Brenda: 00:10
Hello and welcome to Kiss My Black Side with me, Brenda Emmanus. This is a celebratory look at art from a Black perspective.

In this show, we talk to some brilliantly talented creatives who have made their mark in the world of dance, film, music, theatre, fashion, and the visual arts. We discuss their work and inspiration, and then we get to do a little deep dive on issues related to their specific art form.

And as we’re talking, we figured it would be nice to end each programme with a specially commissioned spoken word tribute to our chosen topic, which in this episode is the visual arts. This podcast is produced by Free Spirit Productions Ltd and brought to you by Sadler’s Wells. Sadler’s Wells is one of the world’s leading dance organisations, and in 2022, they’re celebrating work by Black dance artists with Well Seasoned; a year-long programme of live performances, dance films and more from Black choreographers, dancers and artists of colour.

I’m really excited to have two wonderful guests from the world of the visual arts joining me today. My first is someone that I’ve been watching with awe, and once I met him, confirmed that he was as funny as he is talented. Artist Curtis Holder creates the most mesmerising images using graphite and coloured pencils. His main themes focus on people and the human form, creating the most unique and original images of his subjects.

In 2020, Curtis won the Sky Arts Portrait Artist of the Year Prize. A National Portraiture Competition televised in the UK. My equally amazing second guest is as passionate about being a champion of the arts as I am. Bolanle Tajudeen is a curator and founder of Black Blossoms, a platform which promotes black women, artists and creatives by hosting regular exhibitions throughout the UK.

In 2020, she launched the Black Blossom School of Arts and Culture and will now be running short online courses titled Art in the Age of Black Girl Magic. Welcome, guys.

Curtis 02:27
Hello. You’ve bigged me up now, so if I’m now not funny, I’m going to get completely slated.

Brenda 02:34
You know, that becomes your problem and not mine. (Curtis: Oh, thanks for that!) You’ve never not been funny as long as I’ve known you, darling. So, I really don’t think that’s going to be a problem. But what you are is exceptionally talented. And I was going to start the conversation with you asking you what you’ve been up to since winning Portrait Artist of the Year, because I know that has been quite a thing for you.

I want to go back first to your previous incarnation, which was teaching.

Curtis 03:00
Yeah, I was a primary school teacher for like 15 years. And what I realise is every career I’ve had has been an excuse to draw. And weirdly, I’ve gone through many things I can’t, some of which I cannot speak about here, that’s for our private business.

Brenda 03:20
Have you still got the pole in your living room?

Curtis 03:23
Yes, I have thank you very much. I’ve got the pole. I’ve got the G-string. I’ve got it all. I’ve still got the tassels. But that, again, is for another time. But, yeah, I’ve, every career has led me to this point because it was just, everything I did was an excuse to draw and finally ended up as a primary school teacher, because I think, weirdly, you draw every day.

You draw every day. And it’s, it’s just so magical being in an environment where there are young people at the beginning of their life journey. And hopefully you have that positive influence in order for them to just carry on being who they are, which I think is sometimes pushed to one side in education because of so much other stuff going on.

For me, it was about recognising and seeing who they were and help them to be that for the rest of the rest of their lives, because as we well know, there are going to be times where we are buffeted from pillar to post. Should we be this? Should we be that? Should I be doing that? Should I be doing this?

Usually influenced by external pressures of all types? And I think, I think for me it was important to help them to understand, actually this is who I am, and I need to walk through this world trying to be the best version of that, whatever that is. And, you know, careers or hobbies or whatever you want to do is part of that, you know, travelling journey and shouldn’t be confused for the core essence of who you are.

And I loved it. I absolutely loved it. And I do miss the children. I really do.

Brenda 05:24
Speaking of who you are, who or what helped you to take yourself seriously as an artist and make the decision to make that your profession?

Curtis 05:33
Well, do you know what? First and foremost, it was my parents. And I’ve got, I’ve got to thank my parents because they were, I now come to see quite unusual in as much as they weren’t pushy in, in any shape, way or form and understood that I was a creative being and whatever that meant, they just let me get on with it.

