Black History Month is an international event that takes place every October to promote knowledge of black history, culture and heritage and to celebrate the contribution on African, Caribbean and Asian communities to British society.
The University will be hosting a number of events to mark Black History Month 2010. All students and staff are welcome to attend. To add your BHM event to the webpage please contact equality@contacts.bham.ac.uk
This September marks 25 years since two days of disturbances in Handsworth, events that have commonly been used to define the area in a negative light. Presented by the University's Research and Cultural Collections, the Photographing Handsworth exhibition moves beyond this by exploring how different practitioners have sought to represent the rich and diverse life in the area through photography.
The exhibition includes work by established artists such as George Hallett, Vanley Burke and Derek Bishton, a series of ‘self portraits’ taken by the people of Handsworth and the photographs of a group of year nine students at Holte Visual & Performing Arts College, Lozells. Individually, each of these photographs are in their own way important works of art, but taken together they also represent a visual history of life in a community over the last 25 years and beyond.
Photographing Handsworth exhibition poster.
The Danford Collection of West African Art and Artefacts celebrates and showcases the extensive array of cultural traditions and artistic expression from the countries of West Africa. Its contents range from historical utensils to contemporary art and is one of the finest collections of its kind in Europe.
French Studies's opening contribution to the City of Birmingham’s activities for Black History Month is the joint visit of Maryse Condé and Richard Philcox. The visit will coincide with special exhibitions on Condé's work at Birmingham Central Library and Birmingham University Library.
Born in 1937 and raised in Guadeloupe, French West Indies, Maryse Condé is the most prolific Caribbean
women writer of her generation as well as a leading figure in French national policy debates on the commemoration of slavery. She has lived and worked in the Caribbean, Africa, the UK (including a spell at the BBC) and now divides her time between New York and Paris. She served as the first president of the newly-created French Committee for the Memory of Slavery from 2004-2008 and under her leadership, President Jacques Chirac agreed to designate 10th May as the annual day for the commemoration of slavery in France. Condé also campaigned for changes to educational policy and the French school curriculum to ensure the memory of slavery would be better understood. Author, teacher, public figure and critic, Condé engages with questions of exile, migration, European imperialism, identity, African ancestry, notions of home and homelessness, corruption and disillusionment. Her award-winning body of work, written in French and widely translated, is often compared to that of Toni Morrison, Jean Rhys and Derek Walcott.
Condé's talk (in French) will be followed by a translation workshop in English by Richard Philcox, her acclaimed literary translator, discussing practical and theoretical elements of translation. Richard will focus on extracts from Condé's Caribbean rewriting of Wuthering Heights and will also discuss his new translation of The Wretched of the Earth by Frantz Fanon.
For further details visit the French Studies web site.
Experiment with the different ways your fingers and hands can be used to make artwork! The Barber’s West African Altarpiece and objects in the University’s Danford Collection of West African Arts and Artefacts are brought together for a dynamic day of handicraft and storytelling.
This session will be delivered by local artist and creative entrepreneur Michael Butler, founder of the ‘Soulkingz-Designz’ fine art company, and explores and experiments with the ways music and rhythm (drumming) can facilitate creative expression. He will be joined by Jeanette Angela Barrett whose storytelling sessions draw from her African and Caribbean Heritage and its rich oral and musical tradition.
This lecture by Professor Charles Forsdick of the University of Liverpool will explore the Haitian revolutionary leader Toussaint Louverture's posthumous adoption, adaption and rejection as a transnational icon of revolution and resistance by various anti-colonial and anti-slavery movements. Further information on the lecture is available here.
