This project started when Barbara Kentish and Beverley Prevatt Goldstein met over a cup of coffee in Heaton Park, Newcastle, in August 2020, during the Covid pandemic. This park bench meeting had been prompted by a brief Zoom conversation on the extent of racism past and present in Newcastle. At the meeting in Heaton Park, Barbara suggested compiling a calendar to show the black presence in the North East to counter ignorance and racism.

This resonated with Beverley, a member of the NEEACA (North East of England African Community Association), who had participated in pre-pandemic meetings on researching and promoting black history in the North East.

The call went out and a group of historians, researchers and equality activists was assembled and the 2021 calendar of African Lives in Northern England, produced in two months, was sold out before it was printed.

Euphoria at this success and the sense that this knowledge needed to be shared with the younger generation via schools led to a successful partnership with Historic England and the production of online School Resources. 

Growing knowledge and confidence led an expanded project team to produce the booklet African Lives in Northern England (ed. Prevatt Goldstein, NWN, 2021) and a 2023 calendar. 

This small band of volunteers wanted to leave a lasting and accessible legacy that, in portraying the rich diversity of Northern England, would provide accurate information and challenge racism and xenophobia.

A project team enriched by further members of the North East of England African Community Association and members of Anti-Racism in Education (Stand Up to Racism) then created, with Historic England, Two Walks on African Lives in Newcastle, and with Tyne & Wear Archives & Museums (TWAM) and the Imperial War Museum, this website. None of this would have been possible without the involvement of innumerable others, including that of Newcastle Antiquaries throughout this project. 

The challenges of producing the booklet (and the project) have been chronicled in the latter section of the chapter ‘The Transatlantic Trade in Enslaved Africans’ in Ashley, S. and Stone, D. (2023) Whose Heritage? Challenging Race and Identity in Stuart Hall’s Post-Nation Britain, Taylor and Francis. The legacy of this project has been identified by Professor Chris Mullard in one of the endorsements of the booklet thus:

“As a contribution to the reinterpretation and remaking of North-Eastern history through the lives and narratives of the sung and unsung residents and visitors of African descent, this… plots a course towards a new kind of society: one anchored in and embracing fully the principles of dignity, equality, and justice for all.”

So, what next? This website has been developed to include Support from the Empire in Stories of Service, a co-created exhibition with TWAM, and will continue to periodically include new material on African Lives in Northern England. A small team of volunteers from the original African Lives in Northern England Project team await your comments and your contributions and will respond at monthly intervals.