Hear the experiences and insights of experts and practitioners in creating change, so we can uplift one another.
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The World Reimagined’s purpose is to create a moment and platform that honours the countless people and organisations who do the work of making racial equality a reality.
Last year, we hosted the INSPIRE sessions, in which practitioners, experts and activists shared their expertise and know how with our community of activists. From those conversations, we’ve developed five toolkits that we hope you will find useful as a resource, catalyst for reflection and inspiration
Take me to the Toolkits!
Peckham Platform is a creative and educational charity based in Peckham, south London. We bring local communities together with leading artists to co-produce social art that responds directly to the needs and concerns of the people involved.
Art Responders is dedicated to creating opportunities for cultural engagement as a conduit to racial, environmental and restorative justice. We believe in the power of arts participation and grassroots community building to counteract rising threats to civil rights and liberties, and to empower those who are underserved or ignored by the cultural and political establishment.
Seki – like “say hi” with a ‘k’ – is a performance poet, writer and ex-bar manager for his sins. Originally from Leeds, he spent his 20’s in London where he graduated with a BA in Creative Writing and English Literature from the University of Westminster. Seki has written for print and digital publications, creative agencies, art and science events, museums and himself. Subjects range from music, hypnosis, motor neurone disease, samurai, mycelium, romance, travel, therapeutic psychedelics, depression, billionaires and, of course, booze. Since first intoxicated by drinks history after finding out about Hemingway daiquiris, he’s served pisco sours in Peru and designed serious cocktails with silly names for several UK establishments. He has performed numerous times at the Pint of Science and Curious Arts festivals at varying degrees of inebriation. His writing and poetry has appeared in Root and Bone and the International Times. Seki was shortlisted for the Grindstone Literary Poetry prize in 2018. His first book, Ten Drinks that Changed the World is globally distributed by ACC Art Books.
Our mission is to collect, preserve and celebrate the histories of people of African and Caribbean descent in the UK and to inspire and give strength to individuals, communities, and society.
Black Cultural Archives grew from a community response to the New Cross Massacre (1981), the Police and Criminal Evidence Act (1984); underachievement of Black children in British schools, the failings of the Race Relations Act 1976, and the negative impacts of racism against, and a lack of popular recognition of, and representation by people of African and Caribbean descent in the UK.
Our founders, including the iconic Len Garrison, came to the conclusion that what was needed was a space where members of the community, especially young people, could come and find positive representations of themselves in history and culture. This act of self-help expanded into the creation of what our founders called an ‘archive museum’ that evidenced and painted a more comprehensive picture of Black presence in Britain.
Black Cultural Archives is the home of Black British History.
We use our mission to collect, preserve and celebrate the histories of people of African and Caribbean descent in the UK and to inspire and give strength to individuals, communities and society.
Our HQ is 1 Windrush Square in Brixton, London.
At our HQ we run a series of gallery exhibitions, educational programmes and public engagement events. We provide free access to our unique set of archives, museum objects and reference library.
We have become the leading non-governmental and heritage institutional voice for the Windrush Generation. We are part of the Windrush Action Group and the Windrush National Organising Committee.
BCA’s network includes current collaborations with the Universities of Roehampton and Kings College.
We are leaders in the heritage sector for our work on workforce diversity, and we are interrogating decolonial archival practices.
Bristol Ballroom Community is a LGBTQ+ BIPOC group that is part of the international ballroom scene. The ballroom scene consists of balls which mix performance, dance, lip-syncing, modelling, fashion and art. The balls are divided into various categories which people “walk” for trophies or “Grand Prizes”. Bristol’s ballroom scene will be hosting its very first Vogue Ball on the 13th of August 2022!
First Contact 2.0 is a training and service user engagement service. It is a Community Interest Company (CIC) derived from and responding to the identified needs of individuals and collective to affect social change. Our aim is to impact on the negative disadvantage and experience of individuals, families or groups who find access to meaningful engagement a barrier to services. The challenges that differing realities pose from provider to service recipient can cause potential barriers to moving forwards for many. Society’s norms and values can sometimes pose the real problem in hindering progression in peoples’ lives due to poor awareness, knowledge and misunderstanding between stakeholders.
GAP work is shaped and informed by London’s Black AND UNDER-REPRESENTED communities through a series of innovative digital and in-person research and development activities. GAP Fest will meet their needs, demands and aspirations for a more inclusive creative sector that does not marginalise their work or consider it niche. The festival will be followed by ongoing engagement activities with the same creatives and communities to continue developing GAP Fest.
GAP Fest has a long-term mission to celebrate those who remain under the umbrella of under-representation and the presentation of Black creativity, limited engagement with Black audiences and the financial barriers Black communities face in accessing London’s mainstream arts sector.
