National Black Arts Alliance

Elouise celebrated her 80th birthday in the company of over 200 friends and family members at the HQ of her cultural life founded with her late husband Beresford. The Carmoor Road West Indian Centre was decked out in purple and white and the evenings entertained proceeded a gourmet three course meal.

Elousie showed that being community based can never undermine style and hospitality

The Delegates

If doctors are clearly “professionals” whereas mechanics are designated as “labourers” then why, and what is it, that places artists, along with chefs and teachers, into a grey area?

As artists, are we not the craft persons of a trade that we deliver professionally? I believed this to be so when I embarked to attend the conference “Unlocking Skills for a New Life” (USNL) My place was funded by Grundtvig Lifelong Learning Programme.

I have been working in the arts a very long time. I started my career in the arts with no formal training and have had little opportunity or finance to access Continual Professional Development.

None of this has stopped me from wanting to expand my skills from that of a poet to a workshop facilitator across different communities. I have developed from leading a basic poetry workshop in prison to coordinating long term artists’ residencies in all categories of secure accommodation.

I believe that I have served my apprenticeship and develop a craft that is my trade, to a professional level.

The conference was to reveal that what I was failing to record was the impact of my work and that of other artists on the inmates we make contact with. Of course each prison-based project was always fully evaluated but NBAA does not have (although it will have in the future) any measure of the personal development of the men.

These monitors that might seem simple to a “public” observer can make a major positive contribution to the overall assessment of an inmate’s ability to re-join society, manage living alone, find employment or take up further education.

The difference between a workshop and a lesson is that the former requires each participant to be able to work alone and in a team. Being part of a team means they have to be able to communicate clearly in order to achieve the identified tasks. Where previously I would have measured achievement solely on the completion of a set task, USNL gave me practical monitors of measure, such as communication development, confidence and reliability, amongst many others.

USNL showed the value of finding a common ground in which to share aspirations and values; to enable the focus to be on commonality, not difference; how team work brings a disparate group together so that they share commitment and how that brings out a personal sense of social responsibility.

Throughout I observed how easily the course facilitators shared their experience and not once did they become irritated by any inability to understand the aims of any one particular exercise.

I am pleased to achieve an endorsement of my time with USNL.

Further to the training I was asked to address the Personal Effectiveness and Employability through the Arts conference as a panel speaker. On behalf of each NBAA member I accept the following feedback with much humility:

During the PEETA conference in Rotterdam, SuAndi injected a poetic moment in the panel discussion on what it means to work in a prison. The moving poem about experiencing prison life brought artistic inspiration in a conversation about functionality. So did the strong examples she gave of performances with prisoners she realised. She is not afraid of sharing personal and humorous anecdotes in order to explain her passion for the artistic work in prison. Erica Kubic  October 2012

“Suandi’s inspiring contribution on Saturday gave me arguments in future discussions with policymakers at the Dutch Ministry of Justice” Ed Santman, National coordinator Prison Arts Education, the Netherlands.

PEETA http://www.peetaproject.com/conference.html

Superact CIC http://www.superact.org.uk/

SuAndi’s attendance was grant aided by Grundtvig UK National Agency www.grundtvig.org.uk

UK’s FIRST BLACK WOMAN MP

Friday 26th October, marked Diane Abbott’s 25 years as the first Black woman member of parliament.

Whether you support, approve or challenge her parliamentary career she deserves her place in the history books of black achievers. It was to this accord that Dr Deirdre Osborne took the independent decision to host a day of celebrations at Goldsmiths London.

Lord Ouseley presented the key note after a dedication poem by SuAndi

You can hear the delicacies of the Mancunian accent the wonderful humour of Moira Stuart OBE the honouring of Ken Livingstone and all the panels here: Goldsmiths Podcasting Service Please enjoy a selection of recordings from the panels on Journalism, Education, Politics,the Arts and Young People. http://www.gold.ac.uk/podcasts/

The day closed with performances by Kadija George Lizzy Dijeh, Malika Booker, Dorothea Smart, Linton Kwesi Johnson and SuAndi and the closing aria from Mary Seacole the Opera.

Archbishop-Tutu joins the seminar

A National Conversations for Change – supporting the speaking and listening skills of young people.  Tuesday, 23^rd October 2012 in partnership with Croydon College

The seminar provided an opportunity to look at the role we all share in strengthening communities, by preparing our young people to play an active part in helping to tackle local issues. The starting point is the Tutu Foundation’s perspectives around ‘Ubuntu’ is a continued commitment to supporting personal, social, health and economic (PSHE) education, as part of an intergenerational programme of opportunities and experiences that help young people grow and develop as individuals, members of families and members of their local communities.

Roundtable Chair: Professor Gary Craig Professor of Community Development and Social Justice at the University of Durham and Emeritus Professor of Social Justice at  the Wilberforce Institute for the study of Slavery and Emancipation at the University of Hull

Roundtable Contributors:

Harry Bundred is Director of the Institute of Training and Occupation Learning (ITOL) and a learning partner of the Tutu Foundation UK. http://www.itol.org/

Stewart Goshawk is Chief Executive of a new charitable foundation, the Wembley National Stadium Trust and as Principal Grants Officer at the City Bridge Trust. http://www.citybridgetrust.org.uk/cbt/

Denise Mellion is the Paul Hamlyn Foundation interim Head of Education and Learning http://www.phf.org.uk/landing.asp?id=7

Emma Moorby is Senior Project Manager at The Prince’s Foundation for Children & the Arts. www.childrenandarts.org.uk

Maria Paul is head of youth work at the Black-E Arts Centre, Liverpool. www.theblack-e.co.uk

SuAndi Cultural Director representing NBAA

The Cutting Season By Alison Locke

Publisher: Serpent’s Tail (13 Sep 2012) ISBN-10: 1846689120 ISBN-13: 978-1846689123. RRP £14.99

If Manchester had an Underground Tube system I would not have been one of those commuters with a book stuck to their face.