And I think, I think having parents who, one from Jamaica and one from Barbados, obviously bizarre mix as we well know. You know, we’d be going to parties and my, my, mum would often be harassed by `how have you met this small island man?’

Brenda 06:27
The usual, the usual debate.

Curtis 06:29
But and he was a complete atheist, and my mother was high religion. And what that showed me was, do you know what? There is love in everything. You can do anything. It doesn’t matter about those things that seemingly pull you apart. They actually strengthen who you are and give you, you know, a very open-minded childhood. I think I had a very open-minded childhood compared to a lot of the people I knew back then.

My dad, very gentle, very gentle guy and it was a very, a huge mixture of people around of different types of people, different races, different ethnicities I would say. And, and sexuality as well. Dad had gay friends and there was a lot of Irish as well. My mum’s a nurse as well. So first and foremost, it was their ability to let me just be and my brothers have quite they’re quite academically minded.

I’m not saying that I wasn’t, but they were you know, little geniuses when it came to things like maths.

Brenda: 07:52
So how much did your, how much did your Caribbean roots have an impact on your art practise or did it?

Curtis 7:58
Did it? Did it have… Do you know what for me, very early on, my ability to make marks and draw and create was a way of me understanding who I was and how I fit. Because I grew up on an estate in Leicester where there were no other Black people and that was purposeful. My mother, they wanted, apparently my mother wanted, they wanted to send us to another estate and my mother said, no, we’re not going to that estate because it’s predominantly Black and we, she wanted us to be in an estate that was closer in what she thought was more of a more affluent area, which is (it didn’t really make any difference). But, no, it was, it was great. I loved it.

But I think art for me was a way to just connect with my surroundings in a way that didn’t make me seem threatening or it was a way of me mixing and being part of groups that I wouldn’t necessarily have been able to join or be a part of or observe if I hadn’t got this artistic ability. This skill and it seemed to put people at ease.

So, which came first, the chicken or the egg? I don’t really know. But my drawing, my ability to draw is so much a part of me. I don’t know where the art practise begins and, and, and Curtis ends, if you know what I mean. He’s always been. So, the first thing I remember doing before writing or spelling it was drawing.

And I say, so I think that my art practise has evolved as, as, as I have as a way of, of observing the world, communicating with the world, and just trying to find some kind of place and understanding of what’s going on and who I am. So, I don’t know whether I could separate the two. Does that make any sense or am I just waffling?

Brenda 10:19
It does make sense. So, I’m going to move on to Bolanle i here because education formed a part of your career path as well, didn’t it? But in a very different way. You went into education initially?

Bolanle 10:31
So, I studied at University of the Arts London. I actually studied public relations at London College of Communication, and it was my aim to go into politics and policy. And I think being in a creative environment really opened up my eyes to all the things that state schools don’t open your eyes to. So, from illustration to photography, fine art.

I was in all the campuses, and so in my third year I ran for a sabbatical position in the student union as education officer because it kind of went with some of the political aspirations that I had like, you know, a sabbatical officer leads into a lot of civil servant jobs and things like that. So, I was really interested in like developing that kind of practise of my work.

And when I was in that role, I came across quite a few statistics that really affected me. And so, I was elected to be Sabbatical Officer by my peers. I had like 600 votes; it was really great. And then becoming Education Officer was like, it was such a downward spiral. So, all my friends had actually left because they’ve, we’ve all graduated now and still working within the union.

And it wasn’t as great as I thought. And then these statistics were around how Black students and students of Colour were less likely to receive a 2:1 compared to their white counterparts who will get a 1st and the attainment gap was something that really…it shook me for a number of reasons. Firstly, because I have a child and I thought, okay, this can have such a detrimental effect on securing jobs and what does this mean if, you know, you go to university, you work really hard only to like, be getting a 3rd, like what does this mean for students?

And I just came across so many different reports and statistics that the university had been compiling all the data. And then I felt this like enormous pressure to tell the students that this is what they were more, these were the issues that they were facing. And, and it was kind of my responsibility because as an elected Sabbatical Officer, you are there to represent the needs of the students and not the university.

