In  May, 2024 we were invited by Black Mountains College (Wales), to participate in developing and teaching a module on Climate Change, Gender and Mobility, a project held together with the Rift Valley Institute, based in Kenya and The Institute of Peace and Conflict Studies at the University of Hargeisa. 

Mama D worked with Emma Cardwell of the University of Lancaster and a team at the IPCS and RVI to support the module development and then the teaching of the one-month module, for Early Career Researchers. (Read more…)

A Workshop that took place in November of 2023 at The Spore Initiative in Berlin, Germany.

For the longest of times, blackened bodies have been carriers of loss. Loss through separation; loss through crossings; loss through forcings; loss through cuttings, loss through disappearances; loss through disconnections and one of the weightiest losses to bear has been the loss of the ability to determine for ourselves how to grieve for our losses.

(Read more…)

Between 2020 and 2024, CCK in the person of Mama D and occasionally others, have worked with the Racial Justice Network, chiefly on the themes of Climate Justice and Unlearning Racism, the latter for which Mama D acted as a mentor and supported the writing of the closing report.

For the Race and Climate Justice group, Mama D worked as part of a co-ordinating team, offering both presentations, poetry, support co-ordination and supporting those who were on the team and also led a series of sessions called ‘Soul Deep’ and significantly contributed to the closing report. (Read more…)

Finding Common Sense with Anancy and The Urban Nature Project Trail

Every culture in the world has at least one mythical character who, in some way, represents wisdom, knowledge or just plain common sense. Ananse, also spelled Anansi and Anancy, is one such folk hero of the African heritage diaspora. Half-human and half-spider, Ananse was created surrounded by wisdom, but in forgetting who he was went and lost it all.

‘Sankofa’, a wisdom principle from his Akan culture meaning ‘go and fetch it’, inspires Ananse to reach out to the nature connections within indigenous and traditional world cultures. As a knowledge seeker, Ananse learns much from what has gone before. Human elders and ancient trees all have wisdom they can share. Read more on the project here: https://www.nhm.ac.uk/discover/ananse.html

Tree Trail at Natural History Museum

Join folklore character Anansi to discover the names and stories of the trees in our wildlife garden.

See event details here.

We were first invited to collaborate with Researcher Jason Irving, as part of the BSHS postgraduate engagement fellowship scheme to offer The Food Journey©^©, early in 2019 together with Rhian Rowson of the Natural Sciences Department of the Museum. BMAG has a write-up of the event HERE.

Between 2019 and 2022, we engaged with the Natural Histories department of BMAG on a number of projects which led to a variety of outcomes including short videos and presentations, participation in conferences and writing proposals around working with curators and psychosocial engagement with colonial collections affect the processes of curation and public engagement. (Read more…)