For this is a novel that demands quiet: a multi-layered crime story wrapped tightly with the bondage of slavery.

To tell you the truth it annoyed me for each time I thought I had figured it out (and isn’t that just bliss, pages if not chapters before the end?) not once, twice, but many: Locke redirected.

Her word drawings of the “Old House” to the slave quarters are like looking through a magazine but I did struggle with the main female character. I just couldn’t “see” her as well as the others and often I got lost in the racial identities of some of the support characters. But it did not matter one jot. I was compelled to read on.

Locke’s inspiration came from her discomfort at attending a wedding on an old plantation. I had heard and wondered how people holidayed in such locations. Locke turned her experience into a credible piece of fiction.

For me the book should have begun with the following;

I sure hope you weren’t gone so long as to forget where you came from, what this land means for the ….., who have been very good to people like your mother,…. People like you”

These words of “warning” are oft repeated and they symbolise the weird juxtaposition whereby Black people still exist within in the Deep South. Somehow the shared history of slavery has pushed the descendants of trade into people of expected gratitude. Alongside them sit the new indentured illegal workers of Mexicans, a people who have little to no worth within the local communities. And then one is murdered and her death exposes centuries of lies and deceit. Ah! but I cannot tell you more.

SuAndi

National Black Arts Alliance (NBAA) has recently been awarded £48,400 for the Afro Solo UK project, which will document the heritage story of African migrants into Greater Manchester from the 1920s to 1960s.

Were these gentlemen attendees at the Pan-African Congress in Manchester?

Dinesh Allirajah, Chair of NBAA, said: “We are delighted to have received this award. The history of Africans in Greater Manchester through the middle of the 20th century, including their contributions during the Second World War, has generally been overlooked. This is a chance to capture as many of these stories as possible while there is still time.”

Afro Solo UK will gather individual life stories and family members’ memories. There will also be research into newspaper articles, official statistical sources, including ship logs and records of the 1945 Pan-African Congress in Manchester (including identifying attendees using photographs). The material gathered will lead to the creation of an eBook publication of interviews and photographs, a printed souvenir brochure for the 2013 closing memorial ceremony at Manchester Cathedral and a portable digital exhibition.

An interactive website will enable people to upload further stories and images. Students from Manchester Metropolitan University (MMU) will devise a living history performance drawn from the research and there will be four creative writing workshops for the public, families and schools.

For the Afro Solo UK project, NBAA will be working in partnership with Manchester Metropolitan University drama department, Manchester Cathedral, Imperial War Museum North and Ahmed Iqbal Ullah Race Relations Resource Centre.

The Afro Solo UK website will launch shortly at  www.afrosolouk.com meanwhile if you  want further information on how to share your family story please email bba@blackartists.org.uk.. Or write to (Please not new address)

National Black Arts Alliance PO Box 312. Manchester M22 2DF. UK

The project title was inspired by the Afro Solo festival in San Francisco California the orignater of the name http://www.afrosolo.org/

Tutu Foundation Conversations for Change

John Amaechi OBE has been chosen to raise the Olympic Torch to new heights on Saturday morning GMT, 21 July 2012. With only one week to go to the start of the London 2012 Games, he will be bringing the Olympic Torch to the top of the Greenwich Arena where he will share the torch transfer moment, affectionately called a “torch kiss” with former Olympic gymnastics superstar, Nadia Komonich at the apex of the roof, looking down over the Olympic Park and the city of London.

The invitation to bear the torch commented that John had been “…chosen for this moment due to (his) inspirational achievements in basketball and in life, and the North Greenwich Arena chosen as it is the venue for basketball during the London 2012 Olympic Games”

On hearing the news, John said, “It’s an honour to be deemed worthy to carry the torch in company with the other torch bearers who are all standouts in their communities. I think of the Olympic torch as one of the pure and unwavering symbols of the true tenets of the Olympic games and to carry it and then share a torch ‘kiss’ with someone as emblematic of perfection in their art as Nadia Comăneci with be a memory I savour forever.”

This for a man who’s career took place in the USA but never forgot his homeland and returned to invest not only his time and knowledge but his earnings in helping young people.

June 30th join us at 7.30pm at Creative Corner Cafe

The Cafe Historique (Manchester) is currently organising its first summer school (July + August 2012) + is looking for individuals or organisations interested in delivering talks, walks, discussions, workshops, etc. exploring the history of activism + philanthropy in Manchester.

If you would like to contribute to the summer school programme, please email: cafehistorique@googlemail.com

Participants / attendees will be asked to make a donation to go towards the facilitator fee(s) or an organisation chosen by the facilitator(s).
The Cafe Historique (Manchester)
http://www.facebook.com/groups/cafehistorique/
http://www.meethelocals.blogspot.co.uk/