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This documentary features Black women active in politics as well as community, labour and feminist organizing. They share their insights and personal testimonies on the double legacy of racism and sexism, linking their personal struggles with the ongoing battle to end systemic discrimination and violence against women and people of colour.

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This documentary features Black women active in politics as well as community, labour and feminist organizing. They share their insights and personal testimonies on the double legacy of ...

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Tate Britain presents a landmark group exhibition celebrating 70 years of Caribbean-British art

This exhibition explores the work of artists from the Caribbean who made their home in Britain, alongside other British artists whose work has been influenced and inspired by Caribbean themes and heritage.

Spanning visionary paintings to documentary photography, fashion, film and sculpture, Life Between Islands traces the extraordinary breadth and impact of Caribbean British art, in one setting.

This exhibition celebrates how people from the Caribbean have forged new communities and identities in post-war Britain - and in doing so have transformed what British culture and society looks like today.

The exhibition features over 40 artists, including Aubrey Williams, Donald Locke, Horace Ové, Sonia Boyce, Claudette Johnson, Peter Doig, Hurvin Anderson, Grace Wales Bonner and Alberta Whittle.
Research supported by Hyundai Tate Research Centre: Transnational in partnership with Hyundai Motor.
Email hello@tate.org.uk

​When you visit:​

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life between islands: caribbean-british art 1950s – now

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Life Between Islands: Caribbean-British Art 1950s - Now - Exhibition at Tate Britain | Tate

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Tate Britain presents a landmark group exhibition celebrating 70 years of Caribbean-British art This exhibition explores the work of artists from the Caribbean who made their home in Britain, alongside other British artists whose work has been influenced and inspired by Caribbean themes and heritage.

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A Canadian writer who has written a lot about being both of mixed race ancestry (African / South Asian) and starting his own family. Thoughtful and thought provoking ideas around intersectionality and intergenerational differences.

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Dr Maggie Aderin-Pocock MBE – Space Scientist

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Dr Maggie Aderin-Pocock MBE – Space Scientist

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Dr Maggie Aderin-Pocock, MBE is Space Scientist and science educator. She is an Honorary Research Associate in University College London’s Department of Physics and Astronomy. Since February 2014, she has co-presented the long-running astronomy TV programme The Sky at Night. Born in London to Nigerian parents in the late sixties, she moved between 13 schools during her childhood, struggling to show her potential in the face of what she later recognised as dyslexia. It was her dream of space travel that provided the ballast in those difficult years and, she is adamant that no one should write themselves off for want of a little inspiration.After graduating with a BSc in Physics, and later a PhD in Mechanical Engineering, from Imperial College London, she worked for the Ministry of Defence on projects ranging from missile warning systems to landmine detectors, before returning to her first love: building instruments to explore the wonders of space.Alongside her academic work, Dr Aderin-Pocock has relentlessly pursued a schedule of school visits – setting up her own company in the process – to give children a whistle stop tour of the universe as well as offering a glimpse of the excitement, the wonder, the sheer joy of prodding away at some of the biggest questions we humans wrangle with.The mention of her career has surprised many, including the Queen. “When I got my MBE, the Queen asked me what I did in life. When I told her that I was a space scientist, she was physically shocked… it’s a curve ball for some people because they expect me to say something different”.

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Six black British pioneers of STEM
Bethan Foulkes - Subject Advisor
It's Black History Month in the UK - a time to reflect upon and recognise the contributions of black people in Britain. Originally published on 23 October 2020, this very popular blog post highlights the life and work of six pioneers in science, technology, engineering and maths (STEM).

Mary Seacole 1805-1881

Mary was born in Jamaica and her father was a Scottish soldier. She learnt her nursing skills from her mother who had a boarding house for invalid soldiers. Mary enjoyed travelling and ended up staying in Panama for a time. It is here Mary encountered many cases of cholera and learnt much about the disease and how to treat it.

Mary visited Britain twice when she was younger. On her second visit, Mary went to the War Office to ask to be sent as a nurse to the Crimean War. She was refused but did not let this stop her. She travelled to Crimea anyway and set up a hotel to treat soldiers. She was also often found to be tending to soldiers on the frontline whilst under fire. Once the war was over, Mary lived out most of the remainder of her life in Britain. Her reputation during and after the war rivalled Florence Nightingale's, but her story was almost forgotten for a time after she died.

Dame Elizabeth Anionwu 1947-

Elizabeth began working in the NHS at the age of 16. She helped to set up the first nurse-led sickle cell and thalassaemia screening and counselling centre. This pioneering service led to the nationwide screening of babies. Elizabeth has worked tirelessly throughout her career to ensure that people with sickle cell disease and thalassaemia get all the support they need and deserve.

Through her work and research, Elizabeth has made a large contribution to the health and wellbeing of multi-ethnic communities. Elizabeth overcame stigma and racism to build a distinguished career as a nurse, health visitor, academic and campaigner.

Dr Donald Palmer 1962-

Donald is an Associate Professor of Immunology. His research involves investigating the way the human body changes with age, as well as the identification of 'markers' on the surfaces of cells. Through this research, he is able to learn about how the body protects itself from diseases such as cancer and infections.

Donald carried out post-doctoral work at Cancer Research UK and Imperial College, London. Donald is also a co-founder of Reach Society. The aim of this society is to encourage and inspire young people, especially black boys and young black men to realise their potential.

Dr Maggie Aderin-Pocock MBE 1968-

Maggie is a space scientist and science communicator. Maggie has worked on many projects throughout her career. These include project managing the development of hand-held instruments to detect landmines, developing a high-resolution spectrograph for the Gemini telescope and being the lead scientist at Astrium, managing observation instruments on a satellite which measured wind speeds to help investigate climate change.

Maggie also engages with many children and adults to inspire new generations of astronauts, engineers and scientists. Her talks also lead her to myth-bust about careers, class and gender whilst talking about how and why she became a scientist.

Dr Nira Chamberlain 1969-

Nira is a mathematical modeller and a chartered scientist. Nira has developed mathematical solutions for industries such as defence, aerospace and energy. He also writes mathematical models that solve complex problems.

Nira has achieved many accolades in his career. In 2014 he was named as one of the UK's Leading Practising Scientists by the Science Council. He was one of only two black scientists. In 2018 he also won the title of World's Most Interesting Mathematician.

Charlotte Armah 1970-

Charlotte is a Nutritional Biochemist at the Institute of Food Research. Her particular area of research looks at the effect of diet on human health. Her current focus is researching the effect a particular type of broccoli can have on our cardiovascular health.

Charlotte's career progression has taken her through pharmacology and onto nutrition, and during her studies she was one of a few people from an ethnic minority background.

Summary

This is a brief overview from just a small selection of black British scientists and people in STEM. You can find out about more scientists, as well as other inspirational black people, on the Black History Month website.

We have previously produced Women in science posters and will continue to feature diverse scientists in future to inspire you and your students.

Stay connected

We would love to hear about your favourite or most inspirational scientists. Please let us know in the comments below who you would like to see us include.

About the author

Bethan joined OCR in April 2019 and is a subject advisor for GCSE Sciences and Applied Science. Before joining OCR, Bethan taught biology to 11-18 year-olds for eight years, and was responsible for planning her school's biology schemes of learning. In addition to her teaching responsibilities, Bethan mentored PGCE students and NQTs in science, and oversaw all the trainees and NQTs within the school as professional tutor. In her spare time she enjoys dressmaking, quilting and many other different crafts.

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Six black British pioneers of STEM Bethan Foulkes - Subject Advisor It's Black History Month in the UK - a time to reflect upon and recognise the contributions of black people in Britain. Originally published on 23 October 2020, this very popular blog post highlights the life and work of six pioneers in science, technology, engineering and maths (STEM).

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 Marian Rogers Croak is a Vice President of Engineering at Google.She has previously served as Senior Vice President of Research and Development at AT&T, where she and her team worked on advancing voice over IP technologies, furthering the capabilities of audio and video conferencing

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 Marian Rogers Croak is a Vice President of Engineering at Google.She has previously served as Senior Vice President of Research and Development at AT&T, where she and her team worked on advancing voice over IP technologies, furthering the capabilities of audio and video conferencing

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Professor Fenton is Public Health England's regional director for London. He was named the second most influential Black Briton in 2020s Powerlist.

“It’s nice to be recognised, but more importantly, it’s nice to be represented in this group because it’s not just sports people or people who are cultural icons. We have people in the health service, we have people from other walks of life, and I think that shows the rich diversity of black leadership within our society,” Professor Fenton said.

He was recognised for his work in tackling the coronavirus pandemic, and particularly its devastating impact on Black, Asian and minority ethnic communities. Fenton has authored two reports on Covid-19 and inequality, the second of which included evidence from about 4,000 people, including Britain’s Black, Asian and minority ethnic communities and academics. “Somebody said to me in one of our interviews: ‘You’re one of the first people from government to ask us why and to listen to our stories’,” said Professor Fenton.

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rof Kevin Fenton, Public Health England's regional director for London, has lived in a lot of places over the past five decades. Born in Glasgow in 1966, he went to school and university in Jamaica, and worked in public health in the US for 10 years. But it's the UK, where he gained his PhD, that he calls home.

He was particularly moved and humbled to be named the second most influential black Briton in this year's Powerlist, behind the Formula One driver Lewis Hamilton, and followed by the grime artist Stormzy, the actor and screenwriter Michaela Coel, the editor-in-chief of British Vogue, Edward Enninful OBE, and the chief executive and general secretary of the Royal College of Nursing, Dame Donna Kinnair.

