Uncovering Britain’s Hidden Histories

As many parts of the UK prepare to celebrate the Queen’s Diamond Jubilee, it feels as if nostalgia is back in vogue. Many trappings of the festivities have a timeless feel to them – Union Jacks, Scones, and bunting – but as we all know, Britain has been transformed over the last 60 years.

Many of the reasons for this transformation have been well documented. These include breakthroughs in science and medicine; rapid advancements in computer and mobile technologies; popular music and culture; globalization; deregulation and the birth of the Internet have all helped to reshape British society.

Another visible and often contentious driver of change has been migration. There’s no denying that some parts of Britain look very different today. What was once known as a cultural melting pot could now be renamed a remix culture.

We can point to historic moments such as the arrival of the Empire Windrush, which docked in Tilbury on 22 June 1948, carrying 493 passengers from Jamaica hoping to start a new life in the United Kingdom. But most changes are harder to track as they take place on a micro level and involve the daily interactions that occur among people of different cultures. I call these hidden histories.

My Hidden History

My parents came to the UK over 50 years ago. My father had been a teacher in his native country Nigeria, but because he was bright and ambitious, he was selected by his village and sent to England to study law. His plan was to qualify as a lawyer and return home to set up his legal practice. In the end, it took him over 20 years to complete this mission.

My mother came to Britain from her home on the outskirts of Montreux in Switzerland to learn English. She worked as an au pair and was living with a family in South London when she had what turned out to be a life-changing encounter on the London Underground with a lady carrying too many bags of shopping.

The lady, who happened to be Nigerian, was struggling with her bags as she disembarked from the tube. In a random (but not uncharacteristic) act of kindness, my mother offered to help her.

The two of them walked from the station to the apartment where the Nigerian lady lived. The lady insisted on returning my mother’s kindness by inviting her back for a meal at a later date.  My mother, who until this point had never known any black people, felt it would be rude to refuse, so she accepted the offer.

It turns out the Nigerian lady was a friend of my father. When she recounted the story to him later, she declared emphatically: ”I have met your future wife!”

Soon afterwards my mother received the invitation back to the flat for a meal. Not knowing quite what to expect, she arrived brandishing a bunch of flowers. However, when the door opened she was shocked to discover that her host for the evening was not the lady she had met before, but my father. Despite wanting to turn and run away, she stayed and had dinner with the man who would become her future husband.

My mother tells me that she will never forget the date of that first meeting: 22 November 1963. How can she be so sure? It was there that she first heard the news that President John F Kennedy had been assassinated.

Half the story has never been told

Stories like the one above form a tiny part of Britain’s hidden history, composed by ordinary people who weren’t kings or queens, musicians or movie stars. Taken together they form part of the broader historical narrative of Post-War Britain, highlighting how migration created unlikely encounters that helped shape the world we now inhabit.

Bob Marley sang, ‘half the story has never been told’. Over 30 years ago a group of parents, educationalists and community activists led by Len Garrison set out to correct this by forming the Black Cultural Archives. Since then, the BCA has been preserving the hidden histories of black people in the UK, amassing a collection of magazines, photographs, recordings and artifacts that bring these stories to life.

I’ve been involved with the BCA as a Trustee for the last few years working towards launching the first National Black Heritage Centre in Brixton. Having received over £5m for a capital building project from sources including the Heritage Lottery Fund, the BCA is well on the way to making this dream a reality by 2013.

This will be a significant milestone, because as the Diamond Jubilee reminds us, history is important. Britain is far from perfect, but there’s a lot to be proud of. Our unique remix culture has created an environment where Urban Mashup’s like me can feel at home. I think that’s worth celebrating.

Photo credits: Thanks to @MelKirk for the shot of the cakes. My Mum and Dad (middle image). My youngest son outside Raleigh Hall currently under construction and soon to be home for the BCA collection when complete in 2013 (bottom image).

Don’t look back in anger

The world has changed significantly in the last 12 months.  2011 was the year the media really woke up to the power of social and mobile networks.

The ‘Arab Spring’, the global ‘Occupy’ movement, and the UK riots all demonstrated how technology could be used to connect and coordinate disparate groups of people in ways that made it almost impossible for security forces and governments to keep up.

