The Black Curriculum is a British community interest company, [1] founded in 2019, whose mission is "to address the lack of Black British history in the UK curriculum". [2]
The Black Curriculum is a British community interest company, [1] founded in 2019, whose mission is "to address the lack of Black British history in the UK curriculum". [2]
The organisation was established in 2019 by Lavinya Stennett, who conceived the idea while studying for a degree in African Studies and Development Studies at SOAS University of London and reflecting on her own education in south London, where Black History Month covered slavery, Martin Luther King Jr. and the American civil rights movement but had taught her little about Black British history. [3] [4] [5]
The Black Curriculum first patron was Virgil Abloh, the late American fashion designer and entrepreneur, who offered financial support to The Black Curriculum through his "Post-Modern" Scholarship Fund. Abloh, together with Edward Enninful, created a collection to benefit The Black Curriculum before his early death, with the aim of furthering the company's mission to educate people on Black British History across the UK. [6]
Gábor Szabó-Zsoldos's study examines decolonization in the context of history teaching in the UK, focusing on The Black Curriculum and other movements. The study analyses their criticism of the educational system from an anti-colonial standpoint, their aspirations concerning curricula, and the methods they adopt. The Black Curriculum is highlighted for its mission to address the omission of Black British history in the UK National Curriculum. The study provides insights into the motives and goals of these decolonizing approaches, reviewing source materials, including reports, movements' publications, and official documents. The Black Curriculum (TBC) has been advocating for changes in how Black British history is taught in schools. Their approach includes incorporating arts, using music, literature, and visual arts to convey Black British history, encouraging critical thinking, and discussion on topics like inequality and legacy. TBC seeks a more inclusive and nuanced approach to teaching Black British history by challenging Eurocentric perspectives, highlighting diverse contributions, and using creative and technology-driven methods to engage students. [7]
The Black Curriculum supports projects such as the podcast called A Letter Home. The podcast focuses on effectively combining celebration and reflection, with the goal of amplifying the voices and experiences of the Black Caribbean community in the UK through topics including the "Windrush generation". [8]
In 2020, the group produced a report, written by Jason Arday, on the lack of black history in the current UK National Curriculum (for England, Northern Ireland, Scotland and Wales). [9] The report "explores how the current History National Curriculum systematically omits the contribution of Black British history in favour of a dominant White, Eurocentric curriculum that fails to reflect our multi-ethnic and broadly diverse society". [10]
They hoped to discuss the report with the Secretary of State for Education but their request for a meeting was rejected, the government stating that the existing curriculum was "broad, balanced and flexible, allowing schools to teach Black history". [11]
The Black Curriculum was one of the two causes (the other being Bristol-based Cargo Classroom) chosen by Jen Reid to receive any profits if the statue of her by Marc Quinn, erected in Bristol in July 2020 on the plinth of the toppled statue of Edward Colston in Bristol, was ever sold. [12]
The School of Oriental and African Studies is a public research university in London, England, and a member institution of the federal University of London. Founded in 1916, SOAS is located in the Bloomsbury area of central London.
Marc Quinn is a British contemporary visual artist whose work includes sculpture, installation, and painting. Quinn explores "what it is to be human in the world today" through subjects including the body, genetics, identity, environment, and the media. His work has used materials that vary widely, from blood, bread and flowers, to marble and stainless steel. Quinn has been the subject of solo exhibitions at Sir John Soane's Museum, the Tate Gallery, National Portrait Gallery, Fondation Beyeler, Fondazione Prada, and South London Gallery. The artist was a notable member of the Young British Artists movement.
Valerie Ann Amos, Baroness Amos, is a British Labour Party politician and diplomat who served as the eighth UN Under-Secretary-General for Humanitarian Affairs and Emergency Relief Coordinator. Before her appointment to the UN, she served as British High Commissioner to Australia. She was created a life peer in 1997, serving as Leader of the House of Lords and Lord President of the Council from 2003 to 2007.
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Hakim Adi is a British historian and scholar who specializes in African affairs. He is the first African-British historian to become a professor of history in the UK. He has written widely on Pan-Africanism and the modern political history of Africa and the African diaspora, including the 2018 book Pan-Africanism: A History. Currently a professor at the University of Chichester, Adi is an advocate of the education curriculum including the history of Africa and its diaspora.
