer than 1% of UK university professors are Black, figures show. The Guardian. Available at: https://www.theguardian.com/ education/2020/feb/27/fewer-than-1-of-uk-university-professors-areblack-figures-show [Accessed 14 August 2020] Arts Council England. (2020). Equality, Diversity and the Creative Case. Available at: https://www.artscouncil.org.uk/sites/default/files/ download-file/ACE_DiversityReport_Final_03032020_0.pdf Arts Council England. (2020). Data Report: Emergency Response Funds for Individuals and for Organisations outside of the National Portfolio.

Available at: https://www.artscouncil.org.uk/sites/default/files/ download-file/Data_report_E_R_F_Individuals_Organisations_outside_ National_Portfolio_0.pdf [Accessed 14 August 2020] Butcher, B., and Aitken, A., (2020). How many statues of Black people does the UK have? (Online) BBC Reality Check. Available at: https:// www.bbc.co.uk/news/53014592 [Accessed 14 August 2020] Eborall, R. (2020) Over 150 UK towns join BLM Protests. Rs21 (Online) Available at: https://www.rs21.org.uk/2020/06/08/over-150-uk-townsjoin-blm-protests/ [Accessed 14 August 2020] English Heritage (2020). Celebrating London’s Black History (Online).

Available at: https://www.english-heritage.org.uk/visit/blue-plaques/ blue-plaque-stories/londons-black-history/ [Accessed 14 August 2020]

Footnotes 1.

According to the Higher Education Statistics Agency (Hesa) only 0.7% of over 21,000 professors identify as Black in the UK (Adams, 2020).

2.

Dr Nicola Rollock, Reader in Equity and Education at Goldsmiths University of London earlier this year curated an exhibition of 40 Black women who have been professors at UK universities at some point over the last three years (University and College Union, 2020). There are currently 35 Black female Professors according to AdvanceHE, an increase from 25 in 2018 (Rollock, 2019). Earlier studies by the Runneymeade Trust, although valuable looked at political Black (African, Caribbean and Asian) and thus the figure is significantly higher at 350.

3.

This figure is slightly misleading as there is no centralised database for collating information on statues in the UK. These two statues are recognised as a bust of Nelson Mandela at London’s South Bank and Platforms Piece in Brixton, however BBC research suggests that there are approximately statues of 15 named Black individuals (Butcher and Aitken, 2020).

Operation Black Vote. (2020). Our Communities. (Online) Available at: https://www.obv.org.uk/our-communities/profiles/mps [Accessed 14 August 2020] Rollock, N. (2019) Staying Power: The Career Experiences and Strattgies of UK Blac Female Professors. University and College Union. Available at https://www.ucu.org.uk/media/10075/Staying-Power/pdf/UCU_Rollock_ February_2019.pdf [Accessed 14 August 2020] Singh, Arj. (2020). Matt Hancock Names Two Asians When Asked To Identify Black Cabinet Members. Huffington Post. (Online) Available at: https://www.huffingtonpost.co.uk/entry/black-cabinet-matt-hancockprotests_uk Solanke, I. (2017). Black Female Professors in the UK (March 2017).

Runneymede Trust. Available at: https://www.runnymedetrust.org/ uploads/BlackFemaleProfessorsMarch2017.pdf [Accessed 14 August 2020] University and College Union. (2020) Phenomenal Women: Portraits of UK Black Female Professors. (Online) Available at: https://www.ucu.org. uk/article/10681/Phenomenal-Women-Portraits-of-UK-Black-FemaleProfessors [Accessed 14 August 2020]

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SERENDIPIT PUBLICATIO Black History Month 2020 marks the seventh anniversary of the publication of Serendipity’s first book Hidden Movement: Contemporary Voices of Black British Dance. Since then we have gone on to publish another eleven titles looking at Black dance, arts and culture.

Many of the publications have been linked, as part of conferences held at Let’s Dance International Frontiers, as records of lived experiences as dancers and choreographers, transcriptions of practitioners codified techniques, and where we have been privileged to have worked with a writer over time, the publications have become a testament to evolving ideas.

In 2017, we published Lost Legends: 30 Years 30 Voices, featuring the contribution of 30 Leicester based community activists and artists in the thirtieth anniversary year of Black History Month in the UK. In June 2020, to coincide with Windrush Day we published Reflections, many of the contributors have links to the Midlands but the publication’s relevance is international.

