Educate the community to educate themselves; the Black Market & Film Festival

BY MKUU AMANI

If you love African art or enjoy wearing African jewelry and beauty products, there’s a popular event in London this spring that could be just right for you.

The 18th Black Market & Film Festival takes place at the West Green Learning Centre in Harringay on Saturday, April 4^th, 2020. From noon through to 9:00 pm, the London venue will be buzzing with entrepreneurial activity as a wealth of business owners gather to showcase their products. An array of items will be on display:

• • Beautifully coloured broad beaded necklaces
  • Bracelets and anklets
  • Colourful sandals, shirts and dresses
  • Vibrant kente cloth
  • Luxurious George fabric
  • African culture will be bursting out from a variety of stalls.

Also included in the program are children’s and adult workshops, as well as two educational presentations and four film screenings. Making its UK debut is, “My People Are Rising,” written and directed by Rafael Flores. Starring: Aaron Dixon, Erica Huggins, Bobby Seale and Elaine Brown, the movie takes the form of a drama-documentary based on the autobiography of the 19-year-old Aaron Dixon. Tracing Dixon’s journey from his roots to becoming the founding member of the Seattle chapter of the Black Panther Party, “My People Are Rising,” offers an unforgettable tale of ‘triumphs and tragedies.’

Organized by Black History Studies (a self-funded organization) The Black Market & Film Festival is expected to attract up to 500 visitors.  In previous years visitors have come from as far as the US and some parts of Europe. The popularity of the event is testimony to the hard work and resilience of the festival’s organizers and the support shown by the community, as Charmaine Simpson, the CEO of Black History Studies, explained, “For the first Black Market & Film Festival that we held in Victoria (in 2012), we underestimated the response. So many people came that we had to look for a bigger venue.”

The search for a larger venue took them from the Public and Commercial Services Union building in Victoria to Platanos College in Stockwell where, between 2013 and 2015, six events took place. A sudden, unexplained cancellation by the college prevented the April 2016 event, but it returned later that year at the Parkview Academy in Tottenham where it has remained ever since.

“The cancellation in 2016 didn’t dent us,” Charmaine said. “It made the community more determined to support the event. It also started the conversation about how we need our own community spaces. A lot of people were talking about how we can get that. Our conversations were all about supporting businesses, supporting venues where we own the leaseholds, and looking at what happened in a positive light. The next event that we organized sold more tickets and had a bigger attendance.”

 The Harringay location has another point of resonance not lost on the organizers. This year marks the 20th year since the death of the former Leader of Harringay Council and first black head of a local authority in Britain, Bernie Grant. Grant became a joint first black parliamentarian on his election as a Member of Parliament for Tottenham in 1987. He continued to campaign for racial justice and minority rights until his death, a point not lost on Charmaine.

“One of the main highlights of this year’s events is that we’re showing a film about one of the Harringay Heroes, Bernie Grant. We’re showing a film to showcase that he existed, because there’s a whole generation of young people that didn’t know about the amazing contributions Bernie Grant made in his short life. It’s an amazing short film.” she added, “The last time we screened it, we got an amazing response, so we thought, let’s use this event to highlight his amazing contributions. We don’t want his name to disappear.”

 The Black History Studies maintains a vision of increasing its reach and output. The organization’s mantra ‘Educating the Community to Educate Themselves’ remains central to its aims and objectives and Charmaine’s goal is to build upon what they already do. The Black Market & Film Festival – she suggested – could happen on “A more regular basis.” She added: “It could take place every two months and be held six times per year. Also, it could expand beyond London. We could take it on tour to different parts of the UK and abroad. In Europe, there are huge black communities; we could take it to Paris or Lisbon, Germany or Russia. There are black communities in all of these places, but we haven’t made links with them. And that’s what I want to encourage.”

To find out more about The Black Market & Film Festival visit Black History Studies. You can also find BHS on Facebook, Twitter and Instagram.