Veronica Maudlyn Ryan is a Montserrat-born British sculptor. She moved to London with her parents when she was an infant and now lives between New York and Bristol. In December 2022, Ryan won the Turner Prize for her 'really poetic' work.
Stella Dadzie is a British educationalist, activist, writer and historian. She is best known for her involvement in the UK's Black Women's Movement, being a founding member of the Organisation of Women of African and Asian Descent (OWAAD) in the 1970s, and co-authoring with Suzanne Scafe and Beverley Bryan in 1985 the book The Heart of the Race: Black Women's Lives in Britain. In 2020, Verso published a new book by Dadzie, A Kick in the Belly: Women, Slavery & Resistance.
Patrick Philip Vernon is a British social commentator and political activist of Jamaican heritage, who works in the voluntary and public sector. He is a former Labour councillor in the London Borough of Hackney. His career has been involved with developing and managing health and social care services, including mental health, public health, regeneration and employment projects. Also a film maker and amateur cultural historian, he runs his own social enterprise promoting the history of diverse communities, as founder of Every Generation and the "100 Great Black Britons" campaign. He is also an expert on African and Caribbean genealogy in the UK. He was appointed a Clore Fellow in 2007, an Officer of the Order of the British Empire (OBE) in the 2012 Birthday Honours for "services to the Reduction of Health Inequalities for Ethnic Minorities", and in 2018 was awarded an honorary doctorate from the University of Wolverhampton.
Beverley Bryan is a Jamaican educationist and retired academic who was a professor of language education at the University of the West Indies in Mona. Settling in Britain with her parents in the late 1950s, she went on to become a founding member of the Brixton Black Women's Group and co-authored the 1985 book The Heart of the Race: Black Women's Lives in Britain.
Heidi Safia Mirza is a British academic, who is Professor of Race, Faith and Culture at Goldsmiths, University of London, Professor Emerita in Equalities Studies at the UCL Institute of Education, and Visiting Professor in Social Policy at the London School of Economics (LSE). She has done pioneering research on race, gender and identity in education, multiculturalism, Islamophobia and gendered violence, and was one of the first black women professors in Britain. Mirza is author and editor of several notable books, including Young, Female and Black (1992), Black British Feminism (1997), Tackling the Roots of Racism: Lessons for Success (2005), Race Gender and Educational Desire: Why Black Women Succeed and Fail (2009), Black and Postcolonial Feminisms in New Times (2012), and Respecting Difference: Race, Faith, and Culture for Teacher Educators (2012).
Olivette Otele FLSW is a historian and distinguished research professor at SOAS University of London. She was previously Professor of the History of Slavery at Bristol University. She was Vice-President of the Royal Historical Society, and Chair of Bristol's Race Equality Commission. She is an expert on the links between history, memory, and geopolitics in relation to French and British colonial pasts. She is the first Black woman to be appointed to a professorial chair in History in the United Kingdom.
Decolonization of knowledge is a concept advanced in decolonial scholarship that critiques the perceived hegemony of Western knowledge systems. It seeks to construct and legitimize other knowledge systems by exploring alternative epistemologies, ontologies and methodologies. It is also an intellectual project that aims to "disinfect" academic activities that are believed to have little connection with the objective pursuit of knowledge and truth. The presumption is that if curricula, theories, and knowledge are colonized, it means they have been partly influenced by political, economic, social and cultural considerations. The decolonial knowledge perspective covers a wide variety of subjects including philosophy, science, history of science, and other fundamental categories in social science.
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Jen Reid is a British Black Lives Matter activist from Bristol. After the statue of Edward Colston was pushed into Bristol Harbour, Reid stood on the empty plinth and made a Black Power salute. This pose was then recreated in the sculpture A Surge of Power 2020.
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Jacqueline "Jacqui" McKenzie is a British human rights lawyer specialising in migration, asylum and refugee law. Her legal career encompasses practice in the areas of civil liberties, crime and immigration with solicitors Birnberg Peirce and Partners, and since 2010 running her own immigration consultancy, McKenzie Beute and Pope (MBP), having previously spent more than a decade in senior local government roles with responsibility for equalities, community development, communications and urban development. She joined human rights law firm Leigh Day as a partner in 2021. She is the founder of the Organisation of Migration Advice and Research, which works pro bono with refugees and women who have been trafficked to the UK. McKenzie has won recognition for her work seeking justice for victims of the Windrush scandal that initially gained notoriety in 2018. She was named one of the top 10 most influential black Britons in the Powerlist 2022.
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