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Printed books will forever hold a place in our heart and on our bookshelves, but this is not to deny the accessibility and value that digital technologies bring for sharing and disseminating information. As a resource, we are delighted that at the point of publishing our twelfth book all of our titles are also available as eBooks through Kortext.

Since our first foray into publishing we have taken a journey; through social history, cultural politics and artistic practice. What remains is a testament to Black history that they contain, missing pieces of a bigger picture, filled with beautiful imagery that centres Blackness in the contexts of arts and heritage.

For more information visit www.serendipityuk.com/publications

Serendipity’s Publications

TY’S ONS CREOLIZING DANCE IN A GLOBAL AGE

Adesola Akinleye, Deborah Baddoo, Hilary S. Carty, Catherine Dénécy, Pam Johnson, Mercy Nabirye, Maureen Salmon, Jessica Walker, Sharon Watson, Jawole Willa Jo Zollar with a preface by Pawlet Brookes

BLACK WOMEN IN DANCE:

From early trailblazers to contemporary ground breakers, Black Women in Dance: Stepping Out of the Barriers, is an exciting publication celebrating and exploring the impact that Black women have made on the international dance ecology. This publication explores topics from the need for institutions and infrastructure to support work from African and African Caribbean artists, and the key role of women within these organisations, to artists’ journeys taken to develop new aesthetics and an individual choreographic voice. The contributors also reflect upon the obstacles they have had to overcome as they have progressed in their careers and some of the challenges they still have to face.

Above all, Black Women in Dance is a celebration of the tenacity, strength and creativity of the authors, their peers and their predecessors.

CONTEMPORY VOICES OF BLACK BRITISH DANCE

Including Hidden Histories by Dr Patrick Acogny Hilary S Carty Brenda Edwards Henri Oguike Dr Bob Ramdhanie Kenneth Olumuyiwa Tharp OBE With an introduction by Pawlet Brookes

STEPPING OUT OF THE BARRIERS

BLACK WOMEN IN DANCE STEPPING OUT OF THE BARRIERS

Pawlet Brookes Hilary Brown Marie-Laure Soukaina Edom Gladys M. Francis Roshini Kempadoo Patrick Parson L’Antoinette Stines With an introduction by Verene A. Shepherd

Kyle Abraham / Funmi Adewole / Ivan Blackstock / Jreena Green / Robert Hylton / Jo Read / Nefeli Tsiouti / Tia-Monique Uzor / Danilo DJ Walde With a preface by Pawlet Brookes

01789_Black Women In Dance Publication_Cover_PR.indd 1

29/09/2016 10:21

Blurring Boundaries: Urban Street Meets Contemporary Dance

Black Women in Dance: Stepping Out of the Barriers

INVISIBLE VISIBILITY

W

it

h

a

G N erm B am a B ob ro in J arb Ra n e A co L’A ean ara m gn nto gu R dh a y in y S am nie et a o te int s C St us a pre be in lle es fa ro ce by Pa w le t Bro ok es

IDENTITY AND CHOREOGRAPHIC PRACTICE Francis Angol Delia Barker Sandie Bourne Joan Myers Brown Nora Chipaumire Yinka Esi Graves

Creolizing Dance in a Global Age

A V N DA O C D N I C ES IA E LOCE S: TR A G L U ES

Hidden Movement: Contemporary Voices of Black British Dance

David Hamilton Terry Ofosu H Patten Kendrick Sandy Sheron Wray With a preface by Pawlet Brookes

DIVERSE VOICES WITHIN INCLUSIVE DANCE PAWLET BROOKES LOUISE DICKSON ANTHONY EVANS LOUISE KATEREGA

03002_Serendipity_Invisible_Visibility_Book_A4_V6.indd 1

Identity and Choreographic Practice

Ancestral Voices: Dance Dialogues

26/04/2018 09:18

Invisible Visibility: Diverse Voices Within Inclusive Dance

Black Dance: A Contemporary Voice

Léna Blou / Mele Broomes / Jonzi D / Annabel Guérédrat / Ashanti Harris / Vicki Igbokwe / Rhea Lewis / Gladys M Francis / Cynthia Oliver / Thomas Prestø / Alice Sheppard / Henri Tauliaut / Makeda Thomas / Eduardo Vilaro With a Preface by Pawlet Brookes

