For Black History Month 2023, we wanted to share the stories of local people in the North East, highlighting their experiences of living as an ethnically minoritised person in the region. Much of Newcastle’s Black history focuses on prominent historical figures, whose stories should be told and honoured, but there are many people living here today who also deserve recognition for their contributions to the area. With this in mind, members of our advisory committee, Malasree Home and Umbereen Moir, supported our intern Taskeen (Taz) Nasif-Whitestone in bringing to life our project entitled ‘Local Black histories and intergenerational stories of resilience’. NUREN was keen to showcase the prevalence of Black identities in our region and emphasise the need to tell these stories for over a longer period of time than just a month, The outputs of the project were released at regular intervals over 8 months, with a number of channels being used to disseminate these.
Overall, the project was ably led by Taz, who conducted five interviews which can be found linked below. The interviews took the form of either a video or written article and they will all take you on their own journey of the experiences of our incredible interviewees who contribute greatly to our region and community. To hear about the ways in which they contribute to the North East, their past and present experiences of being here, how their identity has affected their work, and how they personally feel connected to the region as a home, click on the links below.
Here is a message from Taz, extracted from our fifth and final interview to be released:
“I would like to thank all of our interviewees for sharing their stories for us all to learn from, and for the support they provide the North East community. I will leave you with these words from the very end of my time with Reverend Dr Peter Adegbie:‘There’s always something to learn. I always believe that. Every relationship, every contact.’– Revd Dr Peter Adegbie”
Finally, thank you to everyone who has wanted to hear and read the stories of our interviewees, we hope you are as inspired by them as we are, and feel more connected to our incredible and increasingly diverse community.