Acclaimed Manchester poet, performer and cultural activist SuAndi OBE launches a major new annual lecture celebrating Global Majority women whose creativity, leadership and activism have shaped the city.
Sarah’s Sistahs is the inaugural Sarah Parker Remond Lecture and a powerful new performance created and delivered by SuAndi OBE.
Part performance and part public address, the evening will reflect on Sarah Parker Remond’s remarkable legacy while celebrating generations of women who have shaped Manchester through creativity, leadership, activism, care and resistance.
The event coincides with city-wide activities marking the 81st anniversary of Manchester’s historic Fifth Pan-African Congress of 1945. It also takes place during the bicentenary year of Sarah Parker Remond’s birth.
Honouring Sarah Parker Remond
Sarah Parker Remond was an abolitionist, physician, suffragist and pioneering Black internationalist.
During an anti-slavery lecture tour of Britain in 1859, she spoke at Manchester Athenaeum and challenged the city’s political, business and civic leaders to confront Manchester’s economic dependence on cotton produced through enslaved labour.
Her public testimony exposed the human cost hidden within international systems of wealth and production.
Drawing inspiration from Remond’s belief in the power of testimony to confront injustice, the lecture asks two urgent questions: whose voices have inspired social change and become part of Manchester’s shared memory, and whose contributions remain overlooked?
Sarah’s Sistahs by SuAndi OBE
SuAndi OBE is one of Manchester’s defining cultural figures. As an artist, poet, performer, producer, activist and mentor, her work has transformed conversations around race, identity, representation and cultural leadership.
Born and raised in Manchester, SuAndi has performed throughout Britain and internationally. Her acclaimed one-woman work The Story of M is now studied as part of the A-level curriculum.
Her career has been recognised with honorary degrees from Manchester Metropolitan University and Lancaster University.
SuAndi received an OBE for her contribution to the Black arts sector in 1999. She was presented with the Manchester Culture Awards’ Special Recognition Award in 2023 and became an Honorary Fellow of the Royal Society of Literature in 2024, receiving its Benson Medal in recognition of her career.
Her major retrospective poetry collection, Leaning Against Time, has been published by Manchester-based Carcanet Press.
About the Sarah Parker Remond Lecture
The lecture launches a long-term commitment by Manchester’s cultural, community and civic organisations to recognise, document and preserve the contributions of Global Majority women.
Each year, a different woman connected to Manchester will be invited to share her creativity, leadership, experiences and ideas.
The annual programme forms part of Building a Living Canon, an evolving city-wide initiative ensuring that these stories become part of Manchester’s cultural, civic and social history.
Manchester City Galleries and SICK! Productions will oversee the initiative during its first three years, from 2026 to 2029.
The inaugural lecture is presented in partnership with Manchester Poetry Library, Manchester Metropolitan University, Oxford Road Corridor, Manchester Histories, Global Threads, the National Black Arts Alliance and a growing network of civic and cultural partners.
This is a free event, but advance booking is required.
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