Community projects making a difference this Black History Month

8th October 2021

This October we’re marking Black History Month by celebrating the amazing National Lottery funded projects across the UK that are making a difference within the Black community and celebrating Black history & culture.

Africa in Motion Film Festival

Africa in Motion 2021 Film Festival presents a selection of the best cinema from Africa and the Black diaspora, sharing with audiences a wide array of films that uniquely represent the continent - an enticing variety of languages, genres and filmmaking styles.

Their meticulously curated programme spans fiction, documentary, artists’ moving image, and animation. This year includes over 90 films with 66 premieres including 26 UK premieres and 29 Scottish premieres.

Film strands this year bring music, family, and identity to the fore. They explore the dynamics of relationships, the power of women-led story-telling, tender observations of familial ties, unique forms of protest, the maddening complexity of human nature, our environment, and Q&As foregrounding African talent.

The 16th Africa in Motion Film Festival will be held online from 15th - 31st October 2021. Learn more and get your tickets here.

Race Council Cymru

Race Council Cymru works to promote race equality, art, heritage and cultural activities for Black and minority ethnic communities across Wales.

From 2 to 31 October 2021, Race Council Cymru is delivering a new exhibition which will be on display at St Fagans National Museum of History featuring stories of how the Windrush Generation Cymru made their homes in Wales, titled: Windrush Cymru – Our Voices, Our Stories, Our History. The exhibition will then tour to further national museums across Wales until March 2022.

This exhibition features the stories of over 40 of those Windrush Generation Cymru, told in their own words. The exhibition is an opportunity for visitors to learn about their journeys to Wales, and the challenges they faced in building a new life in a country far from their homelands – finding work and the attitudes of people towards them.

You can learn more about the exhibition here.

My Runway Group

My Runway Group is a youth empowerment organisation whose main mission is to inspire the next generation of creatives and Black business. The group was founded by Kojo Marfo who was inspired to set up a signature fashion event ‘My Runway Show’ in 2013, following him overcoming a suicide attempt. As a young student burdened by financial struggles, he was determined to inspire other youth faced with similar challenges.

In 2016, the tragic loss of a team member to suicide fuelled Kojo and the team to broaden their engagement with the youth community. From this, My Runway Show evolved into My Runway Group – a Youth Empowerment Organisation for emerging creatives from underrepresented backgrounds.

An annual event hosted by the group is the RUN gala, which falls on 31 October this year. The event is a networking ball for Black business founders and allies, which aims to allow attendees to network, create new connections, and strengthen existing ones. You can learn more about the ball here.

In addition, My Runway Group set up Black in Carnaby in 2020. This provided a space for emerging Black-owned brands in fashion, beauty, art, literature, film and photography, to showcase and sell their products to a weekly football of over 900,000 people.

While their physical store isn't open at the moment, their online store is still up and running, available to browse here.