LDIF 1O YEARS IN THE MAKING

30 YEARS 30 VOICES

1O YEARS IN THE MAKING

30 years 30 Voices Joe Allen Mellow Baku Pamela Campbell-Morris Paulo Carnoth George Cole Derrick ‘Mr Motivator’ Evans Dorothy Francis Cheddi Gore Tony Graves Philip Herbert

Donna Jackman Louise Katerega Duncan Lawrence Carol Leeming Michael Lewis Iris Lightfoote Tara Lopez Madu Messenger Elvy Morton Florence Nyahwa

Suzanne Overton-Edwards Shakha Palmer Quincy Victor Richards Brian Simmonds Julie Smith Greg Smith Dianne Van-der-Westhuizen Boston Williams Freedom Tariq Zampaladus

MY VOICE, MY PRACTICE: BLACK DANCE

With a preface by Pawlet Brookes

3

06/04/2020 11:42

LDIF 10 Years in the Making

Reflections: Cultural Voices of Black British Irrepressible Resilience

Lost Legends: 30 Years 30 Voices

My Voice, My Practice: Black Dance

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CALENDAR HIGHLIGHT 2021

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Date

Event

Location

26 December – 4 January

Afrochella

Accra, Ghana

18 January

Martin Luther King Jr Day

USA

24 January

World Day for African and Afrodescendant Culture

Worldwide

25 January – 2 February

Zora Neale Hurston Festival

Eatonville, Florida

February

Black History Month

USA

15 February

Carnival

Trinidad

8 March

International Women’s Day

Worldwide

21 March – 27 March

Week of Solidarity with the Peoples Struggling against Racism and Racial Discrimination

Worldwide

22 April

Stephen Lawrence Day

UK

29 April

International Dance Day

Worldwide

29 April – 15 May

Let’s Dance International Frontiers

Leicester, UK

30 April

International Jazz Day

Worldwide

May

Dak’Art Biennale

Dakar, Senegal

5 May

African World Heritage Day

Across Africa

21 May

Afro-Colombian Day (Día de la Afrocolombianidad)

Colombia

21 May

World Day for Cultural Diversity for Dialogue and Development

Worldwide

19 June

Juneteenth

USA

Calendar Highlights 2021

TS Date

Event

Location

20 June – 2 July Black Europe Summer School

Amsterdam, The Netherlands

22 June

Windrush Day

UK

July

Blak History Month

Australia

2 July – 5 July

Essence Festival

New Orleans, USA

7 July – 10 July

Afroeuropeans Conference 2021

Brussels, Belgium

10 July – 11 July

Afropunk

Paris, France

18 July

Nelson Mandela International Day

Worldwide

1 August

Emancipation Day

9 August

International Day of the World’s Indigenous People

Worldwide

23 August

International Day for the Remembrance of the Slave Trade and its Abolition

Worldwide

October

Black History Month

UK

20 November

Black Consciousness Day (Dia da Consciência Negra)

Brazil

26 December – 1 January

Kwanzaa

USA

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COMING SOON Books The Purpose of Power Alicia Garza October 2020 Publisher: Doubleday Non-Fiction Black Lives Matter began as a hashtag when Alicia Garza wrote what she calls ‘a love letter to Black people’ on Facebook. But hashtags don’t build movements, she tells us. People do. Interwoven with Garza’s personal experiences of life as a Black woman, The Purpose of Power is the story of how Garza responded to the persistent message that Black lives are of less value by knocking on doors to galvanise people to create change.

African Europeans: A Untold History Olivette Otele October 2020 Publisher: Hurst History, Non-Fiction Olivette Otele traces a long African European heritage through the lives of individuals both ordinary and extraordinary. She uncovers a forgotten past, from Emperor Septimius Severus, to enslaved Africans living in Europe during the Renaissance, and all the way to present-day migrants moving to Europe’s cities.

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Black Futures Kimberley Drew and Jenna Wortham December 2020 Publisher: One World Art A succession of startling and beautiful pieces that generate an entrancing rhythm: readers will go from conversations with activists and academics to memes and Instagram posts, from powerful essays to dazzling paintings and insightful infographics. The story of the radical, imaginative, provocative, and gorgeous world that Black creators are bringing forth today, and envisage for tomorrow.

