Panya Banjoko, 'Nottingham Black Archive as Activism' (ONLINE TALK), PPCRG New Directions
Nottingham Black Archive as Activism
Panya Banjoko (Nottingham Black Archive / NTU)
PPCRG New Directions Series
Time: 16.30 (GMT) on Thursday, 11 March 2021
Venue: Microsoft Teams
Duration: 60 mins (including 20 mins Q&A)
How to join: Email ppcrg@ntu.ac.uk to request a joining link.
The Periodicals and Print Culture Research Group (PPCRG) at Nottingham Trent University (NTU) is delighted to welcome Panya Banjoko, founder of Nottingham Black Archive and PhD candidate at NTU, for the second event this semester in our New Directions series. Our New Directions series of invited guest speakers focuses on exchanging and developing methodologies across disciplines in periodicals and print cultural research. Hosted online, this occasional series of talks is free and open to all.
In this talk, Panya will discuss her role in founding and developing Nottingham Black Archive as a case study through which to consider the motivations and methodologies informing print cultural heritage. The talk will be chaired by her PhD supervisor and PPCRG member, Sharon Monteith, Distinguished Professor of American Literature and Cultural History at NTU whose most recent book on print culture is SNCC’s Stories (2020) and who holds a Leverhulme Major Research Fellowship.
Overview:
When members of the Windrush generation settled in Nottingham, individuals like George Powe became increasingly aware of racial discrimination, and an organised voice began to emerge. In an edition of the Black Peoples’ Freedom Movement Weekly Newsletter in 1971, George Powe urged Nottingham’s Black community to ‘organise as never before… for organisations decide everything’. Nottingham Black Archive (NBA) is one example of community organisation in Nottingham. It traces what has taken place since the late 1940s but also pays attention to Black people in Nottingham who have a longer history. NBA has pioneered a range of initiatives to promote the Black presence in Nottingham, including Read a Black Author which is gaining national recognition, and multiple community projects. It has recovered narratives of World War I soldiers in an AHRC-funded project, documented the experiences of World War II veterans, and the Windrush generation’s contribution to the city. It has a growing collection of oral history testimonies, books, political literature, and photographs. This talk will explain the impetus that led me to begin to create the archive, the driving forces behind it, and some of its major achievements to date.
About the Speaker:
Panya Banjoko is a British poet, archivist, and PhD researcher in Arts and Humanities at Nottingham Trent University, with a Vice Chancellor awarded scholarship. She is writing a creative-critical PhD rooted in Nottingham Black Archive, the archive she founded in 2009.
About the PPCRG:
The Periodicals and Print Culture Research Group (PPCRG) is located in the English department at Nottingham Trent University and co-directed by Dr Catherine Clay and Professor Andrew Thacker. The group aims to develop work on the study of periodicals and print culture, from the nineteenth century to the present. It is concerned with the material culture of periodicals alongside books, newspapers, pamphlets, comics, zines, and other forms of print ephemera, along with the digital manifestations of these objects.
Full details and event poster at https://periodicalsandprintculture.org/events/
Periodicals and Print Culture Research Group,
Dept. of English, Communications & Philosophy,
Nottingham Trent University,
Nottingham, UK.