This phenomenon was by no means new, but it was unexpected. As more and more people became digitally connected, and mobile technology became almost ubiquitous, Clay Shirky’s adage that communications tools don’t get socially interesting until they get technologically boring, proved to be right on the money.

While MySpace continued its steady decline, other social networks such as Tumblr, Instagram, and Google+ grew rapidly, each vying for our attention. But as RIM (makers of BlackBerry) discovered this year, attention isn’t always such a good thing.

The hackers behind Anonymous and LulzSec figured this out too.  Niche social networks such as Path have emerged to enable sharing of information among small groups of people. Other platforms like Silk Road are designed to be invisible to those not in the know.

Unsurprisingly, the techies involved in the Occupy movement are trying to build these types of private networks. This trend has led some to speculate that there will never be another network the size of Facebook. I’m not so sure.

What is beyond question is that mass disruption has been a recurring theme across the globe these past 12 months. We’re also seeing an increase in a consumer trend that has been dubbed “SoMoLo” – Social, Mobile, Local.

Observe the modern shopping experience and you’ll see this being played out. Customers in stores are using their smart phones to check prices, compare products, identify other local shops and consult with friends before purchasing. Soon they’ll be paying for items with their phones too.

This year has also seen the rise of the Urban Mashup.  Oglivy Culture launched in the US and Steve Stoute chronicled ‘The Tanning of America’ – highlighting the growing influence of urban culture on the mainstream.

The Kiss

In June, Canadian photographer Richard Lam took one of the most striking images of the year during riots that erupted in Vancouver.

The image of a couple kissing in the midst of the chaos and riot police became an internet viral sensation. Many saw it as a 21^st Century reimaging of the famous photo of ‘The Kiss’ that took place in Times Square on V-J day in 1945.

For all the momentous changes that took place in 2011, I can’t help but feel that we ain’t seen nothing yet.

Here’s to 2012…

How Pre-Internet Piracy Made Me (Almost) Famous

There has been a great deal of discussion and a very good book written about the rise of Internet piracy and the dilemma that this creates for businesses operating in a digital age.

The photograph above is of my son and I standing in front of a mural that I was commissioned to paint by a community centre in Stockwell. Almost 20 years on it’s probably the piece of artwork that I’m proudest of. Following on from my last wander down memory lane, I thought I’d explore the theme of piracy by sharing the tale of this image.

First, a little scene setting: It was the start of the 1990′s and a new wave of Black Consciousness was sweeping both sides of the Atlantic. Malcolm X was back in vogue thanks to rap groups such as Public Enemy. Spike Lee was challenging audiences to ‘Do The Right Thing’. Meanwhile fashion labels such as FUBU (For Us, By Us) were affirming a new African centred identity.

The intellectual underpinning for this movement was inspired by the writings of Cheikh Anta Diop, Molefi Asante, and Maulana Karenga. Louis Farrakhan, the controversial leader of the Nation of Islam, gave these ideas additional religious fervor. As a young man growing up in the midst of all this, the words of Tracy Chapman summed it up. We were ‘Talking Bout A Revolution’.

The mural is a reflection of this moment in time. Based on the map of Africa, it featured black heroes from Queen Nefertiti to Queen Latifah. At the centre, a Benin Mask and the Soul II Soul logo merge together to illustrate the past and present coming together.

The image was supposed to inspire people and based on the feedback, it seemed that it did. The mural became so popular I agreed that a poster could be produced and sold to fund a trip to Egypt for a group of young people. One of the leaders at the centre said she knew someone who could produce the posters cheaply, but that turned out to be a big mistake.

‘Stan’ was the man in question. He was responsible for running the bootleg poster operation that proliferated in London at that time. You couldn’t pass a busy street corner without seeing an array of reproduced Athena posters for sale at bargain prices. When I raised concerns that my picture might be similarly ripped-off, I was assured that this wouldn’t happen because Stan wouldn’t dare cross his own community, as he knew what the consequences would be.

In the event, if Stan did know, he didn’t care, because posters with the Africa image on it soon began appearing all over London. Unsurprisingly this sparked outrage. Feelings were running so high that a few ‘brothers’ were sent to have ‘words’ with Stan. This led to a large quantity of posters being retrieved and promises that no more would be printed. However after a few weeks, more posters began appearing on the streets.

