*Edit: The raffle is now live! See link for more details: https://www.crowdfunder.co.uk/art-for-activism#start. Winner will be announced this week!*
Hi all, I hope you’ve all been okay and that you’re taking care of yourselves in whatever form that may look like. A lot has happened since my last post in terms of what’s happening in the US and here in the UK. I’m sure that everyone has been following the Black Lives Matter movement what with the murder of George Floyd and now Rayshard Brooks. I’m feeling a lot of emotions right now: just utter sadness, grief, anger and it comes in waves. I find it very difficult to express how I’m feeling at the moment, it’s easy verbally, but writing it’s hard for me to string words and sentences together about my thoughts on this.
The Black Lives Matter movement has never been so important especially what is currently happening right now. I have shared my thoughts on this over on Facebook, Twitter and Instagram and what gets me is that still there are people out there saying that the UK for instance is not a racist country and not to make those kinds of generalisations. You know, part of the issue is that people aren’t owning up to it and choose to live blissfully in ignorance. Racism is embedded in our society- fact. Our whole history was and is built on racist ideologies and to exert violence and power over people of colour. I don’t know what it is but if you cannot see if for yourself then I recommend taking some time to educate yourselves and really take the blinkers off your eyes. Even casual racism, like racial slurs, some people say that ‘it’s of it times’ so therefore some words to dehumanise some ethnic minority groups are ok? That’s BS. Excusing racism is like saying, ‘Ooops, sorry that won’t ever happen again’ and putting a fake plaster over it. Then it just becomes this evil and vicious cycle of hate and normalisation of attitudes.
Myself and Ivy Mei, a good friend of mine, are raising money for two organisations which supports children and young people; Kids of Colour and The Literacy Pirates. We feel at this moment in time children and young people are the future of our society and by enabling them to have equal opportunities in life, they will succeed to reach their potential. I think these organisations are the lifeline not only for the young people using these services, but they also serve as a positive benefit to the wider community and beyond. I’ll be donating two prints; one A3 and one A4 print (see photo below).
If you are an artist maker and would like to contribute something please get in touch with us and we’ll send you some more information about the raffle. The deadline is at the end of this month, so that gives us time to organise it. Once we have more people on board we’ll then roll out the fundraising page for people to buy the raffle tickets, which will be in July. The money that we raise from the raffle will be 50/50 split between the two organisations.
Please feel free to share this post and if you know someone who’d be interesting in making a small donation, please share this post with them.
I’m going to leave it there and wishing you all a wonderful Monday wherever you are in the world.