This year's list honoured people who have spoken truth to power at a time of increased debate about racial injustice, the list's publisher, Powerful Media, said.

"It's nice to be recognised, but more importantly, it's nice to be represented in this group because it's not just sports people or people who are cultural icons. We have people in the health service, we have people from other walks of life, and I think that shows the rich diversity of black leadership within our society," Fenton said.

He was recognised for his work in tackling the coronavirus pandemic, and particularly its devastating impact on black, Asian and minority ethnic (BAME) communities. Fenton has authored two reports on Covid-19 and inequality, the second of which included evidence from about 4,000 people, including Britain's BAME groups and academics. "Somebody said to me in one of our interviews: 'You're one of the first people from government to ask us why and to listen to our stories'," he said.

The report concluded that racism and discrimination suffered by people of colour contributed to the high death rates from Covid-19 in those communities.

"The reports came out at the same time as the Black Lives Matter movement ... So I think the conversations were real, they were authentic and it provided us with a way to say there are economic disparities, there are disparities in living conditions, but also people of colour are tackling other issues, including risks which influence their outcomes and we need to be honest about that as well," Fenton said.

Fenton was not surprised by the evidence that showed deprived areas were more likely to be affected by the coronavirus. "Having worked in infectious diseases for 25 years, I knew very well that those diseases and infections are not randomly distributed in the population. They find themselves concentrated - especially in those who have poor access to services, those who are socially and economically disadvantaged, or those not able to take full advantage of some of the preventive measures that we may have," he said.

Fenton added: "What we didn't appreciate was that the inequalities would have been so stark, so quickly." During the first wave of the pandemic, a disproportionate number of people from minority ethnic background who were key workers and consultants died from the virus. "So you had both ends of the economic spectrum being involved."

This is not the first pandemic Fenton has dealt with. While in the US, he led the Act Against Aids initiative with the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, between 2004 to 2008. At the time the focus was largely on developing countries, but Fenton pointed out that the US had a domestic epidemic of Aids, disproportionately impacting the African American community, which also needed attention.

While the links between inequalities, race and health were well-established in the US at the time, Fenton did pioneering work in engaging with the black community to raise awareness and improve access to healthcare.

"[The initiative] really brought together the pillars of African American communities to say, 'listen, there's a crisis in our midst and we need now for you to take on the banner to help us to talk about HIV, to address stigma, to improve diagnosis and linkage to care, and to improve outcomes.'" This meant working with historically black colleges, religious institutions and local businesses to develop programmes with and by black Americans.

After a decade in the US, he could no longer ignore the call to return to London. "The longer I was in the US, the more I realised that my values, my sense of self, what I wanted to accomplish, was going to be back here in London," he said.

Fenton was particularly keen to bring back some new thinking and energy from the US to the UK. He waited for the right opportunity and that came with the development of a new public health body, PHE. He has been working at the body since 2012.

His focus now is on protecting vulnerable communities during the second wave and preparing for the roll-out of vaccine, when one becomes available. He is particularly keen to work with local communities to build up trust and ensure they take full advantage of it when it becomes available.

He describes the inclusion of healthcare workers in the power list as a huge triumph in a particularly difficult year.

As well as his colleagues, his parents are especially proud. "I'm sure they must think, 'How can this be the same Kevin we had on our knees a few years ago?'"

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'We need to be honest': the PHE expert shining light on Covid and inequality

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rof Kevin Fenton, Public Health England's regional director for London, has lived in a lot of places over the past five decades. Born in Glasgow in 1966, he went to school and university in Jamaica, and worked in public health in the US for 10 years.

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Munroe Bergdorf - model and social activist

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Munroe Bergdorf - model and social activist

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Munroe Bergdorf is a model and social activist, who was assigned male at birth and who is mixed race. Bergdorf was due to be the first transgender model due to appear in a L'Oreal Paris U.K campaign in 2017, and around the same time as this was appointed as an LGBT+ advisor to the Labour Party in 2018. Unfairly, Bergdorf was fired by L'Oreal following on from comments Bergdorf had made in a Facebook post challenging systemic racism and white supremacy, and due to this controversy and continuing challenges from the media about her appointment she stepped down from her Labour Party role.

The reason why I've included Munroe as an inspirational figure is due to her continued strength and ability to stand up for what she believes is right, alongside her ability to forgive and look forward, even where she has been routinely attacked and scapegoated by parts of the media and corporations. Where many would have made themselves smaller following on from such media scrutiny, Munroe continued to speak loudly and remain visible.

“She’s a powerful and unstoppable force and the world should take notice”

Teen Vogue

Following on from George Floyd's death, Munroe publicly challenged L'Oreal's #blacklivesmatters post on Instagram for being performative, with it being three years prior that they terminated her job for speaking out against racism. After productive talks with L'Oreal's new President, Munroe agreed to be part of L'Oreal's new UK Diversity & Inclusion Advisory Board so that she could continue to advocate for both the trans and black community.

In August 2020, not only did British Vogue name her in the top 25 most influential women in the country, she was also in October 2020 named among '100 Great Black Britons'. She will also be the first transgender person to feature on the front cover of Cosmopolitan UK's magazine with its 50th anniversary issue, to be published 21st Jan 2022.

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Walter Tull - Dentist, footballer and second lieutenant in the First World War.

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Walter Tull - Dentist, footballer and second lieutenant in the First World War.

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- Born in Folkestone, Kent
- Son of Barbadian carpenter Daniel Tull and Kent-born Alice Elizabeth Palmer
- First professional black dentist in the UK
- Third black player to play in the English top division
- First black player to play for Glasgow Rangers
- First player in his team to enlist in the British Army at the start of the First World War
- Commissioned as second lieutenant in 1917 and one the first black officers in the British Army

https://www.theguardian.com/football/2019/aug/22/walter-tull-football-hidden-pioneer-first-black-professionals-barbados

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Walter Tull. It's a name every player and football fan should know. But in reality, few know the story of this incredible man and his contribution to society and the game. I believe this needs to be addressed.

Tull was one of the very first black professional footballers. Born in east London, he made his debut for Tottenham Hotspur in September 1909, before going on to play for Northampton Town. He was also the first black officer in the British army to lead white troops. A pioneer in football and the armed forces, he was tragically killed serving his country. His story has all the elements of a Hollywood blockbuster.

Tull and the other pioneering black players from that era - such as Arthur Wharton and Andrew Watson - led the way for Kylian Mbappé, Neymar, Raheem Sterling and icons including Pelé, Eusébio and Ronaldo. And yet their stories are so unknown.

The same can be said of women's football - the first female player of colour is thought to have made her senior debut in 1895. Some believe her name to be Emma Clarke, and historians are still debating her story. Whatever her identity, that the history of BAME women in the game is virtually unknown says so much about this neglected narrative.

I have a personal synergy with Tull; like his, my father is from Barbados. My curiosity about Tull's story led me to organise a trip to his ancestral home on the island. Thanks to Phil Vasili, the world's leading expert on Tull, I was able to identify the Clifton Hall Estate Plantation as a place where his father once lived.

I was enthusiastic travelling to the estate to learn more about the Tull family but soon found the brutal reality of where I was heading difficult to comprehend. This wasn't a trip where I would be viewing family pictures on the walls - Tull's family were slaves. His father was part of the first generation born free, but his grandfather was not.

On arrival at the great house it is hard not to be impressed by the beauty of the huge building and its surrounding grounds. But before long I was thinking about the horrors of slavery, somethingthat is impossible to fully get your head around. I also wondered how much Tull's father would have shared with his son - who never visited Barbados - about the family's life on the island. The family must have gone through so much. Could this have been where Tull got his resolve and bravery?

The owner of the estate, Massimo Franchi, a charismatic Glaswegian - and coincidentally a football agent - had no idea of Tull's connection to the property. He was delighted to know more and said he would ensure the Tull family would now feature as part of the estate tours.

The visit really moved me. Football is the world's game; it touches people. Black professional footballers are found in the majority of leagues across the globe - and yet our appreciation of a pioneer such as Tull is minimal. This surely needs to change.

After all, every black professional footballer owes a lot to him. Scratch that, football as a whole owes him. Can you imagine a game without black players?

Racism in football has been well documented: exclusion, abuse and humiliation. Without black pioneers opening doors for the generations that followed, where would we be? Personally I feel I owe a debt of gratitude to those who went before me.

And yet, before a friend made me aware of Tull a few years ago, I knew nothing about his story. In the 15 years I've been in and around professional football I cannot remember his name being mentioned. Not at training, not in the dressing room, not on the team bus.

It's important to recognise that lots of good people and organisations have been trying to raise awareness of Tull. Phil Vasili has dedicated much of his life to this, as have Howard Holmes at FURD (Football Unites, Racism Divides), Kick It Out, Fare Network, the Football Black List and the PFA. The armed services and others have worked hard to share the Tull story, too, while Northampton Town have proudly highlighted and celebrated Tull - there is a pub named after him outside the ground on Walter Tull Way and a statue in the centre of the town.

But imagine if Tottenham Hotspur named part of their new ground after him? Could Fifa pay tribute to him - naming a tournament or cup after Tull? How about incorporating his story into the education of apprentices across professional club academies?