But something else happened. Among a certain set of people I became (almost) famous – or at least my picture did. Stan’s distribution network was far more extensive than I could have imagined. As a result the image cropped up in all sorts of places, from inner-city street corners to suburban offices. A friend spotted it on TV hanging on the wall of an architect’s home in New York. My brother found a reproduction in a street market in Switzerland.

The bootlegged copies didn’t entirely kill the market for the legitimate ones either. As the unauthorized prints were unsigned, the limited edition of 500 was sold to those who were willing to pay extra for a signed copy.

Although this episode took place before the widespread adoption of the Internet, you can see similar effects taking place on a much larger scale today. For example the number 1 book on the Amazon bestseller list ‘Go The F**k To Sleep’ was widely pirated before publication, something that the author attributes in part to its success.

I only ever met Stan once, in a council flat in Greenwich that served as a base for his bootlegging operations. I have no idea what happened to him, or if he got his comeuppance in the end. But if I did meet him again I’m not sure what I’d say. Perhaps it should be ‘Thanks’.

Comments welcome

Was the Cadbury’s advert a Fair Trade?

Ever since Cadburys Dairy Milk brought the world the drumming Gorilla, they have proved that they are not frightened of controversy. However, I’m sure that the reaction to their latest advert will have taken them, and their ad agency Fallon, by surprise.

The advert was first shown on British TV on the18th September 2009, and was designed to celebrate the brand’s commitment to Fair Trade. However, as described by the Independent the video: “features a giant, negroid rotating head that unleashes mass dancing among what appear to be highly excitable people in an African village.”

This led to very mixed reactions. Samples of these are captured on the comments page of Creative Review.  The first few are largely positive, however as you scroll down the webpage, other perspectives begin to appear:

“It’s a shame they don’t show Ghana as a richer country. Africa does have cities with wealth. It’s not just poor rural areas. Still… nice advert, apart from the stereotypes. “

Marie Johnson – despite some dodgy spelling – breaks it down succulently:

“I really dislike this advert. Everytime it comes on I get angry. It’s very stereotypical and it is not at all enjoyable to watch from a Black British piont of view at all. What on earth is the piont of people bursting into dance just because of Cabury’s fair trade? I hate the image of an ‘Black’ face made up from a cocobean? It is not clever, cool or creative it’s just stupid, ulgy and piontless.”

She wasn’t alone. I have to admit that part of my motivation for starting this blog was to have a rant against the advert for it’s simplistic representations of African people and culture.

In the end, the Advertising Standards Authority received 29 complaints, but following an investigation, a spokesman dismissed these saying: “Although the council acknowledges that Cadbury had used stereotypes in their ads, they felt that the stereotypes were not harmful or offensive.”

The irony is I am sure that the people behind the production believed that – as stated by the Cadburys spokesman – the advert was a: “joyous and uplifting portrayal of Ghanaian culture and something which Ghanaians can feel proud of”

Others have pointed out that it was made with the full participation of Ghanaian artists and creative’s, so how could the negative backlash not have been predicted?

For me, it comes back to the issue of representation – or the lack of it within the UK advertising industry.

Let me just state for the record, I worked at Fallon a few years back and I loved it there. I also happen to think that they are one of the most creative agencies on the planet. And I’m sure that the people there now would be horrified at the idea that they had produced something that others would call racist.

But – and it’s a big but – like just about every other creative agency in town, when I was there, they were struggling to recruit from a more diverse talent pool.

To his credit, the head honcho Robert Senior acknowledged this at the time, and even set me up with a small team to help come up with creative ideas to address this issue. This is what led to my discovering Robin Wight’s Ideas Foundation, and I’ve been a Board member of that organisation ever since.

John Hegarty recently described the Ideas Foundation as Robin Wight’s best idea, stating that:

“This is about much more than just ethnic disadvantage: it’s about ethnic necessity. We can’t afford to waste any of the creative potential of British people”

I can’t help but wonder whether the creative potential of a more diverse range of British people would have produced a very different advert to promote Cadburys Fair Trade, and avoided the debacle in the first place.

Perhaps Robin is right – advertising really does need saving.