MAKE A DONATION TO SUPPORT BLACK EUROPE RESOURCES’ WORK
Dear Followers,
I thought I would just drop you a line to share with you my plans for Black Europe Resources.
As you probably know, from its beginning in 2017, Black Europe Resources’ aim was to diversify access to resources – especially open access resources relating to Black, Asian and Minority Ethnic (BAME) groups, and inform public discussion about BAME issues both in the UK and continental Europe through newsletters, commentary and the promotion of books, publications and events.
Black Europe Resources is a blog. It is currently not funded and it is solely edited (including the website) by me, Thushari Perera. Its readership has increased little by little and includes a committed “niche community” of more than 100+ followers and around 700 followers on Twitter.
Black Europe Resources is already punching above its weight, but I am now at a stage where I need your help to grow. Please consider making a donation if you like Black Europe Resources’ content, and/or share it often on other platforms, with family, friends and colleagues.
I am aware that I may ‘aggravate’ you, dear followers by asking, like many others, for more support. The fundraising campaign is a necessary step to increase website content, capability, functionality and keep Black Europe Resources FREE and open for everyone.
I am currently working on the ‘actual logistics’ of this fundraising plan, but if you already wish to make a donation, please contact me by e-mail at blackeuroperesources@gmail.com if you are happy to post me a cheque in British sterling pounds (£).
If you wish to advertise your events or publications with Black Europe Resources please e-mail me as early as possible, I may be able to promote them, but it is not guaranteed as I wish to keep editorial independence.
If you have any comments or questions on Black Europe Resources, please also e-mail me directly.
With thanks,
Thushari Perera
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EDITORIAL
Dear Readers,
The Social Mobility Commission report 2019 has highlighted, as usual, how entry into professional occupations like the heritage sector is still largely dependent on one’s parents’ careers. Social mobility in the UK has been ‘virtually stagnant’ since 2014, especially for people who are from a working class and/or Black, Asian and Minority Ethnic background.
We also learnt yesterday that Cambridge University has launched an inquiry into slave trade links and historic racism. The university’s archives, libraries and museums will be examined. According to the BBC, the inquiry will also consider how the university might make reparation for any links to the legacy of the slave trade – whether in symbolic terms, such as monuments or re-naming buildings, or in funding bursaries or foundations.
Surprisingly, the widely anticipated introduction of mandatory Ethnicity Pay Gap (EPG) reporting has not yet captured the attention of the media. According to the new “Taking the Right Approach” report from consultancy PwC, 95 % of businesses have not yet analysed their gap, with 40 % of that group citing concerns around legal restrictions and GDPR compliance. In this context, it will be interesting to find out what EPG reporting will reveal about the heritage sector workforce, which is currently notoriously ethnically homogeneous or White.
Thushari Perera
WORK, DIVERSITY & JUSTICE
NEW REPORT
Taking the right approach to ethnicity pay gap reporting
(PwC, March 2019)
“We believe transparency drives accountability, and we have been open about the fact our data is not where it should be. We have found through our own experience that reporting numbers is important, but it’s only one step in our journey. The numbers themselves won’t change anything. The real driver of change inside our business is the way we use the data we’ve collected to identify the pain points behind the numbers, and form clear, targeted action plans to address them”
Read the report here
Related article:
Only 5 per cent of businesses have considered their ethnicity pay gap
Written by Lauren R Brown
(People Management, 25 March 2019)
Read the article here
ARTS
PHOTOGRAPHY
Image Credit: Photography in India: A Visual History from the 1850s to the Present by Nathaniel Gaskell & Diva Gujral (20 December 2018)
What these rare images of 19th-century India tell us about colonial rule
Written by Oscar Holland
(CNN, 23 April 2019)
“I see this as a further extension of ownership and legitimizing (colonial) presence, because it’s showing (India) as this great garden of England,” he continued. “It’s mad to think that they were photographing the Himalayas as if they were Gloucestershire.”