My connection to Tull grew much stronger when I found out that his father was from Barbados and he was also of mixed heritage. I have worked to raise awareness of him on the island. Barbados has someone who should be an icon in the world game.

For a long time I've been doing community and charity work in an area of Barbados called Pine. I go there during the off-season when I visit family on the island. It's a place where young people are determined to do something positive with their lives, but they face low employment and a history of gang-related problems. Beyond the pictures of Barbados in the holiday brochures, life for those who live there can be tough.

Football has played a crucial role in bringing the community together. I saw first hand how the game was changing lives there thanks to the amazing staff at Pinelands Youth Soccer Academy and I wanted to bring Tull's story to them. We organised school visits and a tournament in his name. The response was wonderful. The pride the young people had in the association with Tull was evident on each occasion we told his story. Barbados has a football icon and they wanted to know more.

Walter Tull's impact on the young Barbadians was magical to see, and my community work in the country will always feature him. I will also be making a point of sharing his story more widely with teammates and friends.

The Fiver: sign up and get our daily football email.

We can all learn something from Tull's story. For me, it underlined the importance of pioneers. I'm told I am the first British Jewish footballer to play in the Premier League. I hope by doing more to share that myself, it will encourage players from the community to follow my lead.

So let's make a greater effort to maximise the positive change Tull's story can encourage, and celebrate this genuine hero of the world game.
Nick Blackman currently plays for Maccabi Tel Aviv Topics

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Walter Tull: football's hidden pioneer whose story everyone should know

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Walter Tull. It's a name every player and football fan should know. But in reality, few know the story of this incredible man and his contribution to society and the game. I believe this needs to be addressed. Tull was one of the very first black professional footballers.

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the camera's on/off exercise was incredibly moving, it really highlighted how often Black people are relegated to entertainment/sports, and emphasised the importance of finding and amplifying their voices.

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Book: Natives by Akala. Can't shout about this more!

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Book: Natives by Akala. Can't shout about this more!

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Sarah Forbes Bonetta is an interesting figure that challenges perceptions of Black people being part of British society in the Victorian era - https://www.npg.org.uk/collections/search/person/mp63230/sarah-forbes-bonetta-sarah-davies

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Sarah Forbes Bonetta is an interesting figure that challenges perceptions of Black people being part of British society in the Victorian era - https://www.npg.org.uk/collections/search/person/mp63230/sarah-forbes-bonetta-sarah-davies

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Sarah Forbes Bonetta (Sarah Davies) - Person - National Portrait Gallery

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Sitter in 4 portraits Born a Princess into a West African Yoruba dynasty, she was captured as a child by King Ghezo of Dahomey (1848) during a "slave hunt" war in which her parents were killed. In 1850, she was discharged by the King to Captain Frederick Forbes who persuaded the King to send her as a 'gift' to Queen Victoria.

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Bernardine Evaristo, author and academic. Bernardine is one of the 30 black female professors in the UK (out of a total 20,000). She is a pioneer in the field of literature, having been recently selected and the President of the Royal Society of Literature and writing many best sellers, my favourite "Girl, Woman and other".  This book also won her the Booker prize in 2019 - making her the first black woman and first black British person to win it. A true literary inspiration.

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The exercise around keeping our cameras on / turning them off highlighted to me how much there is to learn and the importance of proactively taking time to broaden our knowledge and look into famous / inspirational Black British people

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The exercise around keeping our cameras on / turning them off highlighted to me how much there is to learn and the importance of proactively taking time to broaden our knowledge and look into famous / inspirational Black British people

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I learnt a lot from reading 'Don't Touch My Hair' by Emma Dabiri https://www.penguin.co.uk/books/305/305706/don-t-touch-my-hair/9780141986289.html

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Emma Dabiri's groundbreaking Don't Touch My Hair is a scintillating, intellectual investigation into black women and the very serious business of our hair, as it pertains to race, gender, social codes, tradition, culture, cosmology, maths, politics, philosophy and history, and also the role of hairstyles in pre-colonial Africa

Bernardine Evaristo, The Times Literary Supplement Books of the Year

FASCINATING, educational, personal, humble and engaging. I urge you to read it!

Marian Keyes

I've been pleasantly engrossed this autumn in Emma Dabiri's nonfiction debut Don't Touch My Hair. Part memoir, part spiky, thoroughly researched socio-political analysis, it delves deep into the painful realities and history of follicular racism

Diana Evans, Observer Books of the Year

Both a richly researched cultural history and a voyage to empowerment.

Colin Grant, Guardian

Sensational

Women's Health

Pulled together with meticulous research, Don't Touch My Hair is an unmissable read by a writer who's set to become a household name

Francesca Brown, Stylist

The first book from one of Ireland's brightest literary talents, Don't Touch My Hair brilliantly deconstructs western views of everything from beauty to social value systems, and even to our understanding of time, all through the lens of how African cultures value hair.

Hotpress

Groundbreaking...Her sources are rich, diverse and sometimes heartbreaking. Some books make us feel seen and for me, that is what Don't Touch My Hair does. I would urge everyone to read it

Charlie Brinkhurst-Cuff, Guardian

An excellent and far reaching book...a call to arms for black African culture

Irish Times

A powerful and arrestingly relatable account of the rich history of Afro hair that seamlessly interweaves her personal perspective with meticulously researched historical facts

Metro

Read more

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'Groundbreaking . . . a scintillating, intellectual investigation into black women and the very serious business of our hair, as it pertains to race, gender, social codes, tradition, culture, cosmology, maths, politics, philosophy and history' Bernardine Evaristo From women's solidarity and friendship to forgotten African scholars and the dubious provenance of Kim Kardashian's braids, the scope of black hairstyling ranges from pop culture to cosmology, from prehistoric times to the (afro)futuristic.

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An incredibly inspirational female Black space scientist

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Standing on a large tripod and lurking conspicuously in the window of Dr Maggie Aderin-Pocock's dining room is an enormous telescope. At face value, it is hardly surprising. As a leading space scientist and Sky at Night presenter, it would have seemed curious if she didn't own such a socking great instrument. But as we talk in advance of her gig at the Observer Ideas Festival, I realise this telescope is no passing nod to a day job. Aderin-Pocock grew up with telescopes, and the telescopes have grown up with her.

"When I was young we were living in a council flat. We didn't have much money [so] I saved up some money and I got a telescope," she says as I glance enviously at the tripod. "But it was really not very good. It suffered from something called 'chromatic aberration' which means that as you look through it, the light coming through gets split up into different colours." It was a disappointment to a youngster desperate to look beyond the glare of the capital and gaze into the depths of the night sky. But then she spotted an advert for telescope-making classes in Camden, north London. Turning up to investigate, she encountered a curious scene. "There were lots of middle-aged blokes - they had large slabs of glass and they were just grinding away," she laughs. Bizarre or not, the following week she joined their ranks.

What followed was yet more tinkering - motors, some software, a sprinkling of electronics - and before long the telescope could not only gather light from distant stars, but track them, too. It was the start of a career that has led Aderin-Pocock to work on a host of big-budget projects that veritably groan under the weight of their auspicious capitals; the James Webb space telescope, the Gemini Observatory and the European satellite ADM-Aeolus among them.

In an era of vague ambitions and chop-change plans, it's not very often you meet someone who has always known what they wanted to do and is, pretty much, doing it. I say 'pretty much' because, to be fair, Aderin-Pocock isn't quite living the dream of her youth which was, ambitiously, "to go and visit the Clangers".

But, in shooting for their extraterrestrial abode, she landed among the stars: the instrument she built for the Gemini telescope in Chile, a spectrograph carefully constructed in the bowels of University College London, allowed scientists to analyse the light from these fiery bodies and gain insights into numerous properties, including the chemical reactions taking place deep inside. Getting up close to far-flung celestial bodies might be her jackpot, but as she tells me, peering at them from terra firma comes a close second. And while visiting pink mice on a far-away planet might conceivably have had its perks, there's no doubt Aderin-Pocock's world is an exciting alternative.

A fter graduating with a BSc in physics, and later a PhD in mechanical engineering, from Imperial College London, she worked for the Ministry of Defence on projects ranging from missile warning systems to landmine detectors, before returning to her first love: building instruments to explore the wonders of space. "The telescope is just mind boggling," she says of the Gemini instruments, her voice abuzz with her trademark fervour. "I like to call it a cathedral to science because sometimes I go out to Guildford Cathedral and [it has] this big vaulted ceiling. It is large and echoey, and the telescope is just the same."

Her enthusiasm is infectious. As she conjures up an image of the remote Chilean mountain, the vast, majestic telescope with its huge polished mirror and a glorious view of the clear starry skies above, it's hard not to catch the bug. Is it too late to retrain? To learn how to grind mirrors? To stand beside a behemoth of engineering, clutching a glass of Chilean white wine? Probably.

But it is exactly this flicker of possibility that Aderin-Pocock masterfully deploys to intrigue those who have yet to nail their colours to a career-mast. Indeed while she visibly relishes her own experiences in the field, her desire to bring such opportunities to others goes far beyond mere magnanimity. It's positively a campaign.

Alongside her academic work, Aderin-Pocock has relentlessly pursued a schedule of school visits - setting up her own company in the process - to give children a whistlestop tour of the universe as well as offering a glimpse of the excitement, the wonder, the sheer joy of prodding away at some of the biggest questions we humans wrangle with. "They can't see the correlation between what they are studying in the classroom and what people do outside as scientists," she says, particularly of girls.

