Black History Month Cuts 2011 – BBC Radio Nottingham

Quick Reminder Blackpresence is on the Radio Today 5.15 Radio Nottingham

Talking about how the CUTS affect Black History Month. Listen https://www.bbc.co.uk/programmes/p00cs2cc

Black Presence Argues against the cuts to black history month

Transcription:

 

Cuts to Black History Month – Radio Nottingham

Phil: BBC Radio Nottingham.

Reya: Now, as you’ve been hearing throughout the day here on BBC Radio Ting and one of the most important celebrations of African and Caribbean cultures facing problems as councils across the country, cut funding Black History Month is held in the UK every October with a series of music history and cultural events aiming to raise awareness and celebrate Britain’s African and Caribbean communities.

But this year, for the first time in Nottingham, the budget’s been axed. Soon you’ll hear the opinions on this from Phil, founder of Blackpresence.co.uk website and forum for Black Britain and Nottingham Caribbean community worker Veronica Barnes. But first, earlier I spoke to the Nottingham City Council’s head of Culture, Nigel Hawkins, and began by asking him for his thoughts on the significance of this month.

Nigel: Nottingham Council always see Black History Month as an important part in the calendar. We’ve got a very diverse community, and obviously that community plays a key part in our life, so we want to make sure the works and activities that take place really come to the fore. For this year, what we’ve been primarily working on is looking to try and bring all the information together.

Make sure that’s facilitated and people can get access to it to find out where different events are taking place and working with some of our key partners like the New Art Exchange, and also with some of our longer term partners like Nottingham, Caribbean Carnival, and there other activities to make sure there’s a range of different events and activities 

Reya: With Black History Month coming to an end, officially on Monday.

31st of October, how do you feel it’s been this year? 

Nigel: I think with all of these events, sometimes there have been a lot of little successes that are seen in sort of little pockets. Sometimes I don’t think it’s got all of the attention that maybe it deserves, which I think is the same for a lot of activities that take place across the city.

But that being said, I think overall it’s had a really galvanising effect on the community, and there’s been lots of different activities, I think people have enjoyed. 

Reya: Could you explain exactly what role the council plays where Black History Month is concerned? 

Nigel: Yeah. The, I think role of the city council here is really to try and make sure we link up, I suppose, people and groups and activities provide the opportunity through our networks, through our publicity and material to bring attention to what’s taking place through what’s on.

And obviously much more importantly, these days through the internet, so that people can find and trace activities they want to do and also keep a sort of link with our key hub sites like the New Art Exchange, in order to make sure they can help, generate different activities and events. So we work with them really as a supporter as opposed to a direct deliverer.

Reya: One of the complaints this year is that the Black History Month Promotion hasn’t been as visible as it has in previous years. Is it fair to say that there hasn’t been as visible a promotion as there have been in previous years? 

Nigel: I think probably everything has changed in terms of the way people want to access material.

And a lot of the information we are receiving now is that people want much more interactivity. They want to use the web. They’re moving away from paper-based medium and there’s always a balance to be struck here and it’s a difficult balance to get right in terms of making sure we are using those new mediums and using those effectively to target people, as well as making sure there’s some sort of a, printed material out and about.

We have done that shift, we’ve done that shift, probably not just for Black History month, but for a lot of the publications that we’ve done. So it’s been a move we’ve been doing across the authority for a whole range of different events and activities. And overall, the feedback we’re getting is.

People want to see it on those media. I think there’s more mediums we need to explore like apps and other type of activities for mobile phones. ’cause we’re very aware of how popular they are and I think we just have to be very careful and look at resources, but try to be, make sure we’re future proofing as opposed to just relying on printing material, which we know.

A lot of people don’t engage with it as well 

Reya: In a city that’s as diverse as Nottingham is compared to somewhere like Leicester, where the city council puts aside 5,000 pounds each year for Black History Month promotions. Why is the budget so much less here? 

Nigel: I think we use our money in a variety of different ways, in that we do still support the same, put officer time and activity into the Black History Month specifically.

But equally, we put some money in throughout the year to other larger organisations that keep a program of events going, longer term. We’re not putting all our money, if you like, just in, in one sort of set type of resource. And again, like everywhere else, we’ve had to look very carefully at the spend that we’re doing across all of culture.

