BlackChat is a forum to exchange and progress ideas and plans for issues which directly affect Black Communities. Everyone is invited to be part of the conversation. In a special edition for Black History Month 2018, BlackChat: Women Talk seeks to give voice to women from the African and African Caribbean community. With the theme of Black History Month 2018 reflecting on the thirtieth anniversary of Sisters of the Long March visit to Leicester, as part of the Anti-Apartheid Movement and the sixtieth anniversary of The West Indian Gazette’s founding by Trinidad-born journalist and activist Claudia Jones, and the centenary of the Representation of the People Act 1918. The discussion will focus on the topic of representation, with particular reference to Black women in arts, media and politics.

Panellists include Michelle Gayle, singer, actor and author; Bertha Ochieng, professor of integrated health and social care at De Montfort University; Kennetta Perry, Stephen Lawrence Research Centre at De Montfort Karen Salt; assistant professor in Transnational American Studies at University of Nottingham; Rachael Young, live artist and theatre maker. The event will be chaired by Pawlet Brookes, CEO and Artistic Director of Serendipity.