Fortunately when it comes to plumbing the potential of science, Aderin-Pocock doesn't have to go far for inspiration. "One of the things I do is I go and say, these are some of the jobs I've had: I've hung outside of aeroplanes taking images of missiles going underneath me. I've stood in the moonshadow of a telescope in Chile." It's a very different mission to engineering such instruments, but she is no less passionate about it.

Perhaps it's small wonder. Born in London to Nigerian parents in the late sixties, she moved between 13 schools during her childhood, struggling to show her potential in the face of what she later recognised as dyslexia. It was her dream of space travel that provided the ballast in those difficult years and, as Aderin-Pocock will explain at the Ideas Festival on 12 October, she is adamant that no one should write themselves off for want of a little inspiration.

It is, however, only part of her goal. Concerned that unenthusiastic adults might squash the burgeoning interests of a younger generation, or reinforce negative stereotypes, Aderin-Pocock is determined to challenge the dusty notions grownups hold of science - and scientists - as well. "My idea is that we need to change society as a whole," she says. Indeed she seems undaunted by what could arguably be viewed as a Herculean task, and perhaps she is. After all her reach extends far beyond the classroom. "I'm really lucky because I get to speak to four-year-olds and sometimes the prime minister," she says later, before adding with a grin, "and I sometimes use the same demonstrations for both."

H er drive to democratise science is the antithesis of the ivory tower that so many scientists are accused of both building and reinforcing. This desire to bring science to everyone is well and good, they might argue, but arming everybody with a telescope surely undermines the intellectual, rigorous work of the academic community? Aderin-Pocock brushes it aside. "There's a few big telescopes in the world but there are millions of amateurs, so they are keeping a much better vigil on the night sky than we can." Even academic controversies, she believes, have a value in being aired publicly. In March scientists were tripping over themselves to declare that evidence of gravitational waves - an elusive signature of cosmic inflation following the big bang - had been found. Just months later, the claims could be turning to dust. Galactic dust. Aderin-Pocock is pragmatic. "To me I don't think it is a bad thing at all, because it shows how science works," she says. But communicating the scientific method, and scientific messages, goes beyond preaching to the choir.

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Maggie Aderin-Pocock MBE. Photograph: Richard Saker for the Observer

Having worked on space satellites designed to collect data for climate research, Aderin-Pocock is no stranger to the strength of feeling regarding issues of global warming. But, she says, the scientific community could do with examining and understanding just why climate change sceptics think the way they do. "I don't think we'll say climate change isn't happening," she hastens to add. "But we might see it from a different perspective, perhaps a more human perspective, and therefore present the data in a different way or something." With so much at stake, she points out, we need to get everyone on board.

Perhaps unsurprisingly, given her candid approach to science and verve for communication, it wasn't long before her quest to invoke a societal sea change got a boost: the BBC wanted her on board for its new wave of science programmes, leading to Aderin-Pocock's 2011 documentary on the moon and, a year later, a documentary on satellites. Vibrant and fun these were radically different to the lecture-like offerings of the past, or as Aderin-Pocock recalls, "the sort of thing you saw late night on BBC2 with a chap wearing a kipper tie".

Instead they were packed with ad hoc demonstrations, slick graphics and the unquenchable energy of a true space expert. As Aderin-Pocock's TV career took off, new opportunities beckoned: in December last year, it was announced that she would be joining the team of the long-running astronomy show Sky at Night. She was thrilled. But there was a sting in the tail. "A number of people [said], 'oh well it's just the BBC being politically correct'," she says. "And I [thought] I've studied, I've got a degree, a PhD, I have been working in the field for a number of years and yet I am still not qualified because I am black?!". It wasn't to be the last such insult - a similar taunt in the Daily Mail followed an appearance by Aderin-Pocock and fellow scientist Dr Hiranya Peiris on Newsnight in March. Such experiences, she says, have left her sceptical about the much-mooted notion of TV quotas. "[People] think there are quotas there now - but there are not," she says. "That's my fear with quotas - people will always assume you are there for tokenism. And that gets very frustrating."

Changing the stereotype of scientists, and TV personalities, from being white and male, she believes, lies in targeting the ambitions of children, showing them their scientific heritage and chipping away at preconceptions. "I have been trying to get out there and show people, show black kids, that to be a scientist isn't an odd thing," she explains. "Again it is these stereotypes - many kids will see black sports people, black singers, but they won't see a black scientist and so they eliminate that from their hit list of things to do."

Aderin-Pocock's to-do list is certainly a long one. And it is just as imaginative as it was when she was planning to rub shoulders with the soup dragon. With Nasa rolling out plans to land astronauts on Mars, a new era of manned missions is beckoning - and Aderin-Pocock hasn't quite given up hope of hitching a ride. Her eyes practically sparkle at the thought. "I was brought up the late 1960s - born 1968 - and [in] 1969 people landed on the moon," she says. "I was born in that bubble of excitement, of people going out there and I always thought: when am I going out?" Indeed despite having a demanding career - and young family - to keep her feet firmly on the ground, the idea of space flight is just as exciting as ever.

"I still want to go," she beams. "It's my dream." And that, perhaps, is Aderin-Pocock's most fundamental message: we all need one of those.
Topics

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Maggie Aderin-Pocock: how a space-obsessed schoolgirl battled the odds to become a top scientist

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tanding on a large tripod and lurking conspicuously in the window of Dr Maggie Aderin-Pocock's dining room is an enormous telescope. At face value, it is hardly surprising. As a leading space scientist and Sky at Night presenter, it would have seemed curious if she didn't own such a socking great instrument.

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Tune into Black British stories more, visit the Black Cultural Archives 

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Tune into Black British stories more, visit the Black Cultural Archives 

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Highlighting the concept of representation in all aspects. It's important to showcase Black individuals who have achieved things across the spectrum as a way of challenging narratives about what being black is, and how this shapes future generations.

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Highlighting the concept of representation in all aspects. It's important to showcase Black individuals who have achieved things across the spectrum as a way of challenging narratives about what being black is, and how this shapes future generations.

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Ensuring i find ways to ensure my learning stays with me and isn't just a tick box exercise.
eg Highlighting passages in books and going back to it over and over to ensure i remember what resonated
Actively seek out inspirational black british figures and follow (and promote) their work.

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How we only celebrate Black Brits who fit into the white cultural idea of what successful or inspirational means

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How we only celebrate Black Brits who fit into the white cultural idea of what successful or inspirational means

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Noble, D. (2017). Decolonizing and Feminizing Freedom: A Caribbean Genealogy. United Kingdom: Palgrave Macmillan UK.

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Noble, D. (2017). Decolonizing and Feminizing Freedom: A Caribbean Genealogy. United Kingdom: Palgrave Macmillan UK.

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This book traces the powerful discourses and embodied practices through which Black Caribbean women have been imagined and produced as subjects of British liberal rule and modern freedom. It argues that in seeking to escape liberalism’s gendered and racialised governmentalities, Black women’s everyday self-making practices construct decolonising and feminising epistemologies of freedom. These, in turn, repeatedly interrogate the colonial logics of liberalism and Britishness. Genealogically structured, the book begins with the narratives of freedom and identity presented by Black British Caribbean women. It then analyses critical moments of crisis in British racial rule at home and abroad in which gender and Caribbean women figure as points of concern. Post-war Caribbean immigration to the UK, decolonisation of the British Caribbean and the post-emancipation reconstruction of the British Caribbean loom large in these considerations. In doing all of this, the author unravels the colonial legacies that continue to underwrite contemporary British multicultural anxieties. This thought-provoking work will appeal to students and scholars of social and cultural history, politics, feminism, race and postcoloniality.

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Additional Information on Betty Campbell 

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Additional Information on Betty Campbell 

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Betty Campbell

"I was determined that I was going to become one of those people and enhance the black spirit, black culture as much as I could." (Betty Campbell, 2016)

She was the first black headteacher in Wales – “As a champion of Wales' multicultural heritage, she sought to provide a sense of belonging and identity for young people and the wider community.” (itv news 2021)

Betty Campbell was born and lived in Butetown, Cardiff – also known as Tiger Bay. This is an area which in 2019 was identified as the highest area of child poverty in Wales (46% of children). In 1960 Betty was one of only 6 women who attended the Cardiff Teacher Training College in the first year they were allowing admission of women on the course.

In the 1970’s she became a teacher and consequently the  headteacher for Mount Stuart in Bute Town her local area and remained there for 28 years.  On becoming the first black headteacher in Wales , and following a trip to the USA met people from the civil rights movement, she introduced a curriculum to the school which taught about slavery, black history and the system of apartheid that was current at that time in South Africa.

On his only visit to Wales in 1998, Nelson Mandela, met with her as part of her work with the Commission for Racial Equality.  She also worked with the Home Office’s race advisory committee.

Later in 1990s & 2000’s she became a city councillor  within Cardiff.  The school became a “template for multi-cultural education” and Mrs Campbell worked with The Paul Hamlyn Foundation on Education, contributing to “Learning to Succeed – A Radical look at Education today and a Strategy for the Future”(NCE, 1993).

In 2003 Betty Campbell was awarded an MBE for services to education and community life and in 2015 she received a lifetime achievement award from Unison Cymru for her contribution to black history and welsh education.  She helped create Black History Month.

