Fri 06 May 2022, 14.10-14.30

Katrina Ffrench, UNJUST

Katrina Ffrench is the Founding Director of UNJUST C.I.C, and was formerly the first chief executive of the national charity StopWatch. 

Katrina has overseen the publication of several evidence-based reports and has led a range of advocacy initiatives influencing policing policy and practice. A confident and effective communicator, in June 2020 she provided oral evidence to the Home Affairs Committee –The Macpherson Report: twenty-one years on inquiry. 

Katrina has also held the vice-chair and chair positions on The Mayor’s Office for Policing and Crime Pan-London Stop and Search Community Monitoring Network.  Katrina is a Black British Voices Project Steering Group member and a trustee of Transform Drug Policy Foundation.

In 2022, Katrina was elected as a Labour Councillor for Furzedown ward in the borough of Wandsworth.

Fri 06 May 2022, 10.30-10.50

Prof William ‘Lez’ Henry, University of West London

In this Reggaematical talk, Prof William ‘Lez’ Henry will take you on an audio-visual journey through some of the hidden struggles of Black people in the UK for equal rights and social justice, as framed through the lens of reggae music.

By using his ‘A Side – B Side’ metaphor, he will shed light on the treatment of peoples of African ancestry by racist Europeans in the UK, to explore how popular cultural artefacts are often utilised as viable, and valid, forms of resistance to transcendence. 

Sat 07 May 2022, 11.40-12.00

Levi Tafari, Charles University

Levi Tafari was born in Liverpool. He is the author of three poetry collections: Duboetry (1987), Liverpool Experience (1989) and Rhyme Don’t Pay (1998). His latest collection, From the Page to the Stage, is now available. His plays have been performed at the Unity Theatre and the Playhouse in Liverpool, as well as at the Blackheath Theatre in Stafford. He has also worked on educational projects running creative writing workshops in schools, colleges,universities, youth centres, prisons and libraries. 

Sat 07 May 2022, 11.15-11.35

Dr Martin Glynn, Birmingham City University

Reggae theatrics, expressed through Dub poetry with the maxim of ‘Words, Sound, Power’, articulated the voice of black British resistance throughout the 1970’s and 1980’s.

Operating as a cultural ‘counter narrative’ dub poetry contested traditional constructs regarding the understandings of black oppression and it’s resistance. It is my contention that using politicised orality such as ‘dub poetry’ generated both an ‘immersive’ and ‘sensory’ experience, within in the black community at that time, that transcended the academy, conference, and peer review journal.

Fri 06 May 2022, 11.20-11.40

Dr Gabriella Beckles-Raymond, SOAS and Birkbeck University

The disruptive impact of the Covid-19 pandemic has called us to consider fundamental life questions: What is the significance of human contact? What are the parameters of social responsibility? What is essential for our comfort and happiness?

Similarly, the 2020 Black Lives Matter uprisings placed a sharpened lens on already deteriorating patterns of intersectional inequality, exacerbated by the pandemic. While such questions often arise in response to catastrophic injustices, appearing as solutions to what is wrong (what is right), they contain within them, simultaneously, a provocation to consider how we want to live, problems notwithstanding (what is good).

Sat 07 May 2022, 12.05-12.25

Dr Michael McMillan, University of the Arts London

From the gaze of the post-Windrush generation, growing up and living Black in Britain, the public domain of the street has been the site of resistance for Black youth (often coded as male) against being Othered in a racist society.

In the British popular imaginary, Black youth have also been designated living on the street as if they had no homes to go to, and no families with values. On the contrary, the private realm of the Black home, was where Black youth had to ‘fix up’ and domestic creative agency of Black women was often expressed through our being and becoming.

The front room therefore signifies the liminal space between the public and private of realms of Black life, where intergenerational identification, belonging, rebelliousness (read back chat and rudeness) and resistance is enacted.This will be visually shown in this presentation with documentation of The West Indian Front Room, which was the Geffrye Museum’s most popular exhibition, because in speaking to ‘a kind of truth’ after Toni Morrison, about the material culture of front rooms created by Caribbean migrant families, it also spoke to other migrant and white working communities about shared aesthetics in the home.

Dr Michael McMillan (C) EM Fitzgerald 2021

With apologies, the recording of Dr Michael McMillian from this conference is not available. However, you can watch an extended version of his presentation via North Herts African and Caribbean Community.

Fri 06 May 2022, 14.35-14.55

Dr Sharon Walker, University of Bristol

For this talk, I am interested in the representation of the ‘Windrush generation’. Echoing, Taylor (2020) in her paper ‘Representing the Windrush generation’, I am interested in the shifts in representation – the continuities and discontinuities – of this migrant group of around half a million people who moved to the UK from Caribbean countries between 1948 to 1971.

However, I am particularly interested in the emergence of the term ‘Windrush generation’ – by whom is it used, and what it makes visible (or invisible). My thoughts in this area are still forming and this talk will be a good opportunity to engage with others.

Taylor. C. (2020). Representing the Windrush generation: metaphor in discourses then and now, Critical Discourse Studies, 17(1), 1-21.

Fri 06 May 2022, 13.45-14.05

Dr Christiana Abraham, Concordia University

This paper engages with a rarely discussed aspect of the Wind-Rush migration phenomenon: the children left behind. 

Hundreds, even thousands of children were left behind in the Caribbean when many young West Indian migrants climbed aboard the ships to seek new opportunities in England during the three to four decades of the Wind-Rush migration.  These children were left in the care of relatives or guardians, and while some were later sent for, a large number never reunited with their parents in the UK. This ‘generation left behind’ associated their parents in England with remittances and gifts, but they never bonded with their growing and extended families in the UK.  

Dr Christiana Abraham © Concordia University, photo by Lisa Graves

Conference recording not available.

Sat 07 May 2022, 14.55-15.15

Dr Joy White, University of Bedfordshire

Forty years of neoliberalism on either side of the Atlantic have embedded nihilistic, consumerist values as though that is the only way for society to move forward.

In this landscape, Black lives have been rendered as troublesome, and are perceived as having little value. Young people’s lives are increasingly informed by what it means to be poor in an affluent world, of feeling trapped in a system that appears to offer few routes out, on, or up. Terraformed is my attempt to connect the dots, to locate the struggles, the wins and the losses of young Black lives within a structural, institutional and historical context.  

In the UK, simmering below the surface of luxury new builds and obvious wealth, the ever-widening gap between the haves and have nots is revealed via the sonic landscape.

In this paper, I reflect on what it means to grow up ‘Black’ and ‘British’ in a hostile environment. While there is little doubt that young Black lives are lived with and through levels of disadvantage, we cannot underestimate the hope and resistance that comes from creativity in all its forms. Therefore, I will discuss how and why music matters, taking into account the impact of austerity, neoliberalism and racism in a specific east London neighbourhood.

Sat 07 May 2022, 15.20-15.40

Dr Audrey Allwood, Goldsmiths

Today we have reached the fifth generation since the WWII mass migration of Caribbean people to Britain. This enabled sizeable communities to form in the major cities in Britain.

Although there have been challenges to the settlement and integration, Caribbean people have also achieved much success. Indeed, the Caribbean influence on British culture is recognisable and recognised.

However, developing a sense of place and belonging ensues through traversing contested territory personally and through navigating a position in British society. The journey through the decades and generations has seen many consistencies, adaptations, and changes, forging local and transnational connections of tradition and culture.

At this post stage, I raise questions about the Caribbean community, but not in criticism, more in terms a focus regarding strengthening a sense of identity as Caribbean roots deepen and multiply in Britain.