And, you know, I’m, I was a really fun time girl. I like, I like politics, but, you know, there’s always a time and a place for everything and you know, going to a group of students and like trying to tell them that oh, by the way, you’re less likely to get a 1st because of the colour of your skin wasn’t something that I envisioned, especially, I was quite young actually and yeah, it was like I was being forced into EDI without necessarily wanting to do EDI (Brenda: It happens) And yeah, you know, you just have, as a Black person, you just feel the responsibility. And so, in… whilst I was a Sabbatical Officer; I started a campaign called `UAL So White’ so, it was like, literally right after the #OscarsSoWhite and it kind of yeah it just it really changed the game.

Like all the students by tweeting their experiences, there was coverage in the Voice newspaper. The university started to take it seriously and they started to implement some of the campaigning ideas that we were asking for. And by the end of the campaign, I felt really, really burned out and I felt really depressed. I like, I would Google my name and `UAL So White’ would come up and I thought, but I haven’t even got a job in my industry yet. Like what hell, like what is, you know, it was just. I was so down and then …

Brenda 14:42
You were just concerned that speaking out would go against, would go against you.

Bolanle 14:45
Of course. Yeah. And I hadn’t even started my career. And so, to be honest, I kind of just really needed something that… when I started Black Blossoms it only actually started as a one day conference. And it was a safe space for me and Black women who worked, graduated from University of the Arts, was currently studying, studying at UAL

And it was just really meant to be a safe space conference. And then it just like started to grow into like more events and then I had the opportunity to do an exhibition in the High Hope in campus. And, you know, I, the, you know, I was able to choose students who had graduated within the last 3 to 5 years. And it was such a beautiful exhibition.

This one had about 15 Black women and non-binary artist, Black non-binary artist and, and yeah, everyone was calling me a curator. Everyone’s like, oh my gosh, this is so amazing. I was like, OK what’s a curator? This is cool. And I, I do like art and I, I realised I had the eye quite quickly to put artworks together, really understand like the art world as well.

Like I will say that I don’t come from a traditional art background. Yeah, I went to university in an art school. I done a course at an art school, but I everything that I know about the art world has been because I’ve taken the time out to do either short courses, I read a lot. I have just really been able… and that’s when I know some things are spiritual, some things are not even meant to be understood.

Like the way that I’ve been able to understand the art world. I meet people who’ve gone to university to study like, arts management, and I still kind of have a better understanding of like how the different structures of the art world work. Because I feel it in my gut, I feel it in my bones and I just, I, I was really from quite early on in my career, I was able to understand art institutions and art markets, how they operate, how they support each other, the separations between them.

And I definitely think that’s been pivotal to the success of Black Blossoms because yeah, quite early on, after I curated a few exhibitions, I started doing public programme workshops with Tate and they allowed me to bring my own audiences into that. And it’s just been that kind of understanding that I’ve had of.

How these kinds of very separate entities that are not meant to really work together but do work and collude and collaborate, etc.

Brenda 17:48
It’s possible. It’s been interesting listening to you talk about that because your, your experience is almost similar to mine. I didn’t study art history or anything like that. I just had the passion for it. And I think you’re the same Curtis, it’s when you feel it’s the right thing for you, I think that the universe just puts you in the right place at the right time. However, that might be.

So, I think that’s quite exciting to hear and I think learning, I think coming from, what I, because I used to sometime feel insecure about not having a historical background and all of that. But I think I was learning and what I was learning, I was sharing with audiences, and I think, for me, art is for everyone. (Curtis: Absolutely)

And there’s sometimes a conscious effort to make it elitist and keep people out.

Curtis 18:25
Absolutely. And the key word there is passion. Erm, I knew, well I knew very little about the art world before I entered the competition and, and won it. And I think that objectivity that we’re all talking about is an absolute blessing, because we can actually go into an environment and, and see it for what it is and not have the trappings of the traditional route or what we’re supposed to say or what we’re supposed to do.

