Events
We're hosting a month of events to celebrate Black History and culture this October. Learn more about what's happening in each week!
Week one
Black British Females in Sport
1 October 2023 - 31 October 2023
An online campaign to recognise and celebrate Black British females in sport.
Celebrating Black History
1 October 2023 - 31 October 2023, All day, David Wilson Library
Gaverne Bennett is a 2nd year PhD student in History researching The Black Cultural Archives in Brixton. His research on Black Literature Timeline and Celebrating Black Engineers will be showcased.
Unlocking Our Sound Heritage: Black History Month
1 October 2023 - 31 October 2023, 8.00am - 7.00pm, Sir Bob Burgess Building, Foyer
Take a moment to listen into The Unlocking Our Sound Heritage Team's Listening Desk installation, which includes recordings from our sound archives and enables listeners to create their own soundscapes. For October, a curated playlist to mark Black History Month, features the voices of residents who moved to Leicester in the mid-20th century.
The Listening Desk was created by Emily Peasgood Studio, inspired by historic listening devices and instruments. In collaboration with The British Library and eight partner institutions across the UK, the installation is funded by the National Lottery Heritage Fund. There are similar listening desks currently being installed in nine regional and national locations, with the University of Leicester proudly representing the Midlands.
Find out more about the installation
Black Food Inventors
1 October 2023 - 31 October 2023, 10.00am - 4.00pm
As part of Black History Month, LSP are celebrating Black food innovators and their contributions to better agricultural processes and food inspiration globally. LSP are exploring Black stories from the past that have influenced the present through food and are proud to offer food which reflects and includes the flavors, ingredients and processes founded by Black food innovators.
Black History Wellbeing Night
4 October 2023, 7.00pm, Freemen's Social Space
Hosted by ResLife for students in Halls of Residence.
Black History Month Film Screening: When We Were Kings (Leon Gast, 1996)
5 October 2023, 5.00pm, University Film Theatre (Attenborough Seminar Block)
Set in the Zaire of Mobuto Sese Seko’s brutal dictatorship, this documentary film focuses on preparations for the 1974 World Heavyweight title fight between Muhammed Ali and George Forman. Much more than a film about boxing, it explores the tensions between Mobutu’s post-colonial programme of “authenticité” to rid Zaire of Western influences, and his desire to maximise Western investment during the Cold War. Tensions are evident, too, between Ali’s brash media persona and the warmth of the more personal relationships he builds with a growing local support base. The film also hints at the social and political causes with which Ali’s life intertwined: the civil rights movement, conversion to the Nation of Islam, Black Power and black consciousness, Pan Africanism and the opposition to the Vietnam War for which he was imprisoned.
Apittame: Creative Writing - Black Historical Figures
7 October 2023, 2.00pm – 3:30pm, Studio 3, Attenborough Arts Centre
Join us to discover the lives of Black historical figures and reimagine their lives through creative writing.
Apittame was founded in 2019, feeling that there was a space that was needed for people to meet, as well as partake in the arts and build a sense of community. They work to centre marginalized people’s stories, as well as hopefully facilitate a space that helps people find their tribe.
Week two
Festival of Careers 2023
9 October 2023 - 13 October 2023, various times, central campus
The Festival of Careers is more than just a careers fair - it’s an entire week of inspiring workshops, presentations and information sessions dedicated to helping you find out more about what’s available in the world of work, entrepreneurship and study.
It gives you the opportunity to hear from employers, discuss your options and learn more about you. The best bit is there is something for everyone. Whether you’re a first year studying Mathematics or a finalist studying History, the Festival is open to all.
We have a jam-packed line-up for the week – so it is important to review the full festival line-up and to plan your week.
Browse the programme of events and activities
Black Leadership Programme
9 October 2023
ULSB Black Excellence (UBE) Group are thrilled to announce the launch of the Black Leadership Programme. This opportunity will enhance your leadership skills, accelerate your professional development and ultimately improve your career readiness.
ULSB Black Excellence: Career Information Session
11 October 2023, 1.00pm-2.00pm, Brookfield
Hosted by ULSB UBE, speakers will include Careers professionals and returnee students from placement(s).
