Black history, garden sheds and dragons.

Meet Professor Christer Petley, expert in the history of colonial settlers and slaveholders in the school of humanities at the University of Southampton.

His work focuses mainly on slave societies in the British Caribbean and he has published work on the social and cultural history of the Jamaican planter class.

Listen to this podcast to delve into black history and to get to know the person behind the research including using his child's toy dragon as a teaching tool!

Available also on:
- Apple Podcasts at https://fal.cn/3aT72
- Spotify at https://fal.cn/3aT70

John Hansard Gallery is delighted to premiere a brand new film by artist Larry Achiampong especially commissioned in response to COVID-19 and the subsequent lockdown.

Reliquary 2 is composed of animated sequences and unseen drone footage from Achiampong's personal archives, complemented by an original score, also composed and performed by the artist. The film is a meditation on a period of separation between Achiampong and his children, where he observes his own family narrative and the trauma of forced isolation within the context of the pandemic.

The film features animations by Wumi Olaosebikan and is a continuation of Achiampong's Relic Traveller series.

Reliquary 2 is a John Hansard Gallery commission as part of the Digital Array programme, supported by the Barker-Mill Foundation.

To watch the film, please visit the John Hansard Gallery website.

" 'Tea By the Sea' is a powder keg of a novel, where secrets and lies explode into truth and consequences, all told with spellbinding, shattering power. Hemans doesn't just fulfill the promise of her debut-she soars past it." -- Marlon James, Man Booker Prize Winning author of Black Leopard

Last October, Donna Hemans, an award-winning writer from Jamaica and Washington, D.C., read from her new novel, 'Tea by the Sea' then talked to Carole Burns, the university's head of creative writing and herself a writer. As Hemans and Burns discussed the importance of telling diverse stories, the role of culture and history in literature, and the creative process, viewers were able to ask questions.

From Brooklyn to the island of Jamaica, 'Tea by the Sea' traces a mother's circuitous route to finding the daughter taken from her at birth. A seventeen-year-old taken from her mother at birth, an Episcopal priest with a daughter whose face he cannot bear to see, a mother weary of searching for her lost child: 'Tea by the Sea' is their story-that of a family uniting and unraveling.

Jamaican-born Donna Hemans is also the author of the novel 'River Woman,' winner of the 2003-4 Towson University Prize for Literature. 'Tea by the Sea,' her second novel, won her the Lignum Vitae Una Marson Award for Adult Literature, and was listed in Ms. Magazine's "June 2020 Reads for the Rest of Us."

Donna Hemans official website: https://www.donnahemans.com/

This event was broadcasted live on YouTube and Facebook and is now available for you to enjoy in the Live section below.

The Parkes Institute presents a research seminar with David Brauner and Bryan Cheyette on Black-Jewish relations in American Literature.

Professor David Brauner (University of Reading), 'Blackness and Jewishness in the Fiction of Howard Jacobson'. Looking in detail at a few passages from a number of Jacobson's novels, David will be exploring the ways in which Blackness is represented ambivalently, symbolising an otherness which is simultaneously analogous, and in opposition, to Jewishness.

Professor Bryan Cheyette (University of Reading ), 'The Ghetto in America: Black and Jewish?'. Following on from David, Bryan will look in detail at a few passages from James Baldwin, Albert Murray, and Ralph Ellison in relation to the Harlem Ghetto and in response to Kenneth Clarke's Dark Ghetto (1965). He will look at the aesthetic and political debates in these writer's works concerning whether black Harlem was in fact a "ghetto" in stark contrast to the Jewish embrace of the Lower East Side of New York as the ur-ghetto.

The discussion will be chaired by Dr Devorah Baum, https://www.southampton.ac.uk/english/about/staff/dmb1w07.page

This event was held on ZOOM and is now available for you to enjoy in the Live section below.

More information about the speakers can be found on the University of Reading website at:
https://www.reading.ac.uk/english-literature/aboutus/Staff/d-brauner.aspx | Professor David Brauner
https://www.reading.ac.uk/english-literature/aboutus/Staff/b-h-cheyette.aspx | Professor Bryan Cheyette

In celebration of Black History Month, Winchester School of Art (WSA) hosted an interview with Nahem Shoa, curator of 'Face of Britain'.

'Face of Britain' is an exhibition of portraits by outstanding artists who have painted British individuals from the 17th century to the present day. It is currently taking place at the Southampton City Art Gallery: https://www.southamptoncityartgallery.com/whats-on/nahem-shoa-face-of-britain/

The interview panel included:
- Professor Larry Lynch, WSA Head of School
- Dr Ronda Gowland-Pryde, Senior Engagement Fellow/Civic University for the Public Engagement and Research unit (PERu) at the University of Southampton
- Eria Nsubuga, WSA practice-based PhD Student in Fine Art

Nahem Shoa official website: https://www.nahemshoa.co.uk/

This event was broadcasted live on YouTube and Facebook and is now available for you to enjoy in the Live section below.