We can look and go, hold on a minute. Why is that happening and not that happening? Why aren’t those two groups talking to each other? Because they are going to be able to help and support and raise each other up. But traditionally they would be on opposite ends of the room and, and weirdly, forces would be trying to keep them apart, which is, you know, nonsensical.

But I think. what I think passion is, is the thing. And like you, as you were saying Bolanle, it’s, you feel it in your gut, you know what you need to do. You know what’s broken. And, and inherently, you kind of know how to fix it.

Brenda 19:46
Yeah, I did this documentary I don’t know if you saw it, called Whoever Heard of a Black Artist? And it was looking at, well the void in Black, in British art history and it was a real revelation to me, partly, there was a part of me that was almost, felt embarrassed because there were so many great names of artists I’d never heard of and didn’t understand their experience or their plight.

And to see their battle and to see the constant battle that they had just be acknowledge and to be recognised and some doing great work. And then I go to the Tate now and I go to the National galleries, and I see Kehinde Wiley, hanging up in The National Gallery. Then I go to Soul of a Nation, and It’s packed out with Black people really enjoying and absorbing art.

We’ve got Hew Locke on at the moment, we’ve had Lubaina Himid. We could do a roll call. So, we could, it looks like things are changed radically, but is that really the case Bolanle?

Bolanle 20:32
So, thank you, Brenda. So, when I first started Black Blossoms, it was a platform to highlight Black women and non-binary artists. So, this was in 2015 erm, Lubaina Himid hadn’t won the Turner Prize, Sonia Boyce, definitely, like, look, we’ve got another seven years from 2015 until Sonia Boyce would go on to win the Golden Lion.

So, you know, Black women artists in Britain were very, very much unseen and unheard (Curtis: Yeah), but now, if you look at the landscape… I was on Artsy. I’ve been on Artsy quite a few times this week, actually, just looking at the numbers that young Black women artists are doing on the secondary market. Black British men are not doing the same in the contemporary art market.

So, we are definitely in a time period where Black women artists and non-binary artists and queer artists as well, they are very much being, their work, is very much being picked up institutionally, is being picked up by collectors, their being noticed? You know, I was trying to think about why, why is it now? And I think Lynette Yiadom-Boakye is definitely one of the artists who had, who started to pave the way. So, in 2013 you can start to see like her secondary art market sells and like therefore there being a lot of faith that from a collector perspective this is buying up work from Black women artists is actually a good investment.

And once you have the investors on sides, the collector’s side, they’re the ones who donate artworks to museums like, you know, it’s a very interesting colluded little bubble, (Curtis: laughs – it is) but it,

When you start to understand certain like, okay, this is why this artist is having a show at this space and who’s one of the main sponsors. I wonder how many works of so and so artist they have and things like that. So, you know, I think, yeah, the course that I teach. So, after I done Black Blossoms highlighting Black women artists and so forth, etc. and that’s still one of the main missions of Black Blossoms.

In 2020 I launched a Black Blossoms art school and we’ve had a number of courses from a number of tutors. So, we’ve had Black British Art, which was led by Lisa Anderson, who is from the Cultural Archives. We’ve had the amazing Evan Ifekoya whose collective Black Obsidian, was nominated for a Turner prize last year, they also led their course, Devotion and Spiritual Practise in Art.

And we’ve had Richard Rawlins lead a course, so we’ve had really amazing tutors lead courses and I teach a course called Art and Activism in the Age of Black Girl Magic. So, the main reason why I launched a school is because we have the secondary art market now really paying attention to Black artists. We have more Black artists having institutional shows.

However, if we don’t have constant education about these artists, then people are not going to be talking about them, referencing them in their work. And it’s really, really, really important that Black artists continue to take up space within an educational academia context. Like we want students in art schools to not just reference Sonia Boyce, but even younger contemporary artists that are coming up.

Because the more references they have, it just it keeps the cycle going. How many books has Picasso had written on him? Five books written on a Black woman artist is nothing. You know, we need to have more books. We need to have more courses. And as we know, a lot of these art schools, they don’t have a diversity of tutors coming from different racial backgrounds, so therefore they’re only going to be talking about artists from their pool of networks that they know.

