Book Launch and RoundtableWednesday, 31 May 202318:00-19:30 BSTSpeakers: Anjalie Dalal-Clayton, Paul Goodwin, Carolina Rito, Ian Sergeant, and Marlene Smith. Register here! Download publication here. ‘The Role of Visual Arts Organisations in the British Black Arts Movement in the Midlands’ is a research network funded by the Arts and Humanities Research Council (AHRC). Co-led by Carolina Rito (Coventry University) and Paul Goodwin (University of the Arts London), this project explored the institutional and curatorial strategies of the movement in the 1980s, and the institutional support in promoting and showing Black curators and artists then and today. The network it created also aimed to understand how the 1980s movement’s motivations can provide models for the sector today. With thanks to our panellists Anjalie Dalal-Clayton, Ian Sergeant and Marlene Smith. Join us in reflecting on the project process through a roundtable with the project working group members, and in launching the project’s publication. The publication includes new insights about the process, and interviews with key researchers and practitioners in the field. It presents a series of recommendations and …

We organised a workshop with the project partners and working group members at New Art Exchange on the 7th of December 2022. The project partners were asked to give a short presentation about an event or activity that they found radical and transformative in the history of their organisation. Here is what Senior Curator Carol Thompson at Wolverhampton Gallery shared with us. Carol Thompson on Black Art an’ Done Exhibition When I was asked to talk about an event at Wolverhampton Art Gallery that was radical and transformative in the history of Wolverhampton Art Gallery the obvious choice was the exhibition Black Art an’ Done, in June 1981, now widely recognised as the first exhibition of work by young Black British artists at a major public UK gallery, and a catalyst for change.  As Eddie Chambers’ exhibition guide states: “This exhibition of visual art work by five young black artists, is the first of its kind to be mounted in Wolverhampton. It is a stride along the road to ‘somebodyness’ for the black community. These …

Marlene Smith Nation’s Finest, Putting Down Roots & Birthing is the title of a multi-dimensional and inter-generational project by artist Beverley Bennett, commissioned by the B2022 Commonwealth Games cultural festival and curated by myself and Ian Sergeant for the Blk Art Group Research Project. B2022 wanted a project that made reference to the rich history of the Black Arts Movement in the region and that reached 10.000 people in Coventry and Wolverhampton. The Blk Art Group was a group of young black people, art students and recent graduates who came together in 1981 to organise eleven exhibitions of their own work and two national conferences through which they sought to bring like-minded artists and students together to discuss the form, function and future of black art. The group were active between 1981 and 1985, when the term ‘black art’ was still new and divided opinions. Their work addressed the condition of blackness, what it meant to be black in the UK and the issues around race and racism.  The project Nation’s Finest, Putting Down Roots …

In November 2021, Marlene Smith and Keith Piper were in conversation at the Herbert in Coventry. The conversation was part of a range of research activities being undertaken to consider the inter-connections between the lives of the local Black and Asian community, the art institutions, Coventry University, and the local cultural networks in Coventry during this time.