Nubian Jak Community Trust (NJCT) is a commemorative plaque and sculpture scheme founded by Jak Beula that highlights the historic contributions of Black and minority ethnic people in Britain. The first NJCT heritage plaque, honouring Bob Marley, was unveiled in 2006 after "two years of research and behind the scenes negotiating". [1] [2] The scheme has been run and managed by the not-for-profit organization Nubian Jak Trust Ltd since August 2016, with a remit to commemorate and celebrate the diverse history of modern Britain. Its objectives include the promotion of social equality and to encourage activities that promote cultural diversity in society.
The Trust was founded by Jak Beula and works in partnership with educational groups, cultural institutions, local government, and public- and private-sector organizations. Its activities include exhibitions, seminars, workshops, and learning programmes, as well as managing a national plaque and sculpture scheme.
The scheme, which is the only one of its kind in Europe, highlights BME presence in Britain by commemorating individuals who have made a recognisable contribution to the nation. [3] These individuals (mostly deceased) are either nominated by members of the public, or recommended by a special panel within the Trust, to receive a commemorative plaque. One of the most famous plaques of recent years is the Bob Marley Blue Plaque, [4] which the Nubian Jak Community Trust arranged in partnership with the Mayor of London in October 2006. [5] It was the first commemorative event organised by the Nubian Jak Community Trust, as well as also being County Hall's first ever blue plaque. The installation of the Bob Marley plaque was filmed as a feature for a 90-minute Arena documentary aired on BBC1 the following October called Bob Marley: Exodus 77. [6]
The next three Nubian Jak Community Trust plaques were installed as part of the bicentenary commemoration for the British abolition of the Slave Trade Act 1807.
The first of the plaques installed in 2007 had a public ceremony unveiling inside Luton Town Hall in February 2007. The Luton Bicentenary Plaque [7] is now installed outside Luton Central Library in Central Square.
This was followed by the historic plaque to Ignatius Sancho [8] erected in October 2007 at the Foreign and Commonwealth Office in the City of Westminster, near which site Sancho lived and had a grocery store. [9] It is the only black plaque in Whitehall. A couple of weeks later, on 26 October, [10] another NJCT bronze plaque was installed on Senate House, part of the University of London, to Bermuda-born abolitionist and author Mary Prince. [11] [10] [12] [13]
On 24 August 2018, Nubian Jak unveiled the world's largest blue plaque, honouring the pioneers of the Notting Hill Carnival. [14] [15]
By 2019, the Nubian Jak Community Trust Plaque Scheme had installed 50 commemorative plaques around the UK. [16] [17]
In November 2020, the "Black Plaque Project", a joint campaign by Havas London and Nubian Jak Community Trust to honour Black Londoners, was launched to address the lack of diversity in the capital's "blue plaques". [18] [19] Nubian Jak blue plaques will subsequently replace the black plaques. [20]
On 1 April 2021, a blue plaque was installed at 16-18 Trinity Gardens, Brixton, where Choice FM, the UK's only black radio station to have held a London-wide commercial licence, was launched, co-founded by Neil Kenlock and Yvonne Thompson. [21]
On Armistice Day 2014, as part of the four-year centenary commemorating World War I, the Nubian Jak Community Trust temporarily displayed Britain's first dedicated African and Caribbean War Memorial to servicemen and women from Africa and the Caribbean, who served alongside Britain and the Allied Forces during World War I and World War II at the Black Cultural Archives in Brixton, before its eventual permanent installation on London's Windrush Square, on 22 June 2017. [109] [110] [111] [112] [113] [114] [115] [116] [117]
The Notting Hill Carnival is an annual Caribbean Carnival event that has taken place in London since 1966 on the streets of the Notting Hill area of Kensington, over the August Bank Holiday weekend.
A blue plaque is a permanent sign installed in a public place in the United Kingdom, and certain other countries and territories, to commemorate a link between that location and a famous person, event, or former building on the site, serving as a historical marker.
Walter Daniel John Tull was an English professional footballer and British Army officer of Afro-Caribbean descent. He played as an inside forward and half back for Clapton, Tottenham Hotspur and Northampton Town and was the third person of mixed heritage to play in the top division of the Football League after Arthur Wharton and Willie Clarke. He was also the first player of African descent to sign for Rangers in 1917, while stationed in Scotland.
Basing Street Studios was a recording studio in a former 17th century chapel at 8–10 Basing Street, in Notting Hill, London, England. Originally established in 1969 as Island Studios by Chris Blackwell, the founder of Island Records, the studio's location also housed the offices for Island Records from 1969 until 1973, and was renamed Basing Street Studios in 1975. Island/Basing Street Studios produced many notable recordings in the 1970s from artists including Bob Marley and the Wailers, Led Zeppelin, Roxy Music, Jethro Tull, Traffic, and Dire Straits. In 1982, the studios were acquired by Sarm Studio owners Jill Sinclair and her husband, producer Trevor Horn in 1982, and renamed Sarm West.
Val Irvine McCalla was a Jamaican accountant and media entrepreneur who settled in Britain in 1959. He is best known as the founder of The Voice, a British weekly newspaper aimed at the Britain's black community, which he established in 1982 as a voice for the British African-Caribbean community. He was honoured as a pioneering publisher for the community, but also faced critics who deemed him sensationalistic.