And that is one of the main reason the school exist is to just make sure that Black artists and artists of Colour continue to be part of the conversation whilst also breaking down who has access to knowledge and at the same time who is a knowledge producer? You know, people will assume that me as a young Black woman can’t produce knowledge and give out knowledge to people.

Because of my background, I’m a working class Black girl. I grew up in care, so forth and so forth. So, I think people assume that I shouldn’t be able to give the knowledge about the arts and things like that. But my course `Art and Activism’ that I teach, it’s sold out three times at the Tate, no, twice at the Tate. It sold out for The Photographer’s Gallery.

We’ve got a huge partnership with Art on the Underground where we’re actually delivering four new courses and that respond to four of their new artistic commissions on the underground. So, you know, there’s definitely an appetite for Black art, Black art education and, you know, this is the time to really lean in and extract and give as much as we can as cultural producers.
And yeah, that’s mainly what I do.

Brenda 26:04
Is so exciting. Curtis you are currently, well, speaking to you from taking up space at the National Theatre as the first artist in residence. Now that is amazing. Tell us a bit more about what you’re what they’re expecting of you and what you’re doing.

Curtis 26:19
Well, you know what? It’s a collaborative effort because where all running, you know, we’re all running blind. I was introduced via the Director, Dominic Cooke who’s seen, who had previously seen my work, and he invited me to, like I said, quite literally document the process from day one of the play that he was directing, which is called Corn, The Corn is Green.

Brenda 26:52
I saw that, It’s great.

Curtis 26:53
It was quite, do you know what, I didn’t know anything about the play beforehand. And then he was telling me about it, and I was thinking how, how is … I just didn’t I was thinking, right, okay, how is this going to play out? And the one hook that, that really got me was education. It was about education. And not only education, it was about the power that one person can have.

And in influencing a whole swathe of people and the knock-on effect that that can have. And, and it brings us you know, it really ties into what you were saying Bolanle about education and who the educators are and what those people who are being educated go on to do and how they can bring their own flavour to whatever they do in the future, you know, and…

Brenda 28:02
So, what did they want you to do? what are you doing? What are you tasked with?

Curtis 28:05
Well, well, what I’m tasked with is well, what I have previously been tasked with is whatever I like, I will go and draw rehearsals. And there were, there were acting rehearsals. there were singing rehearsals and there are all, all of that as well as all the technical aspects of what goes into making a production. So, I would be one day I’d be in the props department watching them weld huge, massive structures together.

And then I would be in hair, wigs and makeup, watching them apply and create magic and transform individuals. It was quite an amazing thing to watch. So, I would be quite literally sitting there, and I would be drawing. I would be talking to them about themselves their process, how they arrived at the National Theatre sometimes. And it was very interesting to see the different energies, different departments had and also what the individual make up of that, that particular department was.

It was really interesting because especially in the props department, there are lots of women in the props department who I didn’t, this is about my own prejudice, there are a lot of women in the props department that I didn’t really think, I was quite surprised, but it was really, really amazing, the wonderful energy and it was quite insightful. Obviously when you’re drawing and you are talking to people about themselves and the longer I, I was here, the more intimate, the, the conversations became.

And so, some of them I can talk about, some of them I can’t. But that was my task. And I didn’t see that being an end game to this because I just thought, well, I’m here because I really love being in this environment. I really love capturing the essence of what people are doing and, and capturing the essence of the individuals that made up this, this play, this production, this play at the end of it.

And so, it was quite interesting to see the journey of the play evolve and how, how different it was from start to finish. And, and because I was seconded to one play, it wasn’t, it didn’t limit me because they’re so generous here. I was able to move around different plays and one play that was on at the same time as The Corn is Green was Small Island, which was, was very interesting.

And I did sneak into the dressing rooms there and had some very interesting conversations. And it was a very bizarre and uplifting atmosphere to be in this place where it was theatre and you’re walking up and down the corridors and it’s just Black people everywhere where you were there with Black people behind the scenes and in front of the scenes.