In 2021 a statue was unveiled honouring Betty Campbell in the centre of Cardiff – only the second statue of a women in the city. The choice of subject for the statue was by public vote and the design is more than a statue of her but that of history and connections.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=N-9Ct_Gvhes

https://www.bbc.co.uk/programmes/profiles/1p7r3fkpsWTbQ9shCFh1QXc/betty-campbell

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we acknowledged our gap in knowledge and agreed to research inspirational Black British figures and bringing this back to team meetings. We've done this once so far and agreed to continue. We also decided that there are areas of our work where we can have more Black representation - e.g. in training, obviously recruitment, comms etc.

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Lavinya Stennett - CEO of The Black Curriculum, a social enterprise that Lavinya started as a small uni project just 3 years ago

Anne-Marie Imafidon - child prodigy mathematician (passed A level maths at age 11!!), founder of Stemettes and current arithmetician on Countdown

Lord Simon Woolley - founder of Operation Black Vote and first Black principal of an Oxbridge college (Homerton College, Cambridge)

Tobi Oredein - journalist and entrepreneur, founder of Black Ballad

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Some readings about the experiences of Black social workers

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Some readings about the experiences of Black social workers

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Obasi (2021)

Black social workers: Identity, racism, invisibility/hypervisibility at work

https://journals.sagepub.com/doi/full/10.1177/14680173211008110

https://www.communitycare.co.uk/2021/06/04/black-ethnic-minority-social-workers-disproportionately-high-asye-failure-rate-figures-show/

https://socialworkers.blog.gov.uk/2021/09/23/using-my-identity-and-areas-of-difference-to-drive-authentic-community-led-social-work/

https://blogs.kcl.ac.uk/socialcareworkforce/2020/10/10/black-history-month-in-social-work-and-social-care/

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Another civil rights figure in the UK who took part in the Bristol bus boycott, and focused on housing reform.

One thing that particularly struck for me was learning about the 'Pardner' system. This was a decentralised community solution to support Black people joining the housing market. In the US, there is a long storied history of housing discrimination from red-lining, under-market evaluation of Black owned houses and environmental racism. This story highlights the racial disparities that exists in the UK.

"“We had to be our own banks,” he says. A group of people would pay in a sum of money every month, and each member would take a turn in drawing from the pot. If 10 people put in £100 each month, they would each take turns drawing down the £1,000 in a form of interest-free credit. In the 70s, he explains, a house in St Pauls cost between £400 and £500, so pardner money was enough to buy a house. The system is still in use today."

https://www.theguardian.com/world/2020/dec/17/guy-reid-bailey-the-man-who-sparked-the-bristol-bus-boycott-and-then-fought-to-desegregate-housing

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uy Reid-Bailey was a hero of a civil rights movement in the UK that is only now being given its due. A central figure in the struggle to end the unofficial segregation - the notorious "colour bar" - rampant in the UK in the 1960s, he took part in the Bristol bus boycott, which is credited with encouraging politicians to bring in the first Race Relations Act in 1965. He went on to found the first black housing association in Bristol and set up a cricket club to challenge discrimination in sport - one that is still bringing joy to generations of black Bristolians today.

When he arrived in Britain in 1961 at the age of 16, Reid-Bailey was a self-described "country boy" from Jamaica. His parents had sent him to live with his aunt in Bristol, assuming that the "mother country" would give him a good education. But he quickly realised, he says, that it was "a mother without any affection for black people". Reid-Bailey had three brothers in Jamaica, but told them not to follow him to the UK because "I had to grow up very quickly and I wouldn't wish my other brothers to experience what I did". Not much has changed in that regard. He still believes that "if you're a black person, you suffer a mental lack of freedom".

Almost 60 years on, the hurt in his voice is palpable as he describes the shock of having constantly to look over his shoulder, "because there was always a gang somewhere likely to attack". Living in perpetual fear, he says, affected him throughout his life. "I felt I had to be serious at all times. I found it very difficult to relax, whether it was at home or out when I was younger. It was difficult to have fun."

It was not just the physical racism that wounded. Reid-Bailey vividly recalls walking the streets of Bristol in the 60s looking for a home, and being confronted by the ubiquitous sign "No blacks, no Irish, no dogs". Being put "in the same category as a dog was heartbreaking", he says. White landlords would rarely rent to black people, which, before the Race Relations Acts came into force in the UK, was perfectly legal.

That was one of the reasons he lived with his aunt and her husband until well into his 20s. It allowed him to avoid the deeply racialised housing market, where overcrowded, shared accommodation was often all that was offered to the black community. When we think of segregated living areas in towns or cities, we often think of the US, but Britain had many of the same ingredients. In Bristol, St Pauls was the district where black immigrants found themselves - a tight, closed-in area with everyone packed on top of one another. It is a vibrant neighbourhood, but it also locked the community into a cycle of living in cramped housing in a polluted and deprived environment that continues today.

Reid-Bailey was only able to secure his own three-bedroom house in the 80s. One problem was that, as in the US, banks in the UK were complicit in housing discrimination. They made it "very difficult to get a mortgage" if you were black, he says, which restricted would-be buyers to the bottom end of the inner-city housing market. To get round this, those who did not want to wait as long as Reid-Bailey used a community solution - the "pardner" system.

A copy of the Bristol Evening Post from 1963 records Reid-Bailey as a 'bewildered Jamaican'. Photograph: Olumedia/The Guardian

"We had to be our own banks," he says. A group of people would pay in a sum of money every month, and each member would take a turn in drawing from the pot. If 10 people put in £100 each month, they would each take turns drawing down the £1,000 in a form of interest-free credit. In the 70s, he explains, a house in St Pauls cost between £400 and £500, so pardner money was enough to buy a house. The system is still in use today.

In part due to his personal experience, Reid-Bailey became a champion of affordable housing. In 1985, with the support of Bethel United Church, he founded the United Housing Association - the first black housing association in Bristol. At first it offered sheltered accommodation for elderly people who had never been able to buy their homes and were in dire straits in their retirement. "Black people were not getting a fair share and it was difficult to get accommodation from other associations," he says.

By the time he stepped down 20 years later, they were "housing quite a lot of people", as Reid-Bailey modestly puts it: more than 2,500 units, ranging from one- to five-bedroom homes, for those in need. In 2005, he was awarded an OBE for his work. "It was remarkable because I felt I had achieved something I did not dream of doing until it happened," he says.

Racial discrimination in the housing market is still a significant problem. Ethnic minorities have to wait longer for social housing and are more likely to be accommodated in flat shares and areas of deprivation. The government's hostile environment immigration policy, which imposes a legal responsibility on landlords to check the immigration status of tenants, has exacerbated this. Reid-Bailey believes there is still a great need for a black-led housing association to provide accommodation for black people. At 75, he continues to offer advice to what is now the United Communities Housing Association.

But Reid-Bailey first made history in 1963 when he was, reluctantly, at the centre of the Bristol bus boycott. The boycott was one of the first mass mobilisations to challenge racism in the UK. At the time, he was out of work, and the bus company was recruiting. He saw it as a potential career and, being relatively new to the country, was still fascinated by the double-decker buses.

His mentor was Paul Stephenson, who was working at a local youth club and would go on to become one of Britain's leading civil rights activists. In the folklore of the boycott, the job interview that Stephenson helped set up has been painted as a test case used by activists to prove that bus companies were operating a colour bar. But if that was the case, the 18-year-old Reid-Bailey was unaware of it. He was just excited at the thought of getting a job. Despite calling in advance to confirm the interview, when he arrived he was greeted by a bemused receptionist who scampered to the office of the manager exclaiming that "the appointment for two o'clock is here and he's black".

The then manager of the Bristol Omnibus Company, Ian Patey, told Reid-Bailey that he "couldn't employ blacks". Later that evening, Reid-Bailey reported the news to Stephenson at the youth club, and the following day both went back to the bus company to protest. But Patey refused to bend, and the Transport and General Workers Union sided with the bus company. Soon, Reid-Bailey's personal disappointment was transformed into a months-long boycott involving the Caribbean community, leading politicians and supporters - an initiative that ended the colour bar on Bristol's buses. Reid-Bailey also credits the mobilisation for bringing about the 1965 Race Relations Act, which marked the beginning of the outlawing of racial discrimination in the UK.

Despite being involved in the protest, Reid-Bailey never worked on the buses. He did a short stint as a mental health nurse before getting a job working for the British Aircraft Corporation building parts for Concorde. He remembers his father's dreams that he would become a lawyer or a doctor, and although he never got that opportunity, he is proud that he persevered and completed a social work degree at Bristol Polytechnic in the 80s and worked as an education and welfare officer for 20 years. His two sons and three daughters all went to university, too, and are what he calls "professional people".

His education had to be pursued in evening classes because, when he moved to the UK, he says, it was compulsory for those arriving to register for work at age 16. The school he attended offered instruction in English, maths and history but not, he says, in the subjects he needed most. "I had to do my own research after I found out the life I was going to have. I had to find out a lot about what is known as Great Britain." In other words, he was taught nothing about Britain's empire or the Commonwealth, nor told anything that would instil pride in black history and help sustain him against the barrage of discrimination he faced.

A plaque at Bristol bus station commemorating the bus boycott of 1963, showing, left to right: Prince Brown, Owen Henry, Paul Stephenson, Guy Bailey and Roy Hackett. Photograph: Olumedia/The Guardian

Half a century later, he is frustrated that so little has changed. "I would like to see the schools teach black history and other history. How England become the world manager, the head of the Commonwealth. Those things are not being taught in school and they should be, so that younger people can understand when a black person says they are not being treated the same as white people."