Professor Corinne Fowler: Transatlantic Slavery, Landownership and Enclosure in England, 1738-1836
12 October 2023, 12.30pm – 1.30pm, Attenborough 101 and online
Join Corinne Fowler, Professor of Colonialism and Heritage, who specialises in colonial history, decolonisation and the British countryside’s relationship to Empire; as she explores transatlantic slavery, landownership and enclosure in England (1738-1836).
To attend virtually email the CRLH Director, Dr Angela Muir (am1074@le.ac.uk)
Black History Month Film Screening: Soul Power (Jeff Levy-Hinte, 2008)
12 October 2023, 5.00pm, University Film Theatre (Attenborough Seminar Block)
With a cast including James Brown, Miriam Makeba and Muhammed Ali, this superb documentary reveals the uncharted history of 1974’s “African Woodstock” festival. Originally conceived as the cultural companion to the Ali-Foreman “Rumble in the Jungle” in Zaire, the festival went ahead on its own after the heavyweight title fight had to be postponed. The sounds of Detroit, Memphis, Mali and South Africa provide the backdrop for what was also an exercise in geo-political soft power. Pan African performers from the US are seen bewildered by the Africa they encountered, and soul icon James Brown intones that “you can’t get liberated broke” while he prepares to perform for a brutal dictator’s vanity project which has been funded by Liberian investors. Commercial realities collide with intellectual debates over self-determination, post-colonialism and the Cold War.
Black History Film Night
12 October 2023, 7.00pm, Freemen's Cinema Room and Village Hub Cinema Room
Hosted by ResLife for students in Halls of Residence.
Week three
Black History Wellbeing Night
18 October 2023, 7.00pm, Villa ge Hub
Hosted by ResLife for students in Halls of Residence.
Leicester Jazz House presents Byron Wallen 4 Corners
19 October 2023, 8.00pm - 10.30pm, Attenborough Arts Centre
Immerse yourself in the beauty of Jazz with a line up to remember on an unmissable evening with the Attenborough Arts Centre, including Byron Wallen playing the trumpet, shells, percussion, piano, Mike D'Souza on guitar, Paul Michael on bass and Rod Youngs on drums.
Byron Wallen is widely recognised as a seminal figure in world jazz. He is constantly travelling the world recording, teaching and performing. The Leicester Jazz House CIC is a volunteer-run not-for-profit organisation bringing contemporary jazz of the highest quality to Leicester and the county.
They have been a leading local jazz organisation for over thirty years and are one of the Midlands-based voluntary jazz organisations, partly funded by Arts Council England, working cooperatively under their new regional organisation "mjazz".
Black History Month Film Screening: Summer of Soul (…Or, When the Revolution Could Not Be Televised) (Questlove, 2021)
19 October 2023, 5.00pm, University Film Theatre (Attenborough Seminar Block)
Questlove’s Oscar-winning “Summer of Soul” details the Harlem Summer of Soul, which took place across six searing Sundays in 1969. That was the same year as Woodstock, but this festival was largely forgotten as recording tapes sat unseen in a locked basement for 50 years. Now that footage has been skilfully edited into a film of politically-charged performances by Nina Simone, BB King, Stevie Wonder and myriad others at the top of their game. Performances of, and for, black pride and self-determination are set against a backdrop of Black Panther participation, debates over the politics of nonviolent direct-action protest, and the white racist backlash it unleashed. “It wasn’t just about the music,” recalls Gladys Knight. “Revolution was coming together,” we hear. “Are you ready?” asks Nina Simone. “Are you really ready?”
In Conversation with Dr Maggie Aderin-Pocock MBE
20 October 2023, 4.00pm - 5.30pm, Sir Bob Burgess Lecture Theatre 2
As part of the University’s Black History Month programme, Chancellor of the University Dr Maggie Aderin-Pocock speaks candidly about her experiences as a Black woman.
From being born in London to immigrant parents, moving between 13 different schools and struggling with undiagnosed dyslexia, Maggie has become an award-winning space scientist, broadcaster and author, with a Queen’s honour and her own Barbie doll just a few of her many achievements.