The Geraldine Connor Foundation (GCF) was established in 2012 to continue the work and vision of Geraldine Connor. We are an arts charity that celebrates cultural forms from across the globe in a collaborative and supportive environment.
Our primary beneficiaries are young people aged 12-25 years with diverse ethnicities, from low-income households living in the Leeds city region. In 2021 we worked with 345 young people across 11 projects. These projects included Represent exploring neglected industrial narratives with young people and Where We Are reinterpreting the history of Harewood House and its connections to the transatlantic trade in enslaved Africans.
GCF’s mission is to bring people together through arts and culture. We are a cultural organisation that works at an intersection between heritage and the arts. Our work starts from an African Caribbean perspective, opening up conversations about identity, hidden narratives, and representation in British society. We co-produce work with young people from minority ethnic backgrounds giving freedom to explore culture in its broadest forms. We believe that exploring cultural heritage with young people enables them to start forming their own identities and understand the modern world they live in.
We are currently working on a project Jam Around the Table through funding from Leeds Community Foundation – Addressing Mental Health Inequalities in Minority Ethnic Groups. The young people involved in this project have been taking part in regular singing and lyric writing workshops, they have expressed an interest in performing and singing together more regularly. The Reggae Roots choir would give them this opportunity.
Over 10 years we have built a wealth of experience working with young people in a variety of ways on cultural projects. GCF Creative Associates, Christella Litras and Sheila Howarth will lead the project musically and through their work on the Jam Around the Table project initiated the idea of a Reggae Choir for young people.
Established in 2015 and named after Yvonne Humble, the founder of Rosetta Arts, The Humble Gallery responds to the cultural life within Newham, and its neighboring boroughs, connecting the diverse cultural communities of east London through art and the work of artists based locally across the relevant diasporas.
Our vision is to inspire and connect with people in our communities with art that resonates and is in dialogue with their own cultural lives. Trisha McCauley is a photographer and Director of The Humble Gallery and has over 15 years of experience in community arts, education. Trisha has a special interest in Caribbean artists, the diaspora and heritage.
The Institute is a part of The Henry Moore Foundation, set up by the sculptor Henry Moore (1898-1986) in 1977 to encourage appreciation of the visual arts, especially sculpture.
The Institute is firmly rooted in Leeds, where we work in partnership with Leeds Art Gallery to manage the sculpture collection and archive of Leeds Museums and Galleries, a collaboration that has built one of the strongest public collections of sculpture in Britain.
We are tasked with the responsibility to study sculpture, with our role to make a significant impact on the future of art history, placing sculpture right at the centre. We achieve this through an exhibitions and research programme that consistently re-thinks how we understand sculpture today, continuing Moore’s legacy by making sculpture a necessary and relevant part of contemporary culture.
Music House is a registered charitable trust which has been going strong for over 125 years.
Music House offers 1:1 music and singing lessons, group ensembles, music theory, choral direction and music taster courses.
For this project the Music House will be welcoming the choir into their house for rehearsals and access to their resources for free. They will provide the marketing and communication support for the project. Promoting the activity and profiling the project in Leeds to engage participants and audiences.
We are a Black led organisation that uses the arts to challenge mental stigma and discrimination in racialised and marginalised communities. We work in communities and with professional and emerging artists with lived experience of mental health issues to create new art and performances that give voice to people whose views and experiences are rarely heard. Through our work we aim to stimulate conversations and introduce new and positive ways of thinking about mental health and wellbeing. We have been working in Birmingham for four years and working nationally since 2013. We are a guest producer of the Birmingham Bedlam Mental Health Festival and currently consulting on and delivering a training programme for artists to enable them to work in closed and community mental health settings which is funded by the Baring Foundation. Peoples Health Trust have recently funded us to deliver a drop-in and arts development programme for Birmingham residents with mental health challenges and Revealed, a play that we co-produced with Rites of Passage Productions will begin a national tour this winter. Last year we worked with Birmingham Museums to produce Windrush Culture a celebration and reinterpretation of the work of artists from the Windrush Generation. Our annual StereoHype Arts Festival will celebrate its 20th anniversary in October, at the Midlands Art Centre in Birmingham, with a day of music, theatre, performance and creative workshops celebrating the mental health and wellbeing of Black African and Caribbean communities across the UK.
Established in North Birmingham in 2016, Smoking Bagels quickly rose to notoriety for bringing a ‘hole lotta flavour to the quick food scene. We have a passion for the world’s best herbs and spices and we celebrate the communities they belong to!
