Discussing Decolonisation: Decolonial Horizons – A York Community Event

This is the last event of our ‘Discussing Decolonisation’ series for 2023-24. You can find out more about the other events we’ve held in the series here, and read about our intentions and community expectations here.

Decolonial Horizons – A York Community Event: 

This creative, community-building event is the culmination of a series hosted at York St John over the 2023-24 academic year seeking to interrogate colonialism and its enduring legacy, explore possibilities for decolonisation and push towards anti-racist, decolonial futures.

While the first six events in the series were intended to encourage university staff and students to examine racism, colonialism and decolonisation in academic contexts, this last event seeks to build community by working with local groups and individuals, and to begin to imagine what a decolonised, anti-racist future could look like.

Event programme:

1pm: Guest speaker Haddy Njie (Inclusive Equal Rights UK) will discuss transforming York into an anti-racist city, followed by a Q&A session (1 hour)

2pm: Poetry readings and conversation with Emily Zobel Marshall and Sai Murray

3pm: Refreshments and community group networking

3.30pm: Creative reimagining workshop: Participants will be invited to take part in an open-ended reimagining activity, working in groups to respond creatively to the notion of the decolonised, anti-racist city of the future, using a variety of different methods and materials (e.g. digital, paper, writing, drawing, craft). We will then share our creative visions with one another, bringing together a collection of possibilities that we can reflect upon collectively.

4.30pm: Community networking with music and food from the YSJ Garden Café

6pm: Close

Speaker bios:

Emily Zobel Marshall

Emily is of French-Caribbean and British heritage and grew up in the mountains of Snowdonia in North Wales. She is a Reader in Postcolonial Literature at Leeds Beckett University. She is an expert on the trickster figure in the folklore, oral cultures and literature of the African Diaspora and has published widely in these fields, including her books Anansi’s Journey: A Story of Jamaican Cultural Resistance (2012, University of the West Indies Press) and American Trickster: Trauma Tradition and Brer Rabbit (2019, Rowman and Littlefield).

She plays mas in Leeds West Indian carnival and has established a Caribbean Carnival Cultures research platform and network that aims to bring the critical, creative, academic and artistic aspects of carnival into dialogue with one another. She consults several arts, historical and educational organisations on decolonial methodologies and approaches and is Co-Chair of the David Oluwale Memorial Association, a charity committed to fighting racism and homelessness. She regularly contributes to discussions on race and racial politics in the media and has interviewed many world-famous writers, artists and musicians, including Chimamanda Ngozi Adiche, LKJ, Gary Younge, Caryl Phillips, Yinka Shonibare and Corinne Bailey Rae.

Emily has had poems published in the Peepal Tree Press anthology Weighted Words (2021), Magma (‘The Loss’, Issue 75, 2019), Smoke Magazine (Issue 67, 2020), The Caribbean Writer (Vol 34, 2020, Vol 35, 2021 & Vol 36, 2021) and Stand (Vol. 19, No. 4). Her poetry collection, Bath of Herbs, published by Peepal Tree Press in July 2023, is described as ‘spellbinding’ and ‘a beautifully crafted, honest and thoughtful first collection which explores the complexity of mixed-race, hybrid identities and relationships to the English and Welsh mountains, fells, rivers and shorelines from an ‘othered’, unmappable, positionality.’

Sai Murray

Sai Murray is a writer, poet, performance and graphic artist of Bajan/Afrikan/English heritage. His art addresses issues of self, societal and ecological repair. His debut poetry collection, Ad-liberation (2013) was described as: “Social commentary at its best… wry, witty and biting” (The Jamaica Gleaner) with an “insight that is irresistibly politicising and humanising” (Red Pepper magazine).

Sai’s poetry and short stories feature in anthologies including: The Fire Next Time; Closure; Filigree; Tangled Roots and Dance The Guns to Silence. He has performed his ‘seriously playful and playfully serious’ poetry throughout the UK, US, Afrika and the Caribbean for over 15 years, appearing at international festivals including: Mboka (The Gambia), Decolonising Education (Nairobi, Kenya), Brave New Voices (San Francisco), Mo Juice (Barbados).

Sai’s commissions have included: lead artist for Commonwealth Theatre’s Off the Curriculum, 2022; poet/visual artist for the Black Cultural Activism Map, 2018; lead writer on Virtual Migrants’ Continent Chop Chop, 2015; Weatherfronts: Writing Climate Change, 2015; Action Saro-Wiwa: The Ogoni 9 Living Memorial, 2015; lead artist on Re-Membering: A Creative Journey to Wholeness, 2010; poet in residence for C Words: Culture, Carbon, Climate, Capital, 2009; poet in residence for Southwark 2007 & Beyond and FWords: Creative Freedom, 2008.

As an educator, Sai is a founding artistic director of the youth arts educational initiative, Voices that Shake!, and one of the UK’s leading youth poet coaches with his team winning the largest ever UK national slam, Shake the Dust in 2012.

Through Liquorice Fish artist/activist promotions, Sai has designed, edited and published over 30 books, resources and toolkits including most recently: Oluwale Now (Peepal Tree Press, 2023) and An Anthology of Creative Movements (Voices that Shake!, 2021). He is currently resident poet at Numbi Arts, an organising member of PARCOE (the Pan-Afrikan Reparations Coalition in Europe) and a former trustee of The Racial Justice Network.

The Garden Café is a student-led project aiming to provide a healthy autonomy to student diets, working towards a future where food, as a human right, is for all, not restricted by price or dietary requirements. 

Booking information:

You can book your place for this event via Eventbrite. Please let us know in your booking if you are intending to stay for food, and if you have any dietary requirements if so. This event is FREE and open to all.

If you have any questions or concerns ahead of the event, please email co-organisers Lucy Potter (l.potter@yorksj.ac.uk) and/or Laura Key (l.key@yorksj.ac.uk) from the Teaching & Learning Enhancement Team, YSJU.