Daaance Coconut Daaance Wine Yu Bati, Lif Up U Chest And Pointe U Tuoz: Emancipating The Body From Mental Slavery L’Antoinette Stines 2021 Dance, Non-Fiction For her second book, L’Antoinette Stines offers in depth insight into Kumina, Bruckins, Nyabinghi and Daaance’all as a pathway for decolonisation and emancipation of the body through Caribbean contemporary (CARIMOD) techniques. In Daaance Coconut Daaance, Stines explores the concept of Ubuntu, the universal bond of sharing that connects all, as evidenced in daaance.

Coming Soon

Concrete Rose Angie Thomas January 2021 Publisher: HarperCollins Literary Fiction Angie Thomas revisits Garden Heights seventeen years before the events of The Hate U Give in this searing and poignant exploration of Black boyhood and manhood. Maverick Carter is torn apart by loyalty, revenge and responsibility as he tackles his father’s history and his own life as a new parent.

How Beautiful We Were Imbolo Mbue March 2021 Publisher: Random House Literary Fiction From the celebrated author of the New York Times bestseller Behold the Dreamers comes a sweeping, wrenching story about the collision of a small African village and an American oil company. Told from the perspective of a generation of revolutionary children, amidst the ghosts of colonialism.

Black Girl, Call Home Jasmine Mans March 2021 Publisher: Berkley Poetry From spoken word poet Jasmine Mans comes an unforgettable poetry collection about race, feminism, and queer identity. Black Girl, Call Home is a love letter to the wandering Black girl and a vital companion to any woman on a journey to find truth, belonging, and healing.

Zanele Muholi Ntozakhe II, Parktown 2016. Courtesy of the Artist and Stevenson, Cape Town/Johannesburg and Yancey Richardson, New York (c) Zanele Muholi

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Kehinde Wiley: Narrenschiff (Ship of Fools)

Coming Soon

Exhibitions Please note that exhibitions and events may be subject to change.

Narrenschiff (Ship of Fools), Kehinde Wiley 29 September 2020 – 28 February 2021 The Box, Plymouth A dramatic video installation presented in partnership with the Arts Institute of the University of Plymouth, Wiley’s work looks at historical and contemporary histories of migration.

Phoebe Boswell: Here 19 November 2020 – 13 December 2020 New Art Exchange Boswell’s work explores what it means to belong and to be free. Owing to a personal history rooted in colonial traces and contradictory legacies - upheavals, dualities, geographies, kinships, liberations, silences, and shifts of migration - Phoebe describes her work as a navigation of the space between, anchored to what she refers to as a “restless state of diasporic consciousness.”

Lubaina Himid 24 November 2021 – 22 May 2022 Tate Modern This large-scale exhibition will debut recent work and include selected highlights from Lubaina Himid’s influential career. Taking inspiration from her interest in theatre, the exhibition will unfold in a sequence of scenes designed to place visitors centre-stage and backstage.

Sharif Persaud Have You Ever Had? April 2021 Autograph Placing himself at the centre of his work, Sharif Persaud explores identity through his experience of contemporary life and autism. He is profoundly interested in his body in society as a site of investigation: sneezing, healthcare, hospitals, gangrene, cities, flats, benefits and his independence.

This is Persaud’s first solo exhibition, featuring his drawings, large paintings and award-winning short film The Mask.

Have You Ever Had is the culmination of the UK-wide EXPLORERS Project, highlighting the extraordinary contribution neurodiverse people make to art and culture.

Curated by Mark Sealy.

Zanele Muholi 5 November 2020 - 7 March 2021 Tate Modern Zanele Muholi is one of the most acclaimed photographer working today, with over 260 photographs, this exhibition presents the full breadth of their career to date; documenting and celebrating the lives of South Africa’s Black lesbian, gay, trans, queer and intersex communities.

Lynette Yiadom-Boakye Fly in League With The Night 18 November 2020 - 9 May 2021 Tate Britain Lynette Yiadom-Boakye is a British artist and writer acclaimed for her enigmatic portraits of fictitious people. This exhibition brings together around 80 works from 2003 to the present day in the most extensive survey of the artist’s career to date.

autograph.org.uk/exhibitions/have-you-ever-had

Care I Contagion I Community — Self and Other Ten new artist commissions by Autograph, London Launching Autumn 2020 on autograph.org.uk Autograph has commissioned ten UK-based artists working with photography, film and lens-based media to respond to the wider context of the Covid-19 crisis.

