Panya Banjoko | Dawn of the Unread

Last year I wrote a manifesto for “an interactive digital humanities project” for a conference at Durham University called Beyond Crisis: Visions for the New Humanities. The fourth point in the ten point manifesto was:

“Bring life to the archive. Archives when used in collaboration with social media can help build a collectively authored anthology of content that takes the conversation in new and often unexpected directions.”

Dawn of the Unread has helped bring to life some wonderful archives over the past 16 months, such as: the Feminist Library at the Nottingham Women’s Centre, the Ray Gosling Archives, the Manuscripts and Special Collections Department at University of Nottingham, The Sparrow’s Nest Anarchist Library and Digital Cavendish, an academic project in the USA.

George Africanus throws a mard when he realises diversity is missing from our literary comic

Our final issue ‘Powe versus Africanus’ pays particular attention to race and is written by Panya Banjoko, one of the founding members of the Nottingham Black Archive. NBA was created in 2010 and, as the title suggests, aims to research, collect and preserve Black history, heritage and culture in Nottingham, from the earliest time to the present day. It has in its collection some of the earliest documents relating to the formation of black community organisations in Nottingham, including the ACNA Centre’s constitution, 14 full transcripts from the first generation of Caribbean elders to reside in Nottingham, photographs, articles, newsletters and political letters dating back to the 1960s. More recently it has added videos after employing local documentary maker Ioney Smallhorne.

Panya felt that BME identities were under represented in local museums and conducted some research into Attitudes and Perceptions of the African Caribbean Community at Nottingham Castle Museum in 2008. This revealed that African Caribbean people did not feel as though their history or culture was being represented in Nottingham’s Museums. One comment in her research was particularly revealing: ‘It seems that the only black history contained in museums is about slavery, and that’s not all of black history…I just don’t feel like they showcase some of the good in my history apart from that one big problem’.

NBA filmed 19 oral testimonines for the Common Land project. Photo Nottingham Black Archive.

To counteract this the NBA has ran a series of community engagement projects. Of particular interest is The Common Land which explores the development of the St. Ann’s estate through the eyes of residents during the 1960s and 1970s. In total they recorded and filmed 19 oral histories, including Merlita Bryan, who would become Nottingham’s first female Black Sheriff. The recordings were then dramatised by Mufaro Makubika and performed at the Nottingham Playhouse during October 2012 at a sharing event.

The first generation of Afro-Caribbean settlers in postwar St. Ann’s would have experienced a wide range of prejudices, many of which led to the 1958 Race Riots. Journalist Norma Gregory has pointed out in her book Jamaicans in Nottingham that one common prejudice (after we had progressed from No Blacks. No Dogs. No Irish) was the belief that Black people would bring down the value of housing in an area. Mortgages were also difficult for Black people to obtain due to an institutional prejudice that argued they were unlikely to live for the duration of the 25 year repayment plan and so were a poor investment.

But just as the person in Panya’s research was frustrated at Black culture being only known through a narrative of slavery, so too St. Ann’s has become a byword for poverty and destitution. This is largely due to the Race Riots, a 1969 Gimme Shelter documentary into ‘slums’ (see above video), Ken Coates Poverty: The Forgotten Englishman and more recently Lisa McKenzie’s Getting By: Estates, Class and Culture in Austerity Britain.

This is something that particularly annoys Colin Haynes, who I work with at the Ray Gosling Archives. Colin was an activist in the 1970s and wishes more was said about the positive contribution of locals such as the work of Satra (St Ann’s Tenants and Residents Association) or the Chase Times newsletter which was written by local people and encouraged activism and skill sharing. Referring to Ken Coates book, Ray Gosling once told me, with a smirk, “I think people made a lot of money about books on poverty in those days.”

Nottingham Black Archive have gone some way to altering the parameters informing dialogue about race and community which is why their inclusion was so vital in our final issue. Elsewhere they are helping to give meaning to archives by bringing them directly out into the public, such as through their Community Capsule, a box containing books, children’s toys , war time cookery book, registration and identity cards, costumes, photographs and activities for children to make all relating to World War Two.