“As a child growing up, I wanted to reach the stars”, she said, crediting her father’s belief in perseverance for the way she has followed her dreams. “Thanks to his support it seemed entirely reasonable to me that with hard work, a Black girl with learning difficulties would soon be travelling from inner London to outer space”, she added.
Maggie now works to empower and inspire others. Come along to an up close and personal event with Maggie, including the opportunity to have your questions to Maggie answered*, followed by a drinks reception.
Please register early to secure your place for this headline event marking Black History Month.
Questions need to be submitted to equalities@le.ac.uk by 10th October 2023.
Opal 22 Attenborough Take Over: Unapologetically Black - Life Drawing
20 October 2023, 7.00pm - 10.00pm, Attenborough Arts Centre
Join Opal22 for an 18+ evening celebrating the rich cultural heritage of the black community through the strokes of a pencil and the beats of a live DJ. It’s a night of creativity, education, and rhythm you won’t want to miss! No experience needed. All supplies provided.
Attenborough Late curated by Opal22
20 October 2023, 8.00pm - 11.00pm, Gallery 1, Attenborough Arts Centre
Join us for a late-night takeover as we curate a range of live performances in response to our exhibitions, alongside food, drinks and creative activities for Black History Month with Opal22.
Habib Hajallie: Black Pen Portraits
21 October 2023 - 10 December 2023, 12.00pm - 5.00pm, Gallery 2, Attenborough Arts Centre
Habib Hajallie champions figures from ethnically diverse backgrounds that have been conspicuously omitted from traditional British portraiture, specialising in the use of a monochrome medium such as the black ballpoint pen to celebrate Blackness. Though he was born in Southeast London, his work is often informed by his Sierra Leonean and Lebanese heritage.
Apittame: Creative Writing - Afrofuturism
21 October 2023, 2.00pm - 3.30pm, Studio 3, Attenborough Arts Centre
Come join us to discover the world of Afrofuturism and black presence in art.
Apittame was founded in 2019, feeling that there was a space that was needed for people to meet, as well as partake in the arts and build a sense of community. They work to centre marginalized people’s stories, as well as hopefully facilitate a space that helps people find their tribe.
Week four
Black History 'Celebrating our Sisters'
23 October 2023, 7.00pm, Freemen's Social Space and Village Hub
Hosted by ResLife for students in Halls of Residence.
Introducing Coaching and Mentoring for Professional Development
24 October 2023, 1.00pm – 3.00pm, Sir Bob Burgess 0.02
As part of Black History Month, this event is an opportunity for Black staff at all levels and areas of the University to learn about the opportunities and support available through the University’s Coaching and Mentoring Academy, and how Coaching and Mentoring can facilitate a space for you to learn more about your own strengths and areas of development.
We have invited guest speaker Sandra Pollock, OBE MA, who is local to Leicester, an Alumni of the University and who has experienced challenges as a Black woman in her career journey. She’s a multi-award-winning Leadership Management and D&I Consultant and Coach with over three decades of experience in operational and strategic business development. Sandra has developed range of coaching and mentoring programmes in many organisations to help better support their staff at all levels, to ensure skills and knowledge exchange and to help staff have greater engagement, higher motivation and satisfaction.
The first 10 people to sign will have the opportunity to complete a personalised TalentPredix profile* (worth £85) and will be offered a one-to-one coaching debrief session. The TalentPredix profile helps you to pinpoint your top talent and other unique qualities so you can develop and strengthen these. There will also be an opportunity to network with other staff over light refreshments.
This event is open to staff and PGRs from Black ethnic backgrounds. Light refreshments will be provided.
*Staff are required to attend the event to qualify.
Gaverne Bennet and Chole Phillips: Black Lives In British Archives
26 October 2023, 2.00pm - 4.00pm, Hybrid - Attenborough 101 and Online
As part of both Black History Month and the 2023 Autumn Seminar Series, join Gaverne Bennett and Chloe Phillips as they explore Black lives in British archives.
