Stance Takes: Black History Month - The Debate
Stance Takes is an experimental mini episode outside of Stance's regular format, covering entertainment, in-depth interviews and the ideas framing co-founders, Chrystal Genesis and Heta Fell’s conversations. In the second episode of Stance Takes we look at Black History Month and the loud debate surrounding its ongoing relevance.
Windrush: Songs in a Strange Land: (C) Andrea Levy
The Royal Historical Society just published a damning assessment of the diversity of History students and academics in Britain, calling for urgent action. It described a system inherently biased where black students commonly faced racism in both study and employment. It painted a grim picture of ‘a white centred and eurocentric curriculum’ describing it as a racial problem. Slow to acknowledge weakness and even slower to change, does the academic teaching of history, blinded by the canon, risk failing in its duty of relevance to the population? How can Black and British history be properly represented if there are so many barriers to black people reaching the history departments?
In the year that Windrush went from being a ship to a scandal, in the month that many schools dismissed its celebration as tokenistic and in the week two descendants of a Barbadian slave trader married in a royal chapel, Stance asks - How Have We Got Here? Chrystal’s first stop is the British Library, where she exchanges stories with her son against the backdrop of Windrush: Songs in a Strange Land, an exhibition celebrating 70 years since the Empire Windrush.
Stuart Hall: Image by Stuart Hall Foundation
Stance Takes speak to Farzana Khan, a producer and award-winning arts educator currently coordinating the Black Cultural Activist Map with the Stuart Hall Foundation. We visit her, in her office in east London where she tells us more about the project and how she hopes it will restore forgotten stories.
Voices That Shake
Farzana talks to Stance about her work with Voices That Shake and the innovative ways in which voices once regarded as being on the fringes are becoming more vocal.
Aimée Felone and David Stevens
Just a ten-minute walk from the Stuart Hall Foundation sits a new publishing house created by Aimée Felone and David Stevens. Knights Of is an exciting new publishing company committed to making books better by publishing commercial children’s fiction from emerging writers of with as “many perspectives as we can squeeze into the making-of each book.”
Image Cited in The Royal Historical Society: Imperial War Museum AP 14372D, 1943.
This Episode of Stance Takes sets out to discover how Black History is being celebrated and whether new ideas around representation and diversity are challenging the old stale orthodoxy.
Stance Takes is a new experimental series outside of Stance Podcast’s regular format, covering entertainment, in-depth interviews and the ideas framing our conversations. Our first episode of Stance Takes was selected as “Podcast of the Week” by The Times.
Knights Of Recommendations - Books to Buy:
1. Knights and Bikes Gabrielle Kent
2. For Every One Jason Reynolds
3. Julian is a Mermaid Jessica Love
5. Death in the Spotlight Robin Stevens