Read the article here
Image Credit: Kwame Brathwaite: Black Is Beautiful by Tanisha C. Ford, Deborah Willis, et al. (2 May 2019)
Black is Beautiful: celebrating the significance of Kwame Brathwaite
Written by Nadja Sayej
(The Guardian, 26 March 2019)
“The Brooklyn-born photographer spent his career working to elevate natural black beauty during a time when the fashion industry was resistant”
Read the article here
STAGE & MUSICALS
Exclusive: diversity of West End musicals revealed for first time
Written by Georgia Snow
(The Stage, 25 April 2019)
“Black, Asian and minority ethnicity men and women are both twice as likely to be cast in an ensemble role as they are to be given a named role. The data shows that there are twice the number of BAME men and women in ensemble roles as there are BAME performers in lead parts, with female performers who are BAME the least likely to be cast in a named role.”
Read the article here
MUSEUMS
Hong Kong’s Tiananmen Square museum reopens
Written by Jenipher Camino Gonzalez
(Deutsche Welle, 26 April 2019)
“Organizers said the museum’s exhibition will commemorate “the sacrifice of martyrs” in China’s 1989 democracy movement. The reopening comes just weeks after the museum was vandalized.”
Find out more here
Restitution: a blunt ‘no’ is not enough
Written by Sharon Heal
(The Museum Association, 23 April 2019)
“One such issue is restitution, which has hit the headlines again this week after the Culture Secretary Jeremy Wright ruled out legal changes to allow the return of objects from national museums in England. His argument seemed to rely on the tired misconception that there would be nothing much left in our museums…”
Read the article here
Read the Empowering Collections Report here
Related article:
‘They’re not property’: the people who want their ancestors back from British museums
Written by David Shariatmadari
(The Guardian, 23 April 2019)
“The remains of indigenous people from all over the world have ended up in various British institutions. Why do their descendants have so much trouble getting them returned?”
Read the article here
MUSIC & ARCHIVES
Bob Marley tapes discovered in damp basement up for auction
(The Irish Examiner, 23 April 2019)
Written by the Press Association
“The tapes will go under the hammer at Omega Auctions in Liverpool on May 21…”
Read the article here
COMMEMORATION
Turkey and France clash over remembrance of the 1915 Armenian genocide
(MercoPress, 29 April 2019)
Read the article here
SPORTS
“Your lot are not winning”: why are there so few British Asian footballers?
Written by Jason Murugesu
(Prospect, 23 April 2019)
“Eight per cent of the country is Asian—but Asian players make up only a tiny fraction of professional footballers. Twenty years after the FA first flagged the problem, why has so little changed?”
Read the article here
SCHOLARSHIPS
UCL MRES IN SCIENCE AND ENGINEERING IN ART, HERITAGE AND ARCHAEOLOGY (SEAHA)
Historic Royal Palaces (HRP) is funding a scholarship for candidates accepted onto the UCL MRes in Science and Engineering in Art, Heritage and Archaeology (SEAHA). HRP particularly welcome Black, Asian and minority ethnic (BAME) applicants as a currently under-represented group both in heritage science and within their organisation: they believe that there should be better representation of diversity in this sector.
Find out more here
BAFTA UK
Are you a British citizen in need of financial support to take an industry-recognised course in film, games or television in the UK? With one month left to apply for the BAFTA Scholarship Programme, make sure you get your application in now. Each BAFTA scholar receives up to £12,000 as well as mentoring support and access to BAFTA events across the UK. Applications close on Tuesday 28 May.
Find out more here
FREE BOOK
LANDE: THE CALAIS ‘JUNGLE’ AND BEYOND
“Available Open Access under CC-BY-NC licence. How can Archaeology help us understand our contemporary world? This ground-breaking book reflects on material, visual and digital culture from the Calais “Jungle” – the informal camp where, before its destruction in October 2016, more than 10,000 displaced people lived. Lande: The Calais ‘Jungle’ and Beyond reassesses how we understand ‘crisis’, activism, and the infrastructure of national borders in Refugee and Forced Migration Studies, foregrounding the politics of environments, time, and the ongoing legacies of empire. Introducing a major collaborative exhibit at Oxford’s Pitt Rivers Museum, the book argues that an anthropological focus on duration, impermanence and traces of the most recent past can recentre the ongoing human experiences of displacement in Europe today.”