What kept him going was sport. "I used cricket as a sword, a weapon to show I could be as good as anyone else," he says. After experiencing frustration at traditional clubs, which he felt were favouring white players, Reid-Bailey took matters into his own hands by helping to found the Bristol West Indies Cricket Club (BWICC) in 1963.

It was by no means easy. Some clubs initially refused to play against them. Reid-Bailey recalls that "one club in Bristol wouldn't offer us a fixture until we played a trial game to show them we were good enough. We beat them so badly, they had to play us." The club rapidly became one the best in the west of England. They were so successful that the local newspaper reported on their games, and when they travelled to play other clubs they were joined by up to six coachloads of their followers. Cricket was at the centre of Caribbean community life until the 90s, given focus by the fact that from the 70s onwards, the West Indies were the best team in the world.

"Cricket was the only thing we could hold on to," says Reid-Bailey. "It helped us be seen as a force to reckon with, and it was something we could actually say was ours." The success of the BWICC and others like it was something the whole community took pride in. The club still exists today. It joined with another local team to form the Bristol West Indian Phoenix Cricket Club, and is based at the Rose Green Centre, which Reid-Bailey helped raise funds to build. He is extremely proud that the club is still providing facilities and programmes for young people from ethnic minorities in the area.

Reid-Bailey's commitment to the community remains undiminished. He is still involved with the cricket club and the housing association, attending meetings and offering advice. He describes his 30 hours a week working with unaccompanied asylum seekers and young people with issues at home for the housing association and social enterprise Riverside as "part-time". Covid-19 may have trapped him indoors, but there is no sign of him letting up.

The recent Black Lives Matter protests have energised him because "they have opened the eyes of a lot of people who were hiding behind race equality. Over 50-odd years in England, I have been waiting to see the sort of changes that Black Lives Matter has brought about. It has established the strength of how people feel about racism and provided a way forward. I am more hopeful that things can change."

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Guy Reid-Bailey: the man who sparked the Bristol bus boycott and then fought to desegregate housing

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uy Reid-Bailey was a hero of a civil rights movement in the UK that is only now being given its due. A central figure in the struggle to end the unofficial segregation - the notorious "colour bar" - rampant in the UK in the 1960s, he took part in the Bristol bus boycott, which is credited with encouraging politicians to bring in the first Race Relations Act in 1965.

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Bristolian civil rights campaigner and social worker - led a bus boycott in 1963 over hire ban of Black and Asian bus drivers. 60 day boycott led to policy being revoked

https://www.theguardian.com/society/2020/oct/01/paul-stephenson-the-hero-who-refused-to-leave-a-pub-and-helped-desegregate-britain

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In 1964, Paul Stephenson walked into the Bay Horse pub in Bristol and ordered half a pint. A bartender served him, but when the pub's manager noticed, he told Stephenson to get out, saying: "We don't want you black people in here - you are a nuisance." Stephenson refused, and the police were called. Eight officers arrived to arrest him for refusing to quit a licensed premises and held him in the police cells until midnight.

The Bay Horse pub may have been notorious for banning black people, but it was not alone. In 1964 it was legal in the UK to refuse service on the basis of someone's skin colour - and black and Asian people found themselves turned away not just from pubs but from working men's clubs - and even from housing and jobs.

Stephenson's one-man sit-in was a way of protesting about this. Stephenson was the first black youth worker in Bristol and fresh from leading a successful boycott of the city's bus company. For years, the Bristol Omnibus Company had been happy to take money from black and Asian passengers but, backed by its trade union, would not employ black or Asian workers on its buses. The fight to overturn this policy took months and had turned the attention of the whole country to this informal segregation. While the activists had been triumphant, it was not without personal cost: Stephenson had lost his job as a supply teacher for being too "controversial".

Looking back, the 83-year-old says that the arrival of so many officers in a show of force was the police sending a message about upholding the colour bar - because "they knew I was a civil rights activist". His subsequent trial became national news. It lasted five days in the magistrates court, with each of the eight officers giving different accounts of the event. What they all agreed on, however, were claims that Stephenson was "aggressive" and had tried to "force his way back into the pub".

The Bristol Evening Post reported this police line, under the headline: "West Indian leader made a fool of himself." Thankfully for Stephenson, not everyone was so easily fooled. An Irishman who had been in the pub had witnessed Stephenson's behaviour and confirmed his account. The charges against him were dismissed and he was awarded £25 in costs. "I was vindicated," he says, more than 50 years later - and it is clear the decades have not dimmed his satisfaction. After all, this was not just a victory against one pub - following his win, the new prime minister, Harold Wilson, sent Stephenson a personal telegram to say he would change the law. And in 1965, the first Race Relations Act was brought in, outlawing discrimination in public places.

Paul Stephenson campaigning in Bristol in 1963. Photograph: Tom Pilston/The Independent/Rex/Shutterstock

Paul Stephenson was born in Rochford, Essex, in 1937, to a west African father (from whom he was estranged) and mixed-heritage mother, Olive Stephenson (who was herself estranged from her African father). At three years old, he was evacuated to a care home in Great Dunmow in the Essex countryside, with seven white children. He stayed there for seven years, and loved the village so much he "secretly used to weep" at the idea of leaving. He made lifelong friends and spent his time playing in the fields, rabbiting and paddling in streams.

If it sounds like an Enid Blyton novel, it was also complete with the kind of casual racism of those books. He was treated as a curiosity; one of his primary school teachers even cut locks out of his hair to keep as a good-luck charm. When his mother visited the village, people assumed she was a man because she was wearing her Women's Reserve Army Corps clothes and "they had never seen a black woman in an army uniform". And when a white woman stared at him in the butchers, exclaiming she "could eat him up", his terrified five-year-old mind decided this was why there were no other black children in the village.

When he returned to London in 1947, the diversity of the city did not mean he was made to feel less of an outsider. His mother was having difficulty readjusting to civilian life and he remained in care. On his way to school he was confronted with open hostility and shouts of "blackie", "monkey" and the N-word. After 1948 - when immigration from the colonies began in earnest - the racism only increased. At secondary school he was once more the only black child in his class, but had been somehow transformed from "a cuddly curiosity to a racial threat". While caning him for a misdemeanour, Stephenson's teacher asked him: "Why are you looking so black?"

In 1953, he joined the RAF, as a cadet, and served until 1960. It was an important time for his development, he says, and it was here, particularly while posted in Germany, that he started working with young people - children of service people and with the Scouts - which became his life's work. Later in life, he wanted to give back to the system that had brought him up, and he and his wife fostered eight children.

After the RAF, he went to college to study youth work before moving in 1962 to Bristol to be a youth and community development worker and a supply teacher. Then came the bus boycott. Stephenson, unlike the boycott's other leaders - Roy Hackett, Guy Bailey, Owen Henry, Audley Evans, Prince Brown - was not from the Caribbean, and he never considered his time in Britain as provisional. This perhaps added extra urgency to his desire to see a more equal British society. He called his autobiography Memoirs of a Black Englishman, because "this has always been my country", he says now.

Stephenson with fellow protester Guy Bailey in 2003, on the 40th anniversary of the bus boycott campaign. Photograph: Tom Pilston/The Independent/Rex/Shutterstock

That his countrymen did not always recognise this was difficult. Even the Queen Mother, when he met her while serving in the RAF, asked as a first question: "Which part of America are you from?" But he used this prejudice to his advantage when he organised the bus boycott. To confirm the company was refusing to allow black or brown drivers and conductors, the boycotters wanted a test case. So Stephenson phoned the company to secure an interview as a driver, in Bailey's name. The company assumed his faultless English accent meant he was white, and agreed. But when Bailey arrived, and they saw he was black, he was immediately sent away.

Stephenson was the protesters' spokesman and won an important legal battle, suing Ron Nethercott, the regional secretary of the Transport and General Workers Union (TGWU) - which strongly supported the colour bar - after Nethercott had called him "irresponsible and dishonest" in the Daily Herald. Stephenson was awarded £500 in damages, and the case was a declaration that the activists would not tolerate being smeared.

Yet not everyone admired his stance, or his tactics. Bill Smith, of the city's West Indian Association, insisted the protest "undermined racial harmony in the city". The Bishop of Bristol agreed, despite Stephenson considering him a friend. Those who did stand on the side of equality paid a high price. Learie Constantine was a cricketing star turned Trinidad's high commissioner, and one of the protesters' most vocal cheerleaders. As a result he was removed from his post by the Trinidadian prime minister, Eric Williams, for getting involved in a "local dispute".

Accusations of being too radical followed Stephenson for years, but he has no regrets. "You can't have true racial harmony without racial justice. So, you need to be disruptive." His activism garnered international attention, and in 1964 he was invited to the US by the National Association for the Advancement of Colored People (NAACP).

His first stop was New York City, where he met Louis Farrakhan, then Louis X. Stephenson was impressed by his oratory - if not his vicious attacks on Malcolm X, who had left the Nation of Islam a year earlier and would be assassinated in 1965. Stephenson went on to Richmond, Virginia, where he met a surprisingly hostile response at his hotel. The staff and an entirely white lobby of guests turned to stare at him, he says, as if he were a stranger walking into a wild-west saloon. The next day his hosts admitted the reason: the NAACP had secured an agreement to desegregate the hotel and Stephenson was their unknowing test case - the first black man to stay at the John Marshall hotel. He joked: "I thought I'd come to give talks about racism in Britain, not to desegregate the south."

