We Are Here explores suffrage from the perspective of British BME Women

Date
6 March 2018
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We Are Here UK: British BME Women, Catherine MA and Muslim Sisterhood

We Are Here UK: British BME Women has announced details of an exhibition to take place at London School of Economics titled 100 years, today’s woman. We Are Here operate as a “platform for discussion around what it means to be a British BME woman”.

The exhibition is the platform’s second following last year’s launch and will see contributions from 21 artists, each presenting and exploring “women’s suffrage and what ‘the new suffragettes’ and women’s activism looks like today in 2018 from the perspective of British BME (Black Minority Ethnic) women,” explain We Are Here. The event will also include workshops and panel discussions.

The creatives involved vary in discipline and job role, from illustrators such as Charlotte Edey, Mona Chalabi and Manjit Thapp, to artists such as Evar Hussayni, Diana Tap and Romina Khanom and photography collective Muslim Sisterhood, which aims to champion and change stereotypes of Muslim women in London. As a result, the exhibition “explores what intersectional feminism and activism looks like in today’s Britain,” explains the platform. “These two identities, British and BME, are often seen as mutually exclusive. We Are Here UK: British BME Women aims to provide a platform for BME artists to explore their dual British identity and heritage.”

The events tied to the exhibition will take place on 14 and 15 March and include Woman: a Manifesto, a collage-based workshop in which “participants will be encouraged to create their own manifesto inspired by a diverse mix of strong BME women from Sade, Mona Hatoum, Solange and Michelle Obama among others”. The second event, a panel discussion on the topic of BME women in the creative industries, is hosted by Unmasked Woman founder and co-founder of Black Girl Festival, Nicole Crentsil. Other panel speakers include We Are Here’s Jess Nash, Aimee Felone from independent publisher Knights of Media, and Ever Hussayni, a Kurdish multi-disciplinary artist.

The exhibition will take place from 14 – 18 March and is open 24 hours a day at London School of Economics’ library. For further details of the workshop and panel discussion can be found here.

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We Are Here UK: British BME Women, Manjit Thapp and Soumbul Qureshi

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We Are Here UK: British BME Women, Mona Chalabi

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We Are Here UK: British BME Women, 100 years, today’s woman, poster designed by Jess Nash

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About the Author

Lucy Bourton

Lucy (she/her) is the senior editor at Insights, a research-driven department with It's Nice That. Get in contact with her for potential Insights collaborations or to discuss Insights' fortnightly column, POV. Lucy has been a part of the team at It's Nice That since 2016, first joining as a staff writer after graduating from Chelsea College of Art with a degree in Graphic Design Communication.

lb@itsnicethat.com

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