The metropolitan bias of London has cast other British towns and cities and their inhabitants, no matter their alleged race or class, in its shadow.
Lanre Bakare’s debut non-fiction book challenges that dominance by incorporating a vastly broader range of Black Britons into the fabric of our national story.
The foundries of Birmingham, the docks of Liverpool and Cardiff, the mills of Bradford: Black people are in Wigan, Wolverhampton, Manchester and the green expanse of the British countryside.
Colin Grant (from Luton) hosts a night reflecting on the woefully under-reported cultural impact of black people who have lived outside of London, including the Bradford-born author Lanre Bakare, Malika Booker (founder of the poetry collective Malika’s Kitchen based in Leeds), Liverpool’s film director Bea Freeman, and the Nottingham-based singer and musician Daudi Matsiko.
Together they illuminate the radical groups of artists and pioneering thinkers who have remained largely unknown or at least unheralded in London.
Lanre Bakare was born and grew up in Bradford, West Yorkshire. He is a correspondent covering arts and culture for the Guardian, where his writing focuses on the intersection of art, race and culture across multiple disciplines. He was senior correspondent on the award-winning Cotton Capital project and has worked in New York and Los Angeles as part of the Guardian US team.
Malika Booker is a poet and multi-disciplinary artist of Guyanese and Grenadian parentage. Her writers’ collective Malika’s Poetry Kitchen has had a major impact on the British Poetic landscape. Booker is currently Creative Writing Lecturer at Manchester Metropolitan University and the recipient of a Slate Award to research and develop her new play. She was inaugural Poet in Residence at the Royal Shakespeare Company.
Bea Freeman’s career in filmmaking has spanned five decades working with national broadcasters and using her filmmaking talents to highlight racial injustice in Liverpool. Born, raised and educated in Liverpool, she has remained rooted in the city and from an early age was involved in the L8 Black community. Her filmmaking work began with a Channel 4 commission which was a groundbreaking exploration of the Toxteth riots in 1981.
Colin Grant is the Director of WritersMosaic, a division of the Royal Literary Fund. His books include Bageye at the Wheel, short-listed for the Pen Ackerley Prize, and Homecoming: Voices of the Windrush Generation, a BBC Radio 4 Book of the Week. His latest book is I’m Black So You Don’t Have to Be.
Daudi Matsiko is a British Ugandan singer-songwriter. Matsiko set up his own label, ‘Really Good,’ to release his debut album, The King of Misery, a hauntingly beautiful exploration of depression, bipolar disorder, and finding hope in that experience. He has recently appeared on The Adam Buxton podcast and performed live on BBC 6 Music.