And not only that, there were, because of the nature of the play, there were, there were people walking around dressed as you would see… (Brenda: Windrush generations) Yeah, that you would see in the albums, the photo albums and the wedding albums of your parents and all your in-laws. It’s like, oh, my God, you know, Jesus, this is, this is them this could be in the photo album

And so, it was a very interesting, different energy. That’s basically what I was doing. And then as the show progressed and I saw the end result, I then envisaged pieces. I then could see actually this could be pieces that could be part of the show. And so then with further talks, we decided that there is going to be a show at the end of the year.

And my, my time here has been extended and I’ve been given my own working space. So, I hope the pair of you are going to come to the private view.

Brenda 32:44
Of course, we will.

Curtis will be documenting this experience at the National Theatre. I know you’ll be documenting and making a book out of Art in the Age of Black Girl Magic, which is obviously important. But considering the wealth of experience you have now. What do you think needs to be done today in terms of the ecosystem to support Black artists and also audiences coming in and being invited in feeling all these spaces, all these institutions are for them?

Curtis 33:11
I’ll let you start with that Bolanle.

Brenda 33:14
Deep question, I know.

Bolanle 33:15
The one, the one that I’m going to tackle first is about audiences. I think, you know, you just got to have very interesting programmes. I think public programme teams, and public programme teams are doing a lot with very tight budget formats because a lot of public programmers are my friends, but I know they are doing a lot on tight budgets, and I will say that it’s about thinking outside of the box if their programming and reaching out to cultural makers and shakers and tastemakers that don’t necessarily sit in with the arts.

So, for example, I love Oloni. Oloni is a young sex blogger from London. They talk about a variety of things. And I always think, why haven’t, why hasn’t a big institution asked Oloni to come and do a night like one of their late galleries? They’re sitting on 300,000 followers, you know what I mean, I think, you know, we don’t need to, we don’t, firstly it doesn’t need to, we need to get rid of the idea of respectability, politics and making sure that the person that we are going to give jobs to fit into this very narrow kind of oh are they sure,, you know, just a very narrow definition.

Curtis 34:37
And I’m you know; I welcome the day when there are more people looking at the art than are guarding the art, that are Black. (Brenda: laughs – security). But I totally agree with you. I think it’s about the institutions inviting, inviting a different kind of audience to celebrate and be part of that institution if they want, if they want to, to, to grow and to be relevant, they need to absolutely think outside the box and invite people.

Because, as you well know, look, look at the Kehinde. Every time I went to the Kehinde. I’ve never seen so many black people in my life.

Brenda 35:28
In The National Gallery, I know, I was shocked. I was shocked. I still remember Soul of a Nation as well, walking down there and seeing it jammed with people so excited.

Bolanle 35:37:02
When they say that Black people don’t engage in the arts,. I don’t really understand what that means. And not all white people engage in the arts either. You know, it is a very niche, with people who come to visit…the audience is also niche. Yeah. And I just think things just need to… I have a lot to say about a lot of public programmes that happen.

I really enjoy developing public programme as much as I enjoy it in an art exhibition, and I do think it is about really pushing the team to really think creatively. There’s only so many times you want to hear the same people in conversation.

Brenda 36:19
That’s true. It’s lazy thinking, that’s all it is. It’s lazy thinking that they need to be more creative on that side. And I’m gradually seeing that happen. I want to play, I want to do this with you because I always, at the end of every podcast is my, is the Pass the Baton section where I ask you to tell me of somebody that you’re into, has inspired you in the past or somebody that you currently think is worth an audience, listening to or getting to know.

So, Curtis who would yours be?

Curtis 36:41
Gaylene Gould.

Brenda 36:42:
Oh, yes, I know Gaylene, very well.

Curtis 36:46
Yeah, I, we met when I was 14 and I asked her out and as my husband now says, well, she dodged a bullet didn’t she.

Brenda 37:01
I wonder if she thinks that?

Curtis 37:02
Yeah, yeah, she probably does. Well look, she’s known me since we were 14. But she’s gone on to, recently she’s doing, she’s set up erm, oh gosh, erm a new kind of initiative, which is about…

Brenda 37:18
It’s like a soiree, isn’t it?