And we’ve tried to make sure where we spend our money, we’re doing that as most effectively as we can, but working as, say, in partnership. And it’s very much about us working in partnership, to help deliver this as opposed to being at the front with just very direct deliveries. 

Reya: Are there plans already in Place for things to change next year in any way? 

Nigel: I think, like everything, we are always looking at what we’ve got to do, what we’ve got to improve. It’s always useful to get people’s feedback in terms of what they felt worked or what didn’t work, for this year. So that can help en engage with ourselves and we can engage with our partners.

We’ve also got to look at probably in terms of what the budget situations will be next year, and we all know that’s not gonna be easy, and we’ve got to be very careful looking at how we use that money. And importantly, I think from our point of view is making sure we build stronger networks in order that we can use our networks that are really well established in the city to really make sure those messages are getting out in all those mediums.

So we’re all being effective in terms of the way we deliver that message. 

Reya: The city council’s head of culture, Nigel Hawkins speaking there about budget cuts. To Black History Month in Nottingham this year, and as ever, I’d love to hear your thoughts this afternoon. Do the council have a responsibility to the African Caribbean community here in Nottingham to continue funding Black History Month?

Phil: When you call, 0 double 1 5 9 3   4 3 4 3 4.   When you text eight one triple three and start your message with the word not.

Reya: Now you’ll hear shortly on this from Nottingham Caribbean community work of Veronica Barnes. But first, welcome, Phil, founder of Blackpresence.co uk, a website and forum for Black Britain. Phil, welcome to the show. arts and culture across the country have really taken a cut, a huge cut, really.

Why should Black History Month be any different where these cuts are concerned?

Phil: Raya, thanks for having me on the show. Firstly, I think, why should they be any different? The truth of the matter is it’s very important to people who are of African Caribbean 

descent. We are bothered.

Is the wider population bothered by that? That’s the question, isn’t it? And I think perhaps we’ve been too quiet work with regards to canvassing for funding. Because people who are making the decisions have obviously decided that black History Month isn’t as important as some other events, and so we’ve been downgraded.

Reya: This isn’t something that’s happening exclusively in Nottingham either, is it? It’s across the country.

Phil: That’s right. Yeah. Yes. When I was doing some research for this show, I looked at Bromley and Croydon. They were celebrating Black History Month altogether. Barnett, Haringey, and Lewisham all in London, have had major cutbacks, Barnett.

When I looked through their calendar, they just had two dates for Black History Month on the calendar. But obviously London being the size that it is, gonna have a heck of a lot more funding than any other town and city. Cuts are across the board 

Reya: Talking of which, why is it that this lands on the feet of councils?

Why should councils be footing the bill for Black History Month? 

Phil: That’s a good question. Of course, I think. In truth, we all have to stop and ask that question. Councils have a duty to provide events for people in their area. Of course, we are taxpayers. The vast majority of us pay our taxes, and so we should expect to get some arts funding back.

However, I do think that across the board, I’m not just talking about the African Caribbean community, we all sit back and rely on the councils. To do everything for us. Why? There are a lot of innovators out there in the community who put on events all year long. What we need to do is, if we want Black History Month, we need to think about what we’re going to put on in that month, and we need to be raising money all year long.

I certainly know that’s happened here in Stoke Trent. NorSaka, which is the North Staffordshire African Caribbean Association. They’ve been putting on events all year long and putting money aside so that they could have a Black History Month Road show, which went around to schools and prisons and theatres.

and The young lady from the West Midlands, via Jamaica, miss Moneienne Stone, she, has approached a local filmmaker and they found a little bit of funding from the BBC and they put together an archive film of, stoke entrance African Caribbean history, which is going to be part of the national, the city archives.

So you can make self-funding events. We shouldn’t rely on the council to totally fund things. 

Reya: Phil, thank you very much for joining us. Phil is the founder of BlackPresence.co.uk.

Now, here in Nottingham, some members of the black community say that funding cuts to Black History Month have left people completely unaware that anything’s even happened in the city this month to celebrate it.

Now, Nottingham Caribbean, community worker and founder of the Blue Mountain not-for-profit Women’s Health Group, Veronica Barnes, is the woman behind an ongoing exhibition displaying Nottingham’s Black History. Veronica, welcome. Thank you. Talk to us through this exhibition that you’ve got. Talk about it.