Inspired by the loan of archival materials by Baroness Doreen Lawrence, the SLRC has a mission to extend the legacy of Stephen Lawrence’s life and his family’s ongoing pursuit of juice by producing, supporting and innovatively communicating groundbreaking, impact-oriented research that influences public dialogues, promotes social justice, fosters inclusion, and engenders equity on a local, national and global scale. The SLRC aims to become a hub of innovative and world-leading interdisciplinary research in the following four target areas:
The SLRC also comprises of an exhibition space drawn from the Stephen Lawrence Archive that chronicles the Lawrence family’s 25-year journey towards justice in the aftermath of Stephen Lawrence’s tragic death.
I grew up a mixed-race foster child in the rural white heartland of North Yorkshire in the 1960s. With a degree in Italian, I went on to work for 10 years in the Italian Embassy in Washington DC and then as a government press officer in Leeds serving the regional briefs of Whitehall departments such as the Foreign and Commonwealth Office and the Department for International Trade.
Now as a freelance writer I harness my communications background with my experience as a woman of colour in the UK and abroad to explore themes of racial identity in my presentations. In Hair Apparent – A Voyage Around My Roots our natural inheritance of Black hair becomes an inspirational journey of resilience, versatility and creativity.
Speak Woman Speak is an all female Leeds based theatre company.They make devised work highlighting hidden stories about women from diverse backgrounds.
The walking and dialogue project is run by Ahmad with the support of Aicha who has previously facilitated the group at Oblong Charity. During the walking and dialogue sessions, groups have engaged in conversations around ‘the future’ and ‘multiculturalism’. Group members are paired and given questions to inspire dialogue and to support them to learn about dialogue skills while walking.
At The World Reimagined event, we will be exploring the themes of Echoes in the Present and Reimagining the Future. Participants will engage in dialogue around systemic inequalities and injustice, entrenched racism and prejudices and the traumatic consequences of colonialism and the transatlantic trade in enslaved Africans. More so, the dialogue will allow participants to share their ideas, visions and hopes for the future.
Asher is a community developer, artist and yoga teacher living in Leeds. He uses the arts to bring people together and challenge the norms of modern culture. His freelance work engages with marginalised communities in novel ways which demands a constant acquisition of new skills. He has a MA in Peace and Development from Leeds Beckett, is a qualified yoga teacher, and has a diverse portfolio of skills and professional experiences.
Community Administrator
With a passion for creative learning and development, Carolyn has worked with businesses, charities, communities and educators to design and deliver behaviour intervention and empower positive change. Since founding Amulinde Consulting, she has worked with leading change makers such as Diversity & Ability, Diversity Resources International, BeetFreaks and Always Possible, to design and deliver engaging learning environments for diverse communities, from executive education to youth development. Carolyn brings a multi-dimensional expertise – including research, facilitation, design, strategy and operations –enabling her to lead projects from conception to delivery.
Of African-Jamaican and Scottish roots, Cleo is a community engagement professional, researcher, has been involved within the arts and culture sector for over two decades and is the former Lord Mayor of Bristol (2018-2019). During her term as a Green Party Councillor, she was instrumental in getting a Reparations and Atonement motion passed at Bristol City Council for Bristol’s role in the Transatlantic Traffic in Enslaved Africans. Cleo is driven by the idea of utilising creativity, dance and expanded performance to aid civic engagement and to reframe storytelling as a resilience tool to embed cultural knowledge, empathy, understanding and cohesion.
Corazon is a digital journalist, artist and creative facilitator, born in Uganda and raised in East London. Corazon’s professional career has consisted of live events, operations and logistics management, where she enjoyed success working with major brands and implementing improvements that transformed the quality of services and work environments. The pandemic inspired meaningful redirection away from the corporate, toward social enterprise and community-related projects. The much needed career change aligned with her personal evolution and a renewed desire to have a positive impact. As an artist and creative she channels a strong spirit of activism. Whether through content creation, music production or the curation of art. Her artistry promotes radical self reflection and self love – emotionally, politically or otherwise.
Garry was born and raised a stone’s throw from Birmingham city centre, surrounded by its rich industrial heritage. As a citizen, historian and community activist, he represents the voice of the people in a story that connects us all on a local, national and global level.
Janiece is an artist with a background in music and dance, as well as visual and performing arts. She has many years of experience working in the youth and community sector; engaging people through arts workshops with positive social messages such as anti-violence, diversity, equality and inclusion, and personal development.
Over her extensive career, Tara has straddled the lines between arts and heritage for the benefit and empowerment of Black people. She has worked for a number of minority lead arts organisations in and around Leicester, as a trainee curator role at Leicester Museum Service and has also worked with organisations such as the VIctorian and Albert Museum and The Race Equality Centre. Her exhibition ‘Together we won the War’ was rated seventh nationally among projects supported by the National Heritage Lottery in 2016. Tara founded Opal22 Arts and Edutainment to bridge the gap between mainstream public organisations and the diverse members of her community and to promote Black excellence to the masses.
The World Reimagined is a company limited by guarantee (#1250114) and a registered charity (#115223).
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