MY BLACK IDENTITY WHAT DOES BEING BLACK MEAN TO YOU?
OPPORTUNITIES TO BE INCLUDED IN AN ONLINE EXHIBIT REFLECTIVE AND CREATIVE ACTIVITIES FREE EBOOKS BLACK HISTORY YOU NEVER HEAR ABOUT AND INSPIRING MODERN FIGURES INTERACTIVE ACTIVITIES & QR CODES
www.myblackidentity.co.uk
EXPLORING IDENTITY THROUGH CREATIVITY A Mojatu Foundation, Fearless Youth Association & Primary Project
ABOUT "Once you know who you are, you dont have to worry anymore" - Nikki Giovanni -
NIKKI
GIOVANNI
In celebrating and reflecting on Black History, we are exploring what it is like to be Black, using artistic and creative expressions. We will provide artistic packs and materials coupled with an online platform for Black people in Nottingham to explore their identity through artistic and creative medium and in multiple formats You can use these activities for your own personal reflection and enjoyment, or share them with us for future exhibitions online and in physical spaces. The aim of this project is to enable Black people living in Nottingham to explore and articulate their identity and relationship with the place they call home in a creative way, whilst facilitating other communities to understand these perceptions from Black people's perspectives.
CONTENTS Knowledge is power: Black History Youtube Playlist (Pg 4) Reading list: Where you can read more (Pg 5) Who Inspires you? : Inspirational modern figures (Pg 6-10) Nottingham's forgotten race riot & me (Pg 11-14) Take a break: wordsearch & colouring activities (Pg 15 - 16) Discovering Blackness through imagination: A creative journal (Pg 17 - 20) Online exhibit (Pg 21-22) Local Organisation: This pack is supported by... (Pg 23)
Additional content: Art materials Postcards Colouring activities
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KNOWLEDGE IS POWER: BLACK HISTORY YOUTUBE PLAYLIST To ease your way into this community project, we have put together a YouTube playlist including a range of engaging videos about Black British History , Identity and Creativity to inspire and empower! We thought we would focus on the history of being Black in Britain as it is rarely covered but very interesting. Scan the QR code following the instructions below to watch! The playlist can be updated at anytime, so feel free to submit any other useful videos by emailing : jaya@fyaonline.com
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WHERE YOU CAN READ MORE Is reading more your thing? We have also created a library on google drive that can be accessed through scanning the QR code below, including articles and books from a range of writers. This reading list incudes several books and poems that are free to access and read online, as well as a list of books you can purchase. If you would like us to add anything to this, please feel free to email us: jaya@fyaonline.com
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WHO INSPIRES YOU? On the following pages, we have created a list of 4 inspiring Black figures of today, all of whom use their platform and creativity to elevate voices, inform and inspire. Who inspires you? We would love to know! Get in touch on social media!
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Rapper, Academic, Public Speaker, Writer and Activist Akala was born in Kentish Town, London in 1983. He was introduced to radical Black thinkers and Black history by his Mother when he was younger, and ever since has been vocal about issues around race and class. In his popular book Natives (2018), Akala highlights shared problems faced by African communities worldwide, looking at privilege, inequality race, and class and how they work together. Alongside several other achievements, Akala has also recieved honorary degrees from Oxford Brookes and Brighton Universities.
Well respected in the UK Rap scene, for almost 20 years Akala has been known for his real, thought provoking lyrical style. Such as the single 'Shakespeare' on his debut album 'It's Not A Rumour'. This song encapsulates his style perfectly, exploring themes around being Black, British and passionate about education and social change. Scan the QR Code below to check out the song:
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Born to a Jamaican father and mother of Guyanese descent, Olivia (Liv) Little is the founder of media publication, 'gal-dem';, commited to telling the stories and elevating the voices of women and non-binary people of colour. She also recieved a first class degree in politics and sociology at the University of Bristol .
"The current journalistic landscape is 94% white and 55% male and galdem is actively trying to redress this imbalance in media more broadly through both our editorial and commercial work." - gal-dem website
With the online and print copies, the magazine addresses inequality and misrepresentation, intersectionality, asylum and womens rights across societies. Scan the QR Code below to check out the gal-dem magazine
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Born in Handsworth Birmingham, Zephaniah is a British writer, poet, musician and Rastafarian. Son of a Barbadian postman and Jamaican nurse, his creativity is strongly influended by the music and poetry or Jamaican 'Street Politics'.