Curtis 37:19
Yeah, yeah, yeah, it’s quite… And I asked her about it, and she talks to me about it and it’s just this ever-evolving platform, just bringing people together, helping people to understand where their strengths are. But she’s well, I don’t need to tell you what she’s been involved in, in the past, but she’s, she’s a real pioneer, I think, and also a real champion.

Well, she’s been a very personal champion for me, but also a huge champion for Black arts. And I think she’s always the one to watch. She’s there. She always seems to be there way before anybody else.

Brenda 38:01
So, from Gaylene Gould, Bolanle, who would you pass your baton to?

Bolanle 38:05
So, it’s actually a duo. So, it’s two people, but they work together as a duo.

Curtis 38:11
That’s fine.

Bolanle 38:12:
They’re brother and sister and they run a community interest group called flat 70, and which is based in Elephant and Castle. And they exist to support cultural workers and artists of Caribbean and African descent and other marginalised identities as well. And what flat 70 are doing is really, really cool. They are., so, when we talk about how do we get more audiences into museum, they’ve started a cultural club with GUAP Magazine where they have different museum days and gallery days.

They’ve had really cool exhibitions in this space and the way they came up with the space is that they lived on the Heywood estate that was knocked down and they lived in flat number seventy and then they went to go and open up a gallery just by the kind of tanks by the station. And now it’s called flat 70. So, it’s an ode to that.

And I’m really, I’ve just been watching them on the sly. I really, you know, like because they’re young and I just, I really enjoy that young creative energy and being like, how much, how much the possibility is for them to expand into so many different, so many different avenues in the arts. Say that’s who I’d like to pass my baton on is the brother and sister duo from flat 70

Anthony Badu is the Arts Director, and his sister Senam Badu is the Communications Director. I just think that’s what we need. We need more Black people to just come out, take up space, work institutionally. Work with really cool, new media platforms then also have exhibitions. This is this is all of like that creative energy that inspires me to work.

And also, it reminds me, actually because when you’re in these art spaces as a Black woman, you kind of sometimes, you can get lost in the sauce. You kind of forget, okay, this is what I’m doing. You know, I get invited to everything. All the parties, when I first started out, that I used to be like, oh my gosh, I want to get an invite to that party.

I want to go…now, I just don’t have the time. And then you also develop different relationships in the art world and your mission changes as well, like starting the school. I mean I’m very business focussed now. Yeah, seeing all the work that flat 70 is doing is just super exciting for me.

Brenda 40:59
The work you guys are doing is so exciting for me, which is why I wanted you to join me on Kiss My Black Side. I swear. I know we could talk forever and ever. I’m truly inspired by both of you and what you do, and I think we’ve got exciting times ahead. I want to thank you both for joining me for this cool, creative conversation.

We end the programme with a specially commissioned, spoken word contribution by flow poet inspired by our visual art theme. So, a big thank you to Floacist Natalie Stewart from the Spoken Word Vortex, for sourcing these brilliant spoken word artists for us. Now, this wonderful piece is called We Are Art by Al-Khemi. Enjoy everyone and thank you for listening to Kiss My Black Slide Brought to you by Sadler’s Wells. Ciao for now.

POEM
Al-Khemi 41:42

Dimensions created
In arts and crafts
Presented in photographs
A celebration of shades
That takes you to a place
Where you can feel the breeze

Oration on canvas
Storytelling heard by eyes
Watching to read
Witnesses of truth
Proof painted, printed, original not repeated

A renaissance
Presenting the black experience
With excellence
Depicting the strength in our structures
Architects
Shaping the richness of our cultures
New foundations, no vultures
Just us and our real stories
Actual
In Black, no white wash
Full colour
Fists raised with vigour
Black Power
Through artifacts
Art in fact
Visual Art
We are empowered
We celebrate
And are celebrated
We heal and receive healing
We see and observe
We visualise
No need for lies
The truth will do
We are enough
We are Art

Brenda 43:14:
Kiss My Black Side is a Sadler’s Wells production.