Perhaps the most shocking artefact in this collection is the Golly Flying a Lancaster Bomber. The Golliwog originated as a character in Florence Kate Upton and Bertha Upton’s 1895 book The Adventures of Two Dutch Dolls but has largely been deemed an offensive racist symbol. Although it is offensive to modern sensibilities it is a symbol that is a reminder of past attitudes and how with hard work and education, these attitudes can be changed.

I knew nothing about the Nottingham Black Archive until Dawn of the Unread and I hope that we’ve gone some way to raising awareness about an important institution that’s been created from below rather than from above. There’s still a lot of work to be done, in particular their website needs updating and more content should be digitised, but this is where you, dear reader, can step in and offer your support.

‘Powe Versus Africanus,’ the last issue in the Dawn of the Unread serial can be read here.

Dawn of the Unread is a graphic novel celebrating Nottingham’s literary history. It was created to support libraries and bookshops. It began life online and won the Teaching Excellence Award at the Guardian Education Awards in 2015 and has since been published by Spokesman Books (2017). All profits go towards UNESCO Nottingham City of Literature.

RELATED READING

Black to Basic: Panya Banjoko on NBA (dawnoftheunread.com)
Common Land Project (nottinghamblackarchive.org)
Community Capsule (nottinghamblackarchive.wordpress.com)
Dig for History (stannsallotments.wordpress.com)
Bygones: Slum Clearance (nottinghampost.com)
Black History Month: George Africanus (blogs.nottingham.ac.uk)

Top right Jean 'Binta' Breeze, bottom left Melanie Abrahams, bottom right, James Walker (me) — Top right Jean ‘Binta’ Breeze, bottom left Melanie Abrahams, bottom right, Ahem.

Melanie Abrahams is the creative director of Renaissance One, which offers mentoring and advice to emerging writers about all facets of the creative industries from launching and touring a performance to how to earn an income. One way she promotes the local literary scene is through a Creative Salon, whereby a selection of writers are invited to share their experiences and projects with other professionals. This is then followed up by a Q&A.

The event was hosted on 2 November at Embrace Arts, University of Leicester. It was my first public talk about Dawn of the Unread outside of Nottingham and I shared the stage with Aly Stoneman, Bubba Bennett and Jean ‘Binta’ Breeze, with guest readings from Panya Banjoko and Joe Coghlan.

Although DOTU has a very specific focus on the Nottingham literary scene I was keen to get over to Leicester because they have such an incredibly supportive literary scene, something raised by Bubba Bennett when he produced handouts for the audience on every spoken word event in the city as well as statistics regarding the demographics of attendees. Any event I’ve ever been to at Leicester has always been very well attended. I’m not entirely sure why this is but it’s certainly something that Nottingham could learn from.

In the talk I outlined the methodology to DOTU and explained how you identify a problem and then put together a project. This was a diluted version of the manifesto I’ve recently written. A manifesto sounds very serious and so it should be. There’s no point embarking on a project unless you know where you are heading and why.

One emphasis of the talk was the importance of diversifying content as a means of building audiences and new partnerships. I have some very ambitious targets for how many people I want to engage and this talk is one of the many ways in which these ambitions become a reality. Sure enough, I met many interesting people and below is a little teaser of what we talked about and how conversations can shape the direction of a project.

Lydia Towsey is involved with the running of Everybody’s Reading in Leicester in October 2014 and so there are obvious links there. However, I also discovered she’s a complete Zombie nut who is putting together a show about reading and zombies. We’re planning a cuppa for the end of the month so watch this space.

Carol Leeming has a blog whose title is inspired by a Sillitoe short story (the same story that inspired Nicola Monaghan’s blog). Her work and promotion of black female writers also ties in with our themes around race.

Panya Banjoko is someone who I’ve had in mind for a long time to coordinate a response to the race issues raised in the project with Mouthy Poets. But I discovered she’s also recording testimonies from Black servicemen from WWII. There are many parallels about ‘forgotten histories’ that we could link to.

Michael ‘Sureshot’ Brome is a poet who works in a prison and was interested in how DOTU could be used to address literacy in prisons, an area I hadn’t considered before. He mentioned an inmate who had a quote tattooed on his arm but didn’t know who it was by. His comments related to my discussion of Agnes Richter’s mental jacket and how fashion and literature can work well together and raises the possibility of exploring the realtionship between body art, fashion and literature.

The digested read: You can’t go home again.