Unable to read or write, he left school at 13. He is known for his strong opinions and beliefs, publicly turning down an OBE Medal saying that he is 'profoundly anti-empire'. His album 'Rasta' (1982) album featured The Wailers, a group known to have worked with Bob Marley. This album featured a tribute to Nelson Mandela which gained international prestige. Scan the QR Code below to check out his website
Zephaniah's books and poems explore many different themes surrounding the Black british identity, such as Gangsta Rap - a book about a troubled teen who finds hope in his music career, slowly learning the hardships of the industry on the way.
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Born in 1944, Margaret Yvonne Busby (also known as Nana Akua Ackon) is a Ghanian born publisher, editor, writer and broadcaster. She became Britains youngest and first Black female book publisher when she cofounded the London-based publishing house Allison and Busby in the 1960's with Clive Allison. Alongside many other achievements, this year she was voted as one of the '100 Great Black Britons' by the public of the last 400 years. She is acknowledged as a 'pathfinder' by those who followed her footsteps, working towards making the book industry more diverse.
“It is easy enough to be the first, we can each try something and be the first woman or the first African woman to do X, Y or Z. But, if it's something worthwhile you don't want to be the only. ...I hope that I can, in any way, inspire someone to do what I have done but learn from my mistakes and do better than I have done.� MARGARET BUSBY
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NOTTINGHAM'S FORGOTTEN RACE RIOT & ME By James Denham Saturday 23rd August 1958 is perhaps the single most important day in the history of Nottingham’s race relations. At approximately 22:00 that evening, a young mixed race couple entered The Chase pub in the St Ann’s Well Road area, sparking a mass brawl between members of the city’s Caribbean community and a group of white ‘niggerchasing’ Teddy Boys. At the time, it was the biggest race riot for a generation, but today, it’s fast becoming another forgotten chapter of Black British history.
As a mixed-race man born and raised in Nottingham, it’s hard to imagine such violence taking the place in the city I’m proud to call home. Although I’ve encountered pockets of racial abuse growing up, I wouldn’t single-out Nottingham for being a particularly intolerant city. Granted, the racial slurs and off-hand remarks I’ve experienced during my formative years have hurt me, but you’d be hard-pressed to find any other racialised communities, notably South Asian people, who hasn’t been through similar experiences. After all, according to the most recent census, Nottingham has one of the biggest mixed-race populations in the UK, and remains one of the most ethnically diverse cities in the country. But facts can sometimes divert us from a deeper, insidious truth. And in the summer of 1958 that truth spilled out onto the streets of St Ann’s.
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In the weeks leading up to the riot, racial tensions had been building in the city for some time. With the end of the post-war economic boom, Nottingham, like many other industrial cities in the late 1950s, saw growing resentment towards its migrant communities, as employment in the once thriving job market began to dry up. This led to a string of racially motivated attacks aimed at the West Indian community, with some reports suggesting that black workers were refused employment in Nottingham’s factories. Accordingly, the injustices faced by the Caribbean community throughout this period has left many to speculate that the outbreak of violence on the 23rd August was largely in retaliation to the abuse experienced by newly formed migrant communities. Since we have no official records to tell us what started the riot, we are left to piece together the events of that evening by examining eye-witness accounts, the majority of which point to a confrontation between a mixed-race couple and a group of white males as the catalyst for the violence. Indeed, it is through the examination of eyewitness reports, and the limited newspaper archives, that we are able to grasp the true brutality of the fighting. As one report states, there were up to 1,000 people in the street, some armed with knives and cutthroat razors, resulting in a number of individuals being hospitalised with stab wounds. By the end of the rioting, an article from The Nottingham Post described the scene as like “a slaughterhouse.�
Source: Nottingham Local Studies Library
Although the Nottingham Race Riot gained nationwide attention, its impact was soon overshadowed by the outbreak of severe racial violence a week later in Notting Hill. Consequently, this has meant that the legacy of the Nottingham Race Riot has been gradually fading with every year that passes, as those who were there that fateful evening begin to diminish.
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For me, the story of the Nottingham Race Riot symbolises the continued erasure of black British history from our collective consciousness. When I attended secondary school in the mid to late 2000s, I was taught that black history began with the onset of the transatlantic slave trade, and ended with the triumph of the civil rights movement. While this reductive account of black history gave me a basic understanding of black people’s place within the Western world, mainly as slaves and second-class citizens, it didn’t help me to come to terms with my immediate context as a Mixed White British/Black African person of Ghanaian ancestry living in the East Midlands. As far as my school curriculum was concerned, black people had arrived in England aboard the Empire Windrush and then simply vanished into thin air. Those wanting to uncover an accurate depiction of the black British experience are required to search for themselves, as I did during my time at university, where my reading of Renni Eddo-Lodge’s ‘Why I’m No Longer Talking To White People About Race’ first turned me on to the story of the Nottingham Race Riot. But is it fair that people without access to these resources are denied the opportunity to truly understand their history, and by extension, their place within society?