To attend virtually email the CRLH Director, Dr Angela Muir (am1074@le.ac.uk)
Black Oral Histories
26 October 2023, 5.00pm - 7.00pm, Bennett Lecture Theatre 3
Dr Margaret Byron and Maxine Chapman are working with the community to host an in-conversation event related to the importance of oral history in recording and representing the lives and experiences of the African/Caribbean diaspora, titled: The critical role of Oral History in recording experiences of migrants of the post war era: case studies of 75 years of Caribbean presence as nurses in the National Health Service
This event highlights the importance of Oral History in capturing, preserving and representing the life experiences and contributions of Black communities in Britain.
We focus on the lives of Caribbean nurses who settled in Leicester and worked in the health care services in the city. A significant proportion specialised as midwives and some have passed their love of this profession down to their daughters and granddaughters resulting in an intergenerational patchwork quilt of NHS experience.
Black History Month Film Screening: Wattstax (Mel Stuart, 1973)
26 October 2023, 5.00pm, University Film Theatre (Attenborough Seminar Block)
In 1972, 100,000 people attended a free concert in Watts, Los Angeles. It was designed by the Memphis-based Stax Records to bring together a community that had been ravaged by historical racial injustices, culminating in a ghetto uprising in 1965 which led to almost 3,000 arrests and needed 14,000 US troops to quell. Featuring some of the most successful recording artists of the era, this documentary film also shows the role played by political activists including Jesse Jackson, who took the crowd through his call-and-response “Black Litany,” and Kim Weston, who sang the Black National Anthem. The festival and ensuing film documentary provide an evocative social commentary, in which the greatest soul hits of the era are a backdrop for compelling social and racial arguments. Director Mel Stuart skilfully weaves the charged contemporary climate of the time into a film which mixes music with footage of protest, riot, and policing, Pan Africanism, Black Power, cultural nationalism and the rebuilding of community spirit.
WORD! Black History Month Special with John Agard
26 October 2023, 6.30pm - 9.30pm, Attenborough Arts Centre
Join us for a special evening celebrating the poetry and words of international poet John Agard and local poet sensations brought to you through a collaboration between Renaissance One and WORD! We'll offer a space for conversation, performance and a Caribbean-style lime.
John Agard is a poet, playwright and short story writer who grew up in Guyana, where his love of language stemmed from listening to cricket commentaries on the radio. He has won many prizes, including the Smarties Book Prize and the Queen’s Gold Medal and in 2021 was awarded the prestigious BookTrust Lifetime Achievement Award for an outstanding contribution to children’s literature. John is a Fellow of the Royal Society of Literature and his work appears in an AQA anthology for GCSE English Literature. With his wife, the poet Grace Nichols, John has edited the Walker anthologies A Caribbean Dozen and Under the Moon and Over the Sea, and he is the author of the Carnegie-longlisted My Name Is Book. John lives in Lewes, East Sussex.
Let's Cook
27 October 2023, 7.00pm, Freemen's Social Space and Village Point
Hosted by ResLife for students in Halls of Residence.
Week five
Black History Month health and wellbeing event
31 October 2023, 11.00am - 2.00pm, Gee's, Percy Gee Building
The University of Leicester will be hosting a health and wellbeing showcase event for all Black staff and students.
This an opportunity for you to attend a number of dedicated talks and Q&As by key invited speakers focusing on the health and wellbeing of Black staff and students, as well as working towards breaking down the barriers to accessing health and wellbeing support.
There will opportunities for attendees to meet and ask the speakers various questions to explore the support that is available at the University, as well as to visit the various stalls that will be showcasing the various structures in place and to answer any questions you may have.
Black food innovators
As part of Black History Month, across various University catering outlets, Leicester Services Partnership (LSP) are celebrating Black food innovators and their contributions to better agricultural processes and food inspiration globally. The University are proud to offer food which reflects and includes the flavours, ingredients and processes founded by Black food innovators.
Unlocking Our Sound Heritage project - Black History Month Playlist
Throughout October, in the Foyer of the Sir Bob Burgess Building, come and hear sounds clips of oral history interviews related to Black History Month.
Celebrating Black History Poster exhibition
Throughout October, Gaverne Bennett a 2nd year PhD student in History researching The Black Cultural Archives in Brixton will be displaying his 'Black Literature Timeline' and ‘Celebrating Black Engineers’ posters in the foyer of the David Wilson Library.