Stephenson with his wife, Joyce, and memorabilia of his meetings with Muhammad Ali. Photograph: Ben Birchall/PA

When the 1965 Race Relations Act came in, the UK government created committees to investigate complaints about breaches of the act. Stephenson worked in this field until 1992. Looking back, he is scathing about their impact. He believes the movement for racial justice was split between those who were co-opted into the government and those who rejected the state and kept pushing for meaningful change through the black power movement. He goes as far as to say it "could have derailed an emerging civil rights movement in Britain". It took until 1976 to have legislation that criminalised racist actions in employment and housing, and established the Commission for Racial Equality, which could support people in industrial tribunals.

His criticism hits a personal note for me because my mum worked for the Race Relations Board, when she met my dad, who was central in the black power movement in Birmingham. Stephenson also met his wife, Joyce, in movement work, when in 1965 he knocked on her door to ask her to sign a petition on housing in Bristol that he was sending to the House of Commons. They met in May, were married in October and went on to have two children, Paul and Funmilayo.

Stephenson moved to Coventry with the Community Relations Council, but his high-profile role protecting black and Asian communities incurred the wrath of the National Front, members of which threw bricks through his window. The police - angered by his support of the black community's complaints against them for over-policing, harassment and lack of protection from racist attacks - agreed to send a police car to his home for protection. But they made sure they parked it so that it blocked his drive "just to inconvenience him". Officers would "stick their fingers up" as they walked by him and the Police Federation even passed a vote of no confidence about his role as a community relations officer. When he left for London in 1972, he was told by several policemen that "a big roar of cheers went up around police stations in the city".

His next move was to sweet talk a superstar. In 1974, Muhammad Ali was staying at the Hilton en route to Chicago after the Rumble in the Jungle - his title fight against George Foreman in Zaire. Stephenson was a governor at Tulse Hill school in Brixton, south London, and decided to take a chance. Walking up to Ali in the lobby - addressing him as Ali when many people still called him Cassius Clay, the name he had dropped years before - he asked him to pay the school a visit. The boxer was pleased he had used his correct name, but when Stephenson said that the school couldn't pay him, Ali told him he had more nerve than Foreman. Unsurprisingly, all 1,300 students arrived for the assembly and left so enchanted that Stephenson says he still gets stopped in the street by those who remember it.

Stephenson with Ali in 1975. Photograph: Tom Pilston/The Independent/Rex/Shutterstock

Ali, he says, was "as you would expect: loud and funny". To the glee of the watching children, he recited a poem: "I admire your school Mr Stephenson / I admire your style / But your pay is so cheap, I won't be back for a while." The two became friends and together set up the Muhammad Ali Sports Development Association (Masda), to give inner-city youth access to sports such as angling and pony trekking. The association attracted the support of black stars including Daley Thompson, Garth Crooks, Arthur Ashe and John Fashanu, but also took a political stance. In 1982, Masda launched the British Standing Conference Against Apartheid Sports, with the support of the World Boxing Association (WBA) champion Lloyd Honeyghan. Honeyghan threw his belt in the bin when the WBA sanctioned fights in apartheid South Africa while, according to legend, Stephenson's staunch anti-apartheid stance led Margaret Thatcher to view him as a "terrorist sympathiser".

In 1992, Stephenson returned to Bristol with his wife, fostering children and campaigning for the city to face up to its links with slavery. He says the continued plastering over the city of the name and image of the slave owner Edward Colston is a "reminder that racism is alive and kicking". As for the toppling of the slave owner's statue this year, that should be a wake-up call to the establishment that "change will come one way or another". For all that has been achieved in his lifetime, Stephenson is worried that the "law has changed and little else". We are at a crossroads, he says, and he can only hope that the government and British society will finally listen to "cries for justice".

In 2008, the man who spent hours in a Bristol jail cell for buying a drink in a pub became the first black man to be made Freeman of the city - a testament to the struggles that have gone before and the work left to be done.

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Paul Stephenson: the hero who refused to leave a pub - and helped desegregate Britain

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When he sat down in a pub that banned black people, Stephenson helped change Britain's discrimination laws. He talks about organising the Bristol bus boycott, attacks from the National Front - and why Muhammad Ali composed a poem about him

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Agreed that a lot of my focus and knowledge is around US/Canadian history; need to re-centre and learn more about Black British history/legacy

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Agreed that a lot of my focus and knowledge is around US/Canadian history; need to re-centre and learn more about Black British history/legacy

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Doreen Lawrence has been hugely influential and inspirational in driving police reform since her son Stephen Lawrence was murdered.

We thought of lots of activists and figures like Baroness Lawrence who are inspirational because of how they have responded to and fought against systemic racism and discrimination - it is important to see and recognise these people but we also talked about making sure we are celebrating a wide range of Black people. Black people are not defined only by their fight against racism, Black History Month is about celebrating achievements and excellence not only in relation to fighting oppression.

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Analyse our protected characteristics data.

'In time' monitoring of protected characteristics and Suitability Panels.

Reflective Discussions prior to Suitability Panels

Share our reading with each other on this topic

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As with most people - the lack of Black British role models - Doctors, Dentists, Teachers ....

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https://www.amazon.co.uk/Eight-Minutes-Forty-Six-Seconds-introspection/dp/1739821300/ref=sr_1_1?qid=1642513153&refinements=p_27%3AMaureen+Watson&s=books&sr=1-1&text=Maureen+Watson

Maureen is a Team Manager in Adult Social Care in Birmingham City Council. She is an inspiration to me.

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Eight Minutes Forty-Six Seconds: Powerful poetic reflections to provoke introspection and challenge perceptions in the hope of changing mindsets

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Buy Eight Minutes Forty-Six Seconds: Powerful poetic reflections to provoke introspection and challenge perceptions in the hope of changing mindsets by Watson, Maureen (ISBN: 9781739821302) from Amazon’s Book Store. Everyday low prices and free delivery on eligible orders.

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How much we all don't know and taking the time to celebrate rather than grounding black british history in a space of trauma 

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How much we all don't know and taking the time to celebrate rather than grounding black british history in a space of trauma 

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As PTs and PPTs we are continuing to try and share and build on our ARP across curriculum. This has involved gathering feedback across north and curriculum and working with our CMM space to try and drive this practice forward

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1) Review how we collect and analyse data to ensure we are separating out ethnic groups rather than grouping as BME where possible
Acknowledging when this is not the case.
To be included in our evaluation framework.
2) When reporting on recruitment numbers explore whether this can be separated out into individual ethnic groups to show whether we are reflecting our communities rather than homogenising.
3) Finding ways to integrate learning into our day to day life so it isn't a tick box exercise eg. instagram account followers

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Parenting Decolonized podcast (also on Facebook and Instagram) 

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Parenting Decolonized podcast (also on Facebook and Instagram) 

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https://open.spotify.com/show/3tsfNBiDTAhFmp3w4NChQ9

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Listen to Parenting Decolonized on Spotify. Raising children is hard. Raising children while black is even harder. The Parenting Decolonized podcast shines the light on how colonization has impacted the black family structure and what to do about it. Host Yolanda Williams takes you on the journey as she learns how to raise liberated black children without breaking their spirits.

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A fun yet compelling read is Queenie by Candice Carty-Williams! 

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A fun yet compelling read is Queenie by Candice Carty-Williams! 

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I would recommend this book by Akala - Natives - Race and Class in the Ruins of Empire 

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I would recommend this book by Akala - Natives - Race and Class in the Ruins of Empire 

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https://open.spotify.com/show/5ru4sH6sED4je53QsHqKbP

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Listen to Decolonize Social Work on Spotify. A discussion about social work, oppression, and liberation.

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Black and British : A forgotten History David Olusoga 

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Black and British : A forgotten History David Olusoga 

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Both the adult version and the easy-to-read children's version

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Art Historian David Dibosa - an inspiring friend who has done a great TV programme on Salvador Dali (BBC iplayer) - Sila

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-Colin in Black and White on Netflix
-Hidden Figures on Netflix
-Small Axe on iPlayer

Books
-Such a Fun Age – Kiley Reid

-The Vanishing Half – Brit Bennett

-An American Marriage – Tayari Jones

-The Other Black Girl – Zakiya Dalila Harris

-Love in Colour – Bolu Babalola (British author)

Bernadine Evaristo and Yaa Gyasi are also authors that we'd recommend

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Clarence Avant
Melz Owusu
Magid Magid

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Be more proactive in researching. And also actively decide to diversify the media we consume to hear black voices e.g. following black influencers/reading black authors

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We discussed the inspirational figures we have chosen to celebrate through meeting room names, their lack of racial diversity, and what this communicates about us as an organisation. We're working on a plan to make a few changes.

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Think about the materials we use in recruitment campaigns - could we be profiling black leaders in the sector?

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The exercise with turning our cameras on and off really struck a chord and demonstrated how a lot of our thinking is limited to entertainment.

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Microsoft chief digital officer Jacky Wright.
Even more impressive to have made such an impact in the male dominated world of tech at a senior level.