Scan the QR Code below to check out James' Podcast
Indeed, this was the question that led me to create my own race awareness platform, ‘Black Friends’, towards the end of last year. Operating under this alias, I started a blog, launched a podcast and hosted a series of live Q&A events with some of Nottingham’s most prominent black creatives, in an attempt to get Nottingham talking about race, and the way it shapes the world around us. As the events of this summer unfolded, and the murders of George Floyd and Breonna Taylor sparked new life into the Black Lives Matter movement, I found myself once again returning to the story of the Nottingham Race Riot. The 62nd anniversary was approaching, and I decided to feature the story as an episode of the ‘Black Friends’ podcast.
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Interviewing a member of the public, whose father took part. In the fighting on the Caribbean side, was a special moment. Hearing them speak, as they passed down the experiences of their Father to me, it showed me how black history can be re-packaged in order to subvert conventional historical narratives. And as I reflect on this year’s Black History Month, at a time when the UK sits on the verge of another lockdown, it’s experiences such as this that reassure me that black voices will continue to find a way to have their stories heard It’s only by passing on stories from generation to generation that the story of the Nottingham Race Riot has lived on. Covid-19 has made older people particularly vulnerable to loneliness and isolation. Why not call or video chat with black elders in your community and ask them about their lived experiences. Once you’ve spoken to an elder, think about the ways that you can share their stories. Perhaps through posting on social media, writing a short story, writing a poem, writing a song, or making a piece of art that is based on their experiences.
If you are interested in exploring Caribbean black British history further, watch Small Axe, a new film series directed by Academy Award, Bafta and Golden Globe-winning filmmaker, Steve McQueen. See more here: https://www.bbc.co.uk/mediacentre/latestnews/2020/smallaxe-premiere#mangrove The commissioning of Small Axe is significant, but there needs to be more investment in histories and stories outside of London for national film, television, and theatre to contribute to the public awareness of black history and culture across the UK. The story doesn't start and end with England's capital city.
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YOU DESERVE A BREAK! We have been looking at a lot of information! Although its all very inspiring, its important to take breaks! Grab a snack, relax, and complete this wordsearch!
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YOU DESERVE A BREAK! There is also some drawing activities in your pack separate from this booklet like the ones below:
In the following section we will be inviting you to reflect more on your own identity through creativity! What you create could feature in our online exhibit (pg 21)
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DISCOVERING BLACKNESS THROUGH IMAGINATION
A Creative Journal Develop a creative journal to use as an outlet to Discover yourself in connection with your cultural roots and personal histories. The creative activities are an exploration of food, textiles, play, memories that connect to black life. The exercises will allow you to centre yourself through reflection, questioning, collage and recipes. You can revisit this journal whenever you need to, and use it as a creative tool for mindfulness, and to support your wellbeing and self-care.
Alongside this, we have provided postcards with reflective questions around identity and blackness that you can use to help stimulate your creativity further.
Using either the creative packs we have given you, or your own means, your ideas and art can be included in the online exhibit (pg 21).
Photos: Primary / Reece Straw
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COLLAGING ACTIVITY:
Here, There, and In-Between Black communities and individuals could have many places they call home – here, there or in-between. Therefore, black life and black diasporic culture are expansive, far-reaching and multifaceted; rooted in many lands across the world. This creative activity aims to support you in expressing and connecting your multiple-selves using mixed media such as fabrics, newspapers, magazines, leaflets, and food packaging.
Create an abstract collage that represents you and explores your black heritage. Gather fabrics that represent your culture and connects to your roots. Using the fabrics and the materials provided within the Identity pack; develop an abstract artwork. Black life is boundless and borderless – get creative. Your final piece can be imaginative and futuristic or an ode to tradition and lineage.
Photos: Primary / Reece Straw
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RECIPES FROM CHILDHOOD
Share your cooking skills! This activity is about recalling a recipe from a childhood memory, that someone may have made for you. Memories connected to our sense of smell create flashbacks, especially when it's not an everyday scent. For example: "Christmas cakes and Birthday cakes remind me of my Nana. My Nana used to bake awesome Jamaican rum cakes for many occasions. Christmas is a great occasion where our family definitely get to taste this Jamaican rum cake. Smelling that aroma now that the recipe is passed on creates emotions within and takes me right back to my childhood from as far as I can remember. It's a memory that cannot be replaced." - Raisa Mcclarey Francis
Activity: It is now your turn to think about a recipe – you can go back as far as you want. Think of a recipe or a meal that sets off positive emotions within you; something that means a lot to you and has a story. Some recipes are family traditions and sometimes sacred. You have a choice to write the recipe or simply describe how this dish makes you feel. You could even take a picture of the food and submit it to our exhibit too, with a few words describing it using the prompts on the next page.
