DO ROLE MODELS MAKE A DIFFERENCE? WE'LL SEE.

The preparations for Black History Month are well under way and this year's Raising Horizons seminars and Question Time event looks like the most exciting yet. We have managed to recruit a really diverse range of speakers and have got some great plans to make the whole month exciting and stimulating. The confirmed line up for Raising Horizons so far is: Rani King MBE, and Colin Adams from the Department for Children, Schools and Families; Professor Heidi Mirza from the Institute of Education; Kieran Hebden (Four Tet and nephew of the school's Headteacher, Dinesh Ramjee); Anthony Thomas from hiphopgeneration "harnessing the power of Hip Hop as a cultural phenomenon to rise a generation ‘from the streetz to streetz’ and unite the Hip Hop driven youth of the world"; Sharon Walker from the Commission for Racial Equality and Marge Lowhar from tranzition.co.uk. Our guests will be coming into school on October 15th to be interviewed by Year 10 Gifted and Talented students about the critical influences on their lives and then will take questions from an audience of year 10 and 11 students in the afternoon on topics related to multiculturalism, fighting racism and the power of role models. It will be fascinating to see how the students respond once again. You can see a short film about last years event below:

Other events lined up include taking students to the Shaw Theatre in Euston for a performance of Nobody Knows  produced by Krik Krak (Marge Lowhar's theatre company), which fuses drama, dance, music and images to tell the story of slavery through the eyes of ‘Equiano’, a former slave. We will also be entering the 100 Black Men of London competition for the third time, with great hopes of reaching the final this year. Our International Food Day will be run, I am looking for African Drummers for a music performance and there will be assemblies and competitions all month.

I have been involved in some interesting discussions with Hammersmith Council about their failure to fund any Black History Month celebrations for the second year running. I received an email from one of the councillors who said that the council were "supporting a number of events marking BHM through offering subsisided or free room hire, exhibition space and equipment hire". I really think that is derisory. Hammersmith was the home of Marcus Garvey for many years, whose great nephew went to my school, and is the resting place of Granville Sharp and Mary Seacole. It beggars belief that the Council continues to ignore this history and snubs so many of its own constituents. I hear that plans are being made to take on the Council over the coming year to reinstate funding for BHM so watch this space.

A final couple of plugs to finish off - The Equiano exhibition starts this week in Birmingham so make sure you get along there before January. The programmes that I made for Teachers TV are being shown again for BHM so check them out if you haven't seen them already.

#Posted 23 September 2007 at 9:15 PM

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