Josie

https://edition.cnn.com/2021/10/14/tech/jacky-wright-microsoft-powerlist/index.html

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microsoft's jacky wright had to leave the uk to become its most influential black person - cnn

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Microsoft's Jacky Wright had to leave the UK to become its most influential Black person

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Microsoft chief digital officer Jacky Wright has been named the United Kingdom's most influential Black person. But the US-based executive says she might not have reached the top of her profession had she stayed in Britain.

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The Partnerships Team would like to share the following inspirational people.
We'd also give a huge thank you to our Jeufrisa colleagues for running this Gathering in Oct

Magid Magid - A Somali-British politician who was the Lord Mayor of Sheffield before being elected (briefly!) to the European parliament representing Yorkshire. I chose Magid because he's a great example of being successful without conforming to the white mould of what a successful person, and especially a politician, is expected to be. Magid's signature squat pose in official photos, slogan tshirts and attitude of being open and accessible with everyone are great examples of how he brings his authentic self to any role.

Ruth Ibegbuna - she was founding CEO of Reclaim charity which empowers young working class people and helps them to build leadership skills and has more recently launched Rekindle School. She impresses me for her down to earth leadership style and ability to connect with young people and empower them to become leaders and succeed in their lives. She is passionate about equipping people from working class backgrounds, with the same confidence and skills that people from more privileged backgrounds often

get automatically.

Momin Mohamed, an activist and anti-FGM campaigner and future lawyer: https://www.rarerecruitment.co.uk/rrs2021/04.php

Ignatius Sancho is the first person of African descent to vote in a British general election. Born in a slave ship, Ignatius served as a slave for 18 years in Greenwich before running away to serve as a butler and valet to the 2nd Duke of Montagu where he learned about literature and music and was able to earn money. In 1774 Ignatius opened a grocery shop. Becoming an independent male property owner, he gained the right to cast his vote for the Westminster Members of Parliament in the 1774 and 1780 elections. Thereafter, Sancho became a predominant leader of the British abolitionist movement as well as an influential poet, writer and composer.

The Ivory Bangle Lady is a skeleton found in York in 1901. The skeleton belongs to a female thought to have died in York in the 4th century AD. She was found with bracelets, pendants, earrings, beads as well as a glass jug and mirror, leading investigators to consider her a high-status adult female, potentially of North African descent, indicating that African descendants have been in Britain for far longer than previously thought (the first recorded Black resident in Britain was in 1583).

Mary Seacole was a healer ("doctress"), who having heard about the virtual collapse of nursing on the front at the Crimean War, self-funded a trip to care for British soldiers (having been originally turned down by the British War Office). She put her own safety at risk by treating the injured on the frontline and was a familiar and popular figure amongst the soldiers, known as "Mother Seacole".

Outside of her incredible work during the Crimean war, she was widely praised for her work in treating cholera during her travels in Panama.

Mary published her autobiography, The Wonderful Adventures of Mrs Seacole in Many Lands, which is still in print today.

Kathleen Wrasama - Kathleen was from Ethiopia and as a child, came to England in 1917. After traumatic experiences in children’s homes in Yorkshire she ran away and found work as a farm labourer. During the 1930s she moved to London and worked as an extra in films, and later established a Black seaman’s mission in Stepney with her husband. She was a founder member of the Stepney Coloured Peoples Association, an organisation committed to improving community relations, education and housing for Black people in the local area.

Michelle Ogundehin - originally from Manchester! Is a British magazine editor and creative consultant turned TV presenter, and author known for writing and presenting on interior design.

Rose Hudson-Wilkin is the first black woman to become a Church of England bishop, along with a long list of other firsts such as the first black woman as chaplain to the Queen and the first woman appointed as chaplain to the speaker of the House of Commons. I chose Rose as I admire her straight-talking nature and how she does what is right rather than what will make her popular, calling out MPs, journalists and anyone whose actions run contrary to the justice that she seeks to see. In my research of her I found many excellent quotes, but love this one and hope and pray that she lives to see this wish fulfilled: “But if there’s one thing I would like to see change in my lifetime, it would be that all these “firsts” stop; that they become normal.”

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If you'd like to learn more about Mary Seacole I found this pod cast really interesting  https://www.bbc.co.uk/programmes/p0b2bjb6

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This has helped remind me about when selecting analogies or examples for projects or design I will be more concious of selecting examples with a view to including black british examples not simply black american or global examples

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I've taken the time to actively research black british scientists which was a particular area of limited knowledge for me when reflecting about this topic.

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My skew towards North America is highly significant on this issue and something I'm actively trying to re-calibrate as a result of the session

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Viv Anderson, Laurie Cunningham and Cyrille Regis

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Viv Anderson, Laurie Cunningham and Cyrille Regis

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First three Black footballers to get England caps. They were role models for me growing up in the 1970s and 1980s, standing up to horrific racism and helping to change British society for the better.

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Betty Campbell - the first black head teacher in Wales and a community leader.

"I was determined that I was going to become one of those people and enhance the black spirit, black culture as much as I could." (Betty Campbell, 2016)

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We agreed to take more responsibility individually and by supporting each other to research and understand our context better including how we should consider intersectionality.

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We were struck by the influence of USA perspective on our understanding of Black history and the need to search out and celebrate Black British people as examples to help us understand.

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Continue to embed teaching on anti-racist leadership into the Headline and Firstline curriculum. Also reaffirmed our commitment  to build in time as a team for regular conversations about how we can work towards our aim of being an anti-racist organisation.

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Continue to embed teaching on anti-racist leadership into the Headline and Firstline curriculum. Also reaffirmed our commitment  to build in time as a team for regular conversations about how we can work towards our aim of being an anti-racist organisation.

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Really struck by how hard it was it come up with -	with Famous Black British people – the activity in the session was really powerful 

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Really struck by how hard it was it come up with -	with Famous Black British people – the activity in the session was really powerful 

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Britain vs. America – focusing on black history in America can lead to a its “worse over there” narrative when it comes to historic racism. This makes it easier for us not to confront the legacy of historic racism in Britain and the impact this has today

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Britain vs. America – focusing on black history in America can lead to a its “worse over there” narrative when it comes to historic racism. This makes it easier for us not to confront the legacy of historic racism in Britain and the impact this has today

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How black history is often focuses on negative events - we agree with the importance of using Black history month to champion success and achievements

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How black history is often focuses on negative events - we agree with the importance of using Black history month to champion success and achievements

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Thanks for inspiring some further thought and action for us. We were in the midst of planning the teaching content for the CSWs and have included 2 new days specifically focused on anti-racist practice.

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Dalian Atkinson - I am not sure if this necessarily fits the question but it came to my mind when I was contemplating my response. Over the holiday break, I read a news article about the Police officially apologising for Dalian's death. Dalian was a former professional footballer and was murdered by a Police Officer who was convicted in June of last year, details of what happened were only shared in May even though Dalian died in 2016. The officer fired a stun gun for 33 seconds and kicked Dalian twice in the head leaving a footprint on his forehead. Police had been called out as Dalian was struggling with his mental health. Dalian needed help and support but was met with extreme violence. It was difficult to read the article, it was emotive and reminded me of how pervasive racism is in our public services and in everyday life, racism is the water we swim in as I read in an article a colleague shared the other day. I wanted to share as it kept alive for me the importance of active allyship, not just being appalled, but thinking about so what now, what can I do with my power, privilege to contribute to working towards dismantling racism

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Sadie Alexander - American economist and lawyer

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Sadie Alexander - American economist and lawyer

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Share ideas to increase Frontline's visibility across Black communities in the NE of England with the recruitment team.

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Share ideas to increase Frontline's visibility across Black communities in the NE of England with the recruitment team.

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Mary Jackson -  NASA's first black female engineer

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Mary Jackson -  NASA's first black female engineer

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·Eddo-Lodge, R. (2017) Why I am no Longer Talking to White People about Race. London: Bloomsbury

·Gottlieb, M. (2020) The case for a Cultural Humility Framework in Social Work Practice. Journal of Ethnic and Cultural Diversity in Social Work, DOI: 10.1080/15313204.2020.1753615

·Jeffery, D. (2005) ‘What good is anti-racist social work of you can’t master it’?: exploring a paradox in anti-racist social work education. Race, Ethnicity and Education, 8(4): 409-425

·Lavalette, M and Pinketh, L (2014). Race, Racism and Social Work. Contemporary Issues and Debates. Bristol: Bristol University Press

·Patel, T.G. (2017) Race and Society. London: Sage.

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This document is intended to serve as a resource to white people and parents to deepen our anti-racism work. If you haven't engaged in anti-racism work in the past, start now. Feel free to circulate this document on social media and with your friends, family, and colleagues. Here is a shorte...

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Two brilliant people from different times in history and different fields.  One healthcare, a person who made significant contributions to establishing nursing as a profession during and after the Crimean war and the other a present day tech expert from Microsoft.

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... and her phenomenal writing about coalition building that has reshaped my thinking about race and capitalism.

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'Blackness is determined by more than skin colour': Emma Dabiri and gal-dem on black hair

Charlie Brinkhurst-Cuff from gal-dem interviews Emma Dabiri on her debut book, Don't Touch My Hair. From pre-colonial Africa and anti-capitalism, to European beauty standards and the experience of growing up mixed-race in Ireland, they discuss why black hair matters.

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'A must-read . . . accessible and yet so full of scholarship' Owen Jones An incisive - and deeply practical - essay from the acclaimed author of Don't Touch My Hair Stop the denial Abandon guilt Interrogate capitalism When it comes to racial justice, how do we transform demonstrations of support into real and meaningful change?