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RECIPES FROM CHILDHOOD
Share your cooking skills! Prompts: What is your dish? How does it make you feel? What does it mean to you? When do you/did you consume this dish? Close your eyes and imagine where the meal was cooked, what sounds can you hear? What can you see? Whose voice can you hear?
By closing our eyes and relaxing we allow ourselves to imagine and let our bodies feel as though we have gone back in time; sometimes this can bring up mixed emotions. By closing our eyes we allow ourselves to become grounded and have a break from the present moment. This also activates our neurological, olfactory, and echoic memories. Slowly start to open your eyes, then write down what you feel after completing this activity. If you feel comfortable, you can retell your memories with your friends and family. You could even encourage them to also have a go at doing the activity.
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SUBMIT YOUR CREATIVITY TO OUR LIVE ONLINE EXHIBIT! We are offering you the chance to display your creativity on our online exhibit, celebrating what your blackness means to you. Everyones identity is different and is shaped by different experiences and lifestyles. The aim of this exhibit is for you to share your thoughts and feelings about identity. We have created a new website (www.myblackidentity.co.uk), dedicated to your creative pieces. Below and on the next page we have offered some advice on what you can send in, what format it should be in, and how to submit creative pieces via email. If you need any help or have anymore questions please do not hesitate to reach out to us. You can either email us at jaya@fyaonline.com, or message us on social media:
What can you send in? - The drawings you have coloured in - Collage - Recipe Activity - Poetry/Spoken Word/ Rap/ Sound, etc - Art piece - Textiles and clothes design - Vlog - Monologue/Story - And anything else you can think of! This exhibit is about YOUR IDENTITY, and so it is up to you how you choose to represent that!
Scan the QR Code below to check out the exhibit so far:
What format should it be? - Photo - Video - Word/Powerpoint document - Audio
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HOW TO SUBMIT YOUR PIECE Decide what you would like to submit (you can submit more than one thing!) Make sure the format of what you send is compatible (Check pg21 for guidance) Open up your email, and create a new email, put the subject of the email as 'My Black Identity submission' In the recipient section, send the email to : Jaya@fyaonline.com In the email, please let us know any additional information you want us to include about your creative piece, whether its what inspired you, how you carried it out, and where people can find you. Also let us know if you are okay with us sharing it online (You do not have to include any of this information, and you can submit pieces anonymously too!) Attach to the email your creative piece, by either dragging and dropping it from a folder, or clicking the paper clip logo. Once your creative piece has attached, click send. When we have recieved your piece, we will send a confirmation email to let you know it has worked. We will also ask you if its okay to share on our social media pages. Once you have replied, we will then send a follow up email when your piece is live, so that you can check it out and share it with anyone you would like to share it with. Any questions or problems, please do not hesitate to contact us via social media or the email above.
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THIS PACK IS SUPPORTED BY Learn more by scanning the QR codes!
Mojatu Foundation is a Charitable Incorporated Organisation and works to empower and support BME communities in Nottingham at risk from ongoing prejudice and whose needs are often overlooked. Our work tackles discrimination and helps BME communities to have the opportunities, skills, and tools to feel they can participate in the wider community. www.mojatufoundation.org
Fearless Youth Association (FYA), focuses on giving youth and BAME groups the opportunity to engage in learning and personal development skills while keeping out of trouble. With the decline in youth clubs, increase of knife crime, mental health issues and the disenfranchisement of youth, we recognised that youth are in desperate need of a place to express themselves, feel empowered and create friendships. www.fyaonline.com
Primary is an arts organisation based in Radford, which supports artistic research and production through the provision of studio and workshop spaces and a free public programme. They work with artists and communities through long-term collaborative projects; workshops and online activities. www.weareprimary.org
Castle Cavendish is a social impact company that improve people's lives, supports the business community and the voluntary sector to grow and develop, enhances social and economic conditions for the wider community. www.castlecavendish.org.uk
Nottingham City Homes vision is to create homes and places where people want to live. Our values define the way we work, set out whom we are as an organisation and shape customer expectations www.nottinghamcityhomes.org.uk
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Blackness is my braided kinky hair. Blackness is shea butter on my deep melanin skin. www.myblackidentity.co.uk