What’s, what is displaying 

Veronica: At this exhibition? What do you have going on? It’s a very large exhibition that we inherited, really, and it was done in about 1984 with Len Garrison and a lot of other interested parties. And so one of the organisations that folded, we, the city council, gave us what we needed from that so we could keep our heritage going.

And, actually, we weren’t planning to do anything this month, ’cause we know that money was not available. We were a new group. We didn’t have any money in reserves, and all the rest of it. But, we did, actually, talk to the chair of the Hyson Green Youth Club, and she said that yes, if we could use the building.

So it means that although she wasn’t offering us money, she was offering kindness in terms of we could use the building. We were only going to do a little table with a few things from the Caribbean, like a lamp and a few of the little bits and bobs and call it the way we were. But as we started unpacking all these things, we saw all this beautiful stuff and we think, she, Maxine, didn’t mind us putting it up, but we other people used the centre for training. So she said we could do it during, after term time. So we like to pack it into two weeks, like. Six, seven months of work, just working right around the clock to put all the stuff that we have up. So we have a really extensive exhibition of all sorts of people on there.

People from the fire brigade, people in the police force. People just right across the board, there are people, they’re like young entrepreneurs during the day, during, the day, those days. Like Colin Mitchell, any sharp. Danny Franciscan is he’s absolutely fascinating. I went to see it earlier this week in the hospital.

Yeah. There was so many people in there 

Reya: and it really puts to, to bed the idea that immigration from African Caribbean is anything new because you’ve got pictures that date back hundreds and hundreds of years showing black people in Nottingham. 

Veronica: Yeah. There is George Afri, and he was snatched from Sierra Leone.

That’s where he, when he was a little boy and taken to the Caribbean and some family called ue or Monu actually had, got him as a present for this. This is how saleable we were. And he got him as a presence and actually brought him to England. And because they had properties across the Midlands, they used to take him to Nottingham.

So he fell in love with Nottingham when he he had his freedom. He came to live in Nottingham, married some local person in Nottingham and set up home with property and all sorts of stuff because they said there’s, it’s recorded that. In 1722 or something like that, he bought a property for the value of 300 and something pounds, and I can’t imagine what his that kind of value is today.

Reya: Fascinating. 

Veronica: And he set up his home, he was near the lace market actually, which you 

Reya: Have the documents to prove now. It’s such a fascinating exhibition and I had the pleasure of going to see it earlier this week, but does it frustrate you that you’ve got something which is. So eye-opening and so amazing to look at, and yet you’re having to pretty much beg and borrow to be able to have a space to put this up in and to give your own time for free in order to put this together.

Veronica: Yeah. 

Reya: But 

Veronica: It is frustrating. But it is like the young gentleman before us spoke about. None but ourselves. I think somebody, some black person, wrote a book called None but Ourselves. And they say you can’t, nobody can write your history for you. Nobody can do anything for you gotta do it for yourself.

But like he said, and I agree with him, the council has an obligation, because we are taxpayers, we contributed to Britain when it was war-torn. Britain was developing after the war. And we, our parents, came here and worked during that time to restructure Britain for. They worked for nothing, ’cause three pounds, something a week was absolutely nothing.

And today, there is nothing in this community representative of us as Caribbean people. I wanna say a big thank you to the people at the Iceland News Centre and, youth club, but they should call it. Ice and Green Youth and Community Centre. ‘Cause that’s what it is. It’s the only place left now far as I know, where black people can go and rent a space there for affordable prices and they will help you.

I’ve been, have, couldn’t do that exhibition without. The never Campbell or Ted, as we affectionately call him and the staff there, because it was a lot of work and his brother, they came in, Howard, when it’s not working, Howard, to come and put some of the things up. without the help of the ice and green youth.

Center. I’ll call it a youth centre, but it’s Heisen Green Boys Club. But to me, it’s more than just a boys’ club. Now. We wouldn’t have been able to do that exhibition. It wouldn’t have been able to do 

Reya: Veronica, absolutely lovely to have you with us. I’m afraid to say running outta time. But the exhibition is on at the Heisen Green Youth Club, or as we should call it, the Youth and Community Club.

Yeah, all the way through until November. If you’d like to find out more, we will get details up on bbc.co.uk/nottingham. Veronica Barnes, thank you for joining us. Thank you. 28 minutes. To six here on BBC Radio and Art and music from Beyonce and Femi Kuti on the way.