The ten artists, whose work collectively addresses complex themes including social justice, cultural identity, sexuality and gender politics, race and representation, disability and ableism, memory, history, migration, human trafficking, and social activism, are: Mohini Chandra, Poulomi Desai, Joy Gregory, Othello De-Souza Hartley, Sonal Kantaria, Ope Lori, Dexter McLean, Karl Ohiri, Silvia Rosi and Aida Silvestri.

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The Interview

MY FIRST LOVE, MY WORLD A conversation with Kathy Williams about her journey from childhood gymnastics classes to the Olympics to dance.

– TELL US ABOUT WHERE YOU STARTED, YOU BEGAN YOUR CAREER AS A GYMNAST?

– SO, YOU MOVED FROM YOUR FAMILY HOME TO PURSUE YOUR PASSION?

Gymnastics is my love, it was my world. I began at aged 10, at primary school through my P.E. teacher Janet Slade and her husband, Stuart. We did one afternoon a week, you know, we had a springboard, a horse and a few mats. Then one summer I was in the house watching the Olympic Games and there is Olga Korbut. She had her pigtails and I saw her turning head over heels on the beam, and I thought, I just want to do that. It was not important that I had not seen anyone who looks like me, so I started doing more at school. The time came when Janet and her husband said that I had talent and thought that they would be doing me an injustice if I remained with them.

Mr Brown and Mr Trainer, then coached me, they could see the potential and wanted me to go further. My head teacher, Mr Silver, was 100% supportive, as too were my family even though it must have been difficult to accommodate me alongside my three siblings.

I know I was young, but I was passionate and I could see how I was rapidly developing. Janet Mitchell was an amazing coach and I had great friends at Huddersfield gymnastics club. I was soon selected to compete in my first international for Team GB versus Hungary. My international journey took me to France, Germany, Italy, Bulgaria, Switzerland, Finland, Romania, Norway, Australia , America and Russia.

I often reflect on this amazing journey and all the people who supported me along the way.

I was then introduced to national coach, Janet Mitchell, who was based in Huddersfield. Travelling from Manchester along the M62 was a bit of a distance, and I began taking the train on a Friday to train over the weekend before relocating to Huddersfield and living with Mr and Mrs Fiddler, Janet’s parents to train 6 days a week.

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The Interview My First Love, My World A conversation with Kathy Williams about her journey from childhood gymnastics classes to the Olympics to dance. — Interview By Pawlet Brookes

– YOU ARE ONE OF THE BIGGEST SPORTING SECRETS IN THE UK. YOU STAND OUT BECAUSE YOU ARE BLACK AND EXCEPTIONAL, BUT THE SAME THINGS CAN ALSO HOLD YOU BACK. I won the Daily Mirror scholarship in 1978, and they dubbed me the ‘Black Tulip’. At the time, the Russian coaches said I was the most talented British gymnast they had coached.

I had the opportunity to go to Russia to train, it was an opportunity for athletes and their coaches, but my coach could not go with me because my teammate had been before. At the time, Russia was behind the iron curtain, and I remember going to Red Square to see Lenin’s tomb, but people were more interested in seeing me. Every time I stepped out, the attention; you know what it is like now.

People would stop in their tracks. At the hotel, people were there wanting to touch me. I was only just 14 years old, and I did not have anyone to talk to about it. When I returned to the gym, it was a sanctuary. The Russian athletes were well travelled and had been outside of Russia.

– SO, YOU’RE TOTALLY IMMERSED IN GYMNASTICS, AND BEFORE YOU KNOW IT’S 1984, YOU’RE REPRESENTING BRITAIN. WHAT WAS THAT LIKE? I was the youngest gymnast selected to represent Britain at the Moscow Olympic Games in 1980, unfortunately I got injured and was unable to compete. I’d just turned 20 years old when I was selected for Los Angeles Olympic Games. I remember the opening ceremony, and they put the gymnasts on the frontline of Team GB as we entered the stadium because, we knew how to march. But, I do remember the security on the rooftops. I visited the American camp as I wanted to see Carl Lewis and Ed Moses.

Usually when I travelled I was the only Black face at competitions; I did not know I was breaking records. I remember being at the Games and watching the Romanians train when a group of Japanese photographers came wanting to take pictures of me, my coach had to keep telling them “no pictures”. I wasn’t aware that I was the first Black female Olympic gymnast.