Download the book here
EVENTS
27 April – 29 November 2019
LANDE: THE CALAIS ‘JUNGLE’ AND BEYOND
(PITT RIVERS MUSEUM, OXFORD)
“Lande: The Calais ‘Jungle’ and Beyond is a major temporary exhibition at the Pitt Rivers Museum, running from 27 April to 29 November 2019. The exhibition has been made in parallel with a book, also called Lande: The Calais ‘Jungle’ and Beyond (Bristol University Press), published to coincide with the opening.
The exhibition reassembles material and visual culture that survives from the ‘Jungle’ as it existed at Calais from March 2015 to the demolitions of 2016. It does so in order to make visible the landscape of ‘borderwork’ at Calais. These range from photographs and artworks made by displaced people and undocumented children to images made by activists and artists, and from the Calais cross salvaged from the Orthodox Church at the ‘Jungle’ to a fragment of border fencing. The exhibition includes a new commission, برد خواهد را ما باد (‘The Wind Will Take Us Away’), by Majid Adin. Everything on display is on temporary loan from displaced people, activists and volunteers who lived and worked at the ‘Jungle’ three years ago.”
Find out more here
16 May 2019
SYMPOSIUM: DECOLONISING UNIVERSITIES (DUNDEE)
By the School of Education and Social Work, University of Dundee
“There is a burgeoning literature around decolonising university research and Scholarship of Teaching and Learning (SOTL) to challenge the dominance of Eurocentric norms in the legitimisation of knowledges, research methods and pedagogies (Ahmed, 2012; Applebaun, 2010; Bhambra et al, 2018; Campbell, 2014; Ferguson et al, 2019; Iveković; Manathunga, 2018; Santos, 2014). Although decolonisation, itself has been identified as an elusive and slippery category – meaning different things to different scholars and initiatives – from a metaphorical approach to one grounded in the lived experiences of students and academics shaped by legacies of the colonised global south; we are in agreement with Santos’(2014) litmus test that social justice must be connected with epistemic justice…”
Find out more here
23 May 2019
CONFEDERATES, RHODES & HONOR: OBLIGATIONS TO REMOVE ARTIFICIAL ARTEFACTS (ABERDEEN)
This lecture will question whether states should remove public statues of people who engaged in serious rights violations. This the 8th Annual Philosophy Public Lecture, will be given by Professor Helen Frowe, Professor of Practical Philosophy at the University of Stockholm and Director of the Stockholm Centre for the Ethics of War and Peace. The lecture will be followed by a screening of the documentary The Silence of Others. Supported by the Royal Institute of Philosophy
Find out more here
25 May 2019
THE EMPIRE SPEAKS BACK – WITH PRIYAMVADA GOPAL
(THE ADNAMS SPIEGELTENT, CHAPELFIELD GARDENS, NORWICH)
“The launch of Insurgent Empire; a timely discussion of empire and an alternative history of the UK’s tradition of dissent. Priyamvada Gopal is a senior academic and critical public figure who regularly draws attention to racism and sexism in Britain. Join her for the launch of Insurgent Empire; a timely discussion of empire and an alternative history of our country’s proud tradition of dissent. Priyamvada Gopal is University Reader in Anglophone and Related Literatures in the Faculty of English at the University of Cambridge and Fellow Churchill College. This event is part of the Norfolk and Norwich Festival.”
Find out more here
3 June 2019
ARUNDHATI ROY IN CONVERSATION WITH OWEN JONES
(ISLINGTON ASSEMBLY HALL, LONDON)
“Join us for an unmissable evening with Man Booker-winning author Arundhati Roy. She will talk to Guardian columnist and activist Owen Jones about her collected political writings, My Seditious Heart. In 1997, Roy’s debut novel, The God of Small Things, became the biggest-selling book by a non-expatriate Indian author, selling more than 8m copies in 42 languages and winning the Man Booker prize. In the two decades between her debut and her second novel, The Ministry of Utmost Happiness, she published many works of political and cultural commentary and criticism. My Seditious Heart collects the writing of those two decades, a period in which Roy dedicated herself to the political essay and to activism, and which capture a memoir of her journey as a citizen as well as a writer. Join her as she makes a radical defence of the collective and the individual in the face of political, social, financial and religious corruption. Tickets are £20 or £40 including a copy of My Seditious Heart (RRP £30). Running time: 90 minutes, no interval.”
Find out more here
The listings included here are provided only for information, not necessarily endorsement. Please let me know if any links are broken.
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