Liverpool’s Windrush celebrations continue with event at the African Caribbean Centre
Big Help Project are delighted to have supported the event, an evening of education, culture, and entertainment.
On Thursday 22nd June, the African Caribbean Centre in Liverpool hosted their Windrush Day celebrations, sponsored by Big Help Project.
Starting off the event was a presentation named ‘100 Years of Fashion’, facilitated by Big Condo Academy, detailing the past century of fashion before and after Windrush, demonstrating key moments and how it changed over that time. They also held a live presentation and fashion showcase at the Museum of Liverpool on the 25th June.
Next was a performance from Tayo Aloku of his one-man play, ‘Just An Ordinary Lawyer’, supported by music from Tom Sykes. The play follows Tunji Sowande, a man who arrived in London from Nigeria in 1945 to both study law and pursue his interests in music. Through his success in becoming the first Black Judge in Britain, and later a member of an exclusive Cricket Club, Sowande ‘muses on Imperialism, Colonialism, and Black people’s struggles for freedom, justice, and human rights’.
Aloku himself is Nigerian-born, and worked as an architect in Liverpool for a number of years. He delivers a number of talks on Black political resistance through the medium of art and song, having written and developed other pieces such as ‘Harvest Moon’, and ‘What Happens?’. Tom Sykes performs a vast range of music with string-quartets, orchestras, jazz groups, and Liverpool-based African musicians.
Closing out the evening was a musical performance from Perri & Alan. Perri Alleyne-Hughes is the former Musical Director of Sense of Sound Singers in Liverpool, and is presently the main vocalist and bandleader for the Perri Alleyne-Hughes ensemble. She was joined by Alan Kaishin Crawford and Roger Gardiner.
The event was a wonderful celebration of the rich culture brought to us by the Windrush generation, reminding us how it – as Alan Kaishin Crawford noted in his remarks about the day – “permanently, and positively, changed British culture forever”.