Back by popular demand and in celebration of Black History Month, Winchester School of Art hosted a screening of the award-winning film BEYOND "There is always a black issue Dear".

BEYOND "There Is Always A Black Issue Dear" explores and celebrates the role of black LGBT communities in Fashion, Fine Art, Dance, Music and Language: https://beyondtheresalwaysablackissuedear.com

You can watch the trailer in the Video section below.

The film screening was followed by a Q&A session and conversation with:
- Claire Lawrie, Director | https://www.clairelawrie.com/
- Frank Akinsete, Stylist | https://www.frankstylist.com/
- Winn Austin, Model | https://www.instagram.com/winn_too/
- Samson Soboye, Founder and Creative Director at SOBOYE | https://www.soboye.co.uk/

This event was broadcasted live on YouTube and is now available for you to enjoy in the Live section below.

Join the Health and Wellbeing Community Engagement Hub at the University of Southampton as hub members discuss sexual health, with a focus on Black and Minority Ethnic groups.

Special guest will be Dr Adaeze Ifezulike, a General Practitioner and Lifestyle Medicine Physician, who is a recipient of the Sir Lewis Ritchie award for Excellence in General Practice and has been a medical doctor for more than 22 years, serving in several capacities within the NHS.

Dr Ifezulike is also the Regional Director of the British Society of Lifestyle Medicine and has authored a number of books including 'Understanding Contraception' and 'Medicine Abroad.'
After her talk, there will be time for questions, answers and further discussion.

The talk will be followed by a Q&A session to give you the chance to contribute to the conversation and ask questions directly to Dr Ifezulike.

Fancy having more discussions about healthy living and wellbeing with community members around Southampton? Or just interested in knowing more about health and wellbeing research being conducted at the University of Southampton?
Then, you should take the chance to join the Health and Wellbeing Community Engagement Hub!

This event will take place in Blackboard Collaborate and is free but please book your ticket to receive the joining instructions.

We look forward to seeing you there.

"A gripping, upsetting and tenderly told dramatic memoir of one man's ordeal during the Windrush scandal" - The Independent

When Stephen Thompson's brother was imprisoned during what later became known as the Windrush scandal, as a writer, he wanted to write about it, but he thought maybe the moment had passed. Instead, that story became the lightly fictionalized film "Sitting in Limbo," was purchased by the BBC, and then aired in summer 2020 just as protests about George Floyd's killing in America prompted protests here and in the UK.

Thompson, a Southampton resident who has also published three novels, will talk to Carole Burns, the university's head of creative writing, about how he shaped this true-life story into a film; whether writing is (or should be) a kind of activism; and how his fictional writing feeds and impedes his screenwriting.

"There is a clarity and intimacy in the retelling which feels remarkably true to life" - Radio Times
"This Windrush story should - and will - make you angry" - The Telegraph

This event broadcasted live on YouTube and Facebook.

You can watch Sitting in Limbo on BBC iPlayer at: https://www.bbc.co.uk/iplayer/episodes/p08g29ff/sitting-in-limbo

Sitting in Limbo trailer: https://youtu.be/1brHDPtSgZo

You can read Thompson's opinion piece from last June on The Guardian at: https://www.theguardian.com/commentisfree/2020/jun/22/sitting-in-limbo-windrush-victims-stephen-thompson

Join artist Larry Achiampong in conversation over Zoom with the University of Southampton's Dr Priti Mishra and Dr Nisreen Alwan, as they discuss Achiampong's new film Reliquary 2.

Reliquary 2 has been especially commissioned for John Hansard Gallery's new digital programme. The film is a meditation on a period of separation between Larry Achiampong and his children, where the artist observes his own familial narrative within the pandemic and the trauma of forced isolation during unprecedented times.

Speaking directly to his children, Reliquary 2 is an archive of contemplative prose and a historical record during what has been a surreal and challenging period for many. The film features animation by Wumi Olaosebikan and is a continuation of the Relic Traveller series (2017), a multi-site and multidisciplinary speculative project that builds upon a postcolonial perspective informed by technology, agency and the body, and narratives of migration. Mixing the visual poetry with generational healing, the series explores past, present and future, through narratives of Pan Africanism and African diasporic identity in relation to colonialism, postcolonialism and the heightened nationalism of current times.

Reliquary 2 can be viewed on John Hansard Gallery's website, www.jhg.art.

This event forms part of John Hansard Gallery's digital exhibitions programme, supported by the Barker-Mill Foundation.

Book your place: https://larryachiamponginconversation.eventbrite.co.uk