WritersMosaic director Colin Grant hosts this Salon reflecting on the woefully under-reported cultural impact of Black people who have lived outside of London. The metropolitan bias has cast other British towns and cities and their inhabitants, no matter their alleged race or class, in its shadow. Lanre Bakare’s We Were There challenges that dominance by incorporating a vastly broader range of Black Britons into the fabric of our national story.
Grant (from Luton) speaks to Bradford-born author Lanre Bakare, singer and writer Pauline Black from Coventry powerhouse The Selecter, Malika Booker, founder of the poetry collective Malika’s Kitchen based in Leeds, and Nottingham-based singer and musician Daudi Matsiko. Together they illuminate the radical groups of artists and pioneering thinkers who have remained largely unknown or at least unheralded in London.