Kathy Williams, at Royal Albert Hall, photographer Alan Burrows

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– WHAT MADE YOU MOVE TO DANCE? When you are immersed in a sport, you never see an end, it is your world. But it got to a point where it was time to move on. I was around 22 or 23 years old when I made the move from gymnastics to dance. For me, it was either to go to drama school or dance school. I had applied to both and wanted to go to both, and I thought I would do whichever accepted me first.

I went to Northern School of Contemporary Dance, at the time they were still operating out of a primary school. As an artistic gymnast, I had the right build and personality for a dancer, but during that first year, there was certainly a transition. Gymnastics is everything hyperextension, and we were learning Martha Graham technique. It was a year of change, but it was an amazing place to be. There was so much diversity there, talent, personalities, and I look back at my training with fond memories.

– WHAT DID YOU DO WITH YOUR TRAINING? The course was only vocational at the time and I was looking for accreditation. During my second year, Phoenix Dance Company were looking for female dancers and myself and two other Black dancers; Joanne Bernard and Gail Parmel were invited to join. But I was told that if I joined the company we wouldn’t get our accreditation, so we stayed.

After graduation, Phoenix had recruited other female dancers and there were no other dance companies looking for Black dancers, so I went to work at the BBC. I was inspired

by Floella Benjamin and wanted to be a TV presenter, and started working as a researcher for Children in Need. I then assisted on a Black radio show called the Night Shift, as an agony aunt. I stayed with the BBC for three years.

– BUT THIS TOOK YOU AWAY FROM MOVING… Absolutely. It does not mean that I did not show off a move or two at the nightclub. One night went to Ricky’s [in Manchester] and I am getting down, having a good time with the girls. Edward Lynch former member of Phoenix Dance Company] approached me and said that they were looking for a female dancer to join their new company, RJC Dance.

I was amongst men and I had to step up. Edward Lynch, DeNapoli Clarke, Donald Edwards, David Hamilton, Martin Robinson and Joe Williams. That was 1993, and I’m still there, I became the director of RJC in 2011.

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– WHAT KEPT HOLD OF YOU? I carry with me the Olympic values; respect, excellence, friendship, inspiration, determination, equality and courage.

I think that is what we give the children and young people that we work with. I became interested in sport because of a passionate teacher that saw that passion in me and nurtured it. RJC Dance is also an incredibly accessible organisation, there are no boundaries in terms of finance, there is no one I will turn away, that would be a crime, I would find a way.

However, resources need rebalancing, a recent statistic highlighted that ethnically diverse people are three times more likely to be rejected for arts funding than white applicants.

The Interview My First Love, My World A conversation with Kathy Williams about her journey from childhood gymnastics classes to the Olympics to dance. — Interview By Pawlet Brookes

However, resources need rebalancing, a recent statistic highlighted that ethnically diverse people are three times more likely to be rejected for arts funding than white applicants.

– IN YOUR OPINION WHAT ARE SOME OF THE CHANGES THAT STILL NEED TO HAPPEN? WHAT ARE YOUR HOPES? We need to have more equality, we have to rebalance resources, investment, and recognition for diverse organsiations that nurture those who are invisible to others.

Diversity is embedded in all we do. We need parity and that’s what we haven’t got.

It was a year of change, but it was an amazing place to be.

There was so much diversity there, talent, personalities.

I look back at my training with fond memories.

I’m hoping that RJC will go on, and have a legacy. I hope that it’s embedded within the community of Chapeltown, Leeds for all time, and it’s the jewel in the crown for a diverse community. We are here for the community and we want recognition, we want to be valued and to be invested in. I don’t think that is too much to ask, for the lives we transform and the children and families we support.

– CAN YOU DESCRIBE YOUR ARTISTIC JOURNEY IN THREE WORDS? Challenging being a Black female leader in this world.

Passionate about everything that I do.

Rewarding I love the work that I’m doing and working with young people, developing, nurturing, mentoring. We need to be invested in to do the work that we are doing, children and young people are the future.

Kathy Williams, at Northern School of Contemporary Dance, 1990, photograph Terry Cryer / © Northern School of Contemporary Dance

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Archival resources documenting the contribution of the African and African Caribbean Diaspora to the East Midlands. Accessible by appointment, call +44 (0) 116 482 1394 for more information.

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CAN SOCIALLY ENGAGED DANCE CHANGE THE WORLD? 29 APRIL – 15 MAY 2021 LEICESTER UK

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“A people’s art is the genesis of their freedom” Claudia Jones

ISSN Number: 2634-4289