Ife Thompson Is a Barrister and a Community Activist Who Founded The
Ife Thompson is a barrister and a community activist who founded the charity Black Learning Achievement and Mental Health, which partners with schools to teach students black history (currently not part of the national curriculum). She fiercely advocates for British schools to incorporate honest and unvarnished narratives about the empire and colonialism into their curricula. In recent weeks, Ife founded Black Protest Legal to provide legal support and representation for UK Black Lives Matter protesters.
Ansel Wong migrated from Trinidad & Tobago in 1965 to attend university. Since then he has had extensive engagement with Black communities and British society as a combatant, advocate and beneficiary – a prodigal son returning to the Mother Country, an afro-haired student revolutionary, a stentorian community voice labelled ‘an ungrateful recipient of British hospitality’, a magistrate, an artist combating stereotypes and fostering pride in Blackness, a diversity consultant and now, a Covid-19-free pensioner. His many positions include Director of Notting Hill Carnival Limited, Artistic Director of Elimu Mas Academy, Vice-Principal of Savile Row Academy, Member of the Windrush Commemoration Committee, and the DCMS Events & Entertainment Working Group.
Dr. Adam Elliott-Cooper received his PhD from the School of Geography and the Environment, University of Oxford, in 2016. He has previously worked as a researcher in the Department of Philosophy at UCL, as a teaching fellow in the Department of Sociology at the University of Warwick and as a research associate in the Department of Geography at King's College London. He sits on the board of The Monitoring Group, an anti-racist organisation challenging state racisms and racial violence.
Dr. Anne-Marie Angelo is a Senior Lecturer in History at the University of Sussex. She studies the histories of global Black Panther movements, especially the British Black Panthers. Her writing on the British Panthers has appeared in the Radical History Review and The Journal of Civil and Human Rights. Her first book, Black Power on the Move: Migration, Internationalism, and the British and Israeli Black Panthers, will be published by the University of North Carolina Press this December. She is a member of the Race, Roots, and Resistance Collective, an anti-racist scholar-activist network.
Dr. Leroy Logan MBE is a former Metropolitan police superintendent, having retired in 2013 after 30 years’ service. He was chair and founding member of the Black Police Association and is one of UK’s most highly decorated Black police officers. Since his retirement, Leroy has built a reputation as a go-to expert, using his decades of experience to give insightful, critical analysis on current events, and believes there is still much work to do in creating a more equitable criminal justice system. He has appeared on Channel 4, Good Morning Britain, LBC, BBC Radio 5, in The Guardian and more.
Vicky Iglikowski-Broad is Principal Records Specialist in Diverse Histories at The National Archives, where she has worked since 2012. In this role she researches traditionally marginalised histories and endeavours to promote them to wider audiences through public engagement activities. One of her areas of interest is Black British civil rights struggles in a state archive. In 2015 Vicky worked on a project to explore The National Archives largely untapped records in this area, part of this was an innovative collaborative youth event with BCA around both organisations Mangrove Nine archive collections.
Jerry Woolley, SPID Theatre Company Youth Ambassador, aged 22, was born in Gothenburg and raised in London. He has always found himself on a journey of fulfilment, but it wasn’t until he decided to harness his inner desire of pursuing the arts that he began to find a real sense of belonging. Acting opened further doors of his creative interest as he realised the influence and impact that conveying emotion through performance had. Ultimately it is his goal to leave a staple legacy on this earth, with the use of theatre, film, poetry and music being his means of doing so.
Alexcia Hume, SPID Theatre Company Youth Ambassador, aged 18, is a young Black woman working to be an actress, activist, motivational speaker and business owner. She has recently been working on several projects around racism and discrimination within British schools. This has inspired in her a passion for activism and wanting to make a difference in the British education system, from schools to universities, as well as in the workplace and other areas of life.