Claudia Vera Jones was a Trinidad and Tobago-born journalist and activist. As a child, she migrated with her family to the United States, where she became a Communist political activist, feminist and Black nationalist, adopting the name Jones as "self-protective disinformation". Due to the political persecution of Communists in the US, she was deported in 1955 and subsequently lived in the United Kingdom. Upon arriving in the UK, she immediately joined the Communist Party of Great Britain and would remain a member for the rest of her life. She then founded Britain's first major Black newspaper, the West Indian Gazette, in 1958, and played a central role in founding the Notting Hill Carnival, the second-largest annual carnival in the world.
Kelso Cochrane was an Antiguan expatriate to Britain whose unsolved murder led to racial tensions in London.
Russell Audley Ferdinand "Russ" Henderson was a jazz musician on the piano and the steelpan. Originally from Trinidad and Tobago, he settled in England in the 1950s. He is most widely recognised as one of the founding figures of the Notting Hill Carnival in London, United Kingdom.
Olive Elaine Morris was a Jamaican-born British-based community leader and activist in the feminist, black nationalist, and squatters' rights campaigns of the 1970s. At the age of 17, she claimed she was assaulted by Metropolitan Police officers following an incident involving a Nigerian diplomat in Brixton, South London. She joined the British Black Panthers, becoming a Marxist–Leninist communist and a radical feminist. She squatted buildings on Railton Road in Brixton; one hosted Sabarr Books and later became the 121 Centre, another was used as offices by the Race Today collective. Morris became a key organiser in the Black Women's Movement in the United Kingdom, co-founding the Brixton Black Women's Group and the Organisation of Women of African and Asian Descent in London.
Rhaune Laslett was an English community activist and the principal organiser of the Notting Hill Fayre or Festival, that evolved into the Notting Hill Carnival.
Nubian Jak is a multi-award-winning board game, introduced in 1994, that combines questions on historical facts with pop trivia, to highlight some of the achievements by people of colour globally.
Jak Beula Dodd, commonly known as Jak Beula, is a British entrepreneur and cultural activist of Caribbean heritage, who is best known for inventing the board game Nubian Jak and designing the African and Caribbean War Memorial. He is also a musician, social-worker, and former model. Beula has received recognition for campaigning to commemorate black history in the UK. He is the founder and chief executive of the Nubian Jak Community Trust, which since 2006 has been memorializing the contributions of African-Caribbean people in Britain.
The Mangrove was a Caribbean restaurant in Notting Hill, London, England. It was founded in 1968 and run by civil rights activist Frank Crichlow, eventually closing in 1992. It is known for the trial of a group of British black activists dubbed "the Mangrove Nine", who were tried for inciting a riot at a 1970 protest against the police targeting the restaurant.
Frank Gilbert Crichlow was a British community activist and civil rights campaigner, who became known in 1960s London as a godfather of black power activism. He was a central figure in the Notting Hill Carnival. His restaurant, The Mangrove in All Saints Road, served for many years as the base from which activists, musicians, and artists organised the event.
Leslie Stephen "Teacher" Palmer,, is a Trinidadian community activist, writer and teacher, who migrated in the 1960s to the UK, where he became involved in music and the arts in West London. He is credited with developing a successful template for the Notting Hill Carnival, of which he was director from 1973 to 1975, during which time he "completely revolutionised the event and transformed its structure and content almost beyond recognition." He is also known by the name of "The Wounded Soldier" as a kaisonian.
The following outline is provided as an overview of and topical guide to Bob Marley:
The African and Caribbean War Memorial in Brixton, London, is the United Kingdom's national memorial to African and Caribbean service personnel who fought in the First and Second World Wars. It originated with a project for a memorial to Caribbean Royal Air Force veterans of World War II who arrived in Britain in 1948 on the MV Empire Windrush; this was an extension of the commemorative plaque and sculpture scheme run by the Nubian Jak Community Trust to highlight the historic contributions of Black and minority ethnic people in Britain. The memorial was originally to have been placed at Tilbury Docks, as part of the commemoration for the centenary of the outbreak of World War I. However, as the project began to evolve into a larger tribute that included both World Wars and commemorated servicemen and women from both Africa and the Caribbean, it was agreed by the memorial recipient – the Port of Tilbury – and the project organisers that a new, more accessible location needed to found. The memorial was ultimately permanently installed and unveiled on 22 June 2017 in Windrush Square, Brixton.
Windrush Square is an open public space in the centre of Brixton, South London, occupying an area in front of the Brixton Tate Library. After changing its name to Tate Gardens, it was again retitled and given its current moniker in 1998. The square was renamed to recognise the important contribution of the African Caribbean community to the area, marking the 50th anniversary of the arrival of the HMT Empire Windrush. It was the Windrush that in 1948 brought to the United Kingdom from Jamaica the largest group thus far of post-war West Indian migrants, 236 of whom had no abode on arrival and were temporarily housed in the deep-level air raid shelter in Clapham Common. Some 1.7 mile away, at the western end of Coldharbour Lane in Brixton, was the nearest employment exchange to the shelter. Many of these migrants eventually found accommodation in the area.
Jessica Elleisse Huntley was a Guyanese-British political reformer and prominent race equality campaigner. She was a publisher of black and Asian literature, and a women's and community rights activist. She is notable as the founder in 1969 of Bogle-L'Ouverture Publications in London.
Southern Syncopated Orchestra (SSO), established first in the U.S. as the New York Syncopated Orchestra, was an early jazz group known for bringing Black musicians to the UK. The group was founded by Will Marion Cook. Members of the group included New Orleans clarinetist Sidney Bechet, British vocalist Evelyn Dove, and soprano Hattie King Reavis. The SSO toured the UK and Ireland between 1919 and 1921.