Educating Black Nottingham  

Project leads: Hannah Thuraisingam Robbins, Lisa Robinson, and Pearl Agyakwa 

Nottingham has an incredible history of community organising to improve the education of young Black people in the city. Our project reimagines the PhD research of Dr Lisa Robinson (Black Studies), bringing together local community members, aged 4 to 81, to model and design a new community education experience for us today.   

Historically, Black supplementary schools helped young people to develop life skills, learn cultural history not taught in the mainstream curriculum, and socialise with others sharing similar backgrounds. Through our events, we heard stories of past supplementary schools in Nottingham, the good trouble they made, and what we might learn from them. Together, we made paper toys, zines, and posters to map the community education experiences we would most like to see.   

Together, our team – Hannah Thuraisingam Robbins, Lisa Robinson, and Pearl Agyakwa with additional contributions from Lisa Jackson and Abiodun Abdul – are now developing an educational pack to share these activities, celebrating Nottingham’s history and encouraging the development of new community spaces, in lots of different environments and for different age ranges. We hope this pilot will be the beginning of many new events connecting different generations and nourishing more education spaces for our city.