Black in Full Colour: The Artist Talk

Liz is an anti-racist educator and mental health social worker. She has created the BIPOC Bookcase Book Club to focus on books written by BIPOC (Black Indigenous People of Colour).

Liz provides a space for people of all hues to come together and collaborate, champion and celebrate fantastic literature by peripheral writers. You can find Liz’s work on thebipocbookcase.org.

Rasheeda Page-Muir is a TEDx speaker, poet and award-winning community organiser from Woolwich. With a background in founding and directing the youth organisation, RevolYOUtion London, Rasheeda has over a decade of experience in guiding thought-provoking social and political debates for young minds in the South East London area.

Rasheeda has worked with institutions and organisations including Channel 4, BBC London, Poet in the City, Royal Borough of Greenwich, Partnership for Young London, KPMG, the Southbank Centre, the Jerwood Foundation and many others.

Having started in 2020, Stories We Cherish is a menswear brand, fusing technology and fashion to spotlight and celebrate the resilience, diversity, allure and creativity of African communities.

"Our mission revolves around leveraging the power of storytelling to reshape narratives and foster positive change. Through our brand, we aim to ignite conversations that challenge stereotypes and bridge cultural divides with communities beyond the African diaspora," they say.

The brand's milestones include hosting over 20 pop-up events in locations including Los Angeles and New York City, and going viral in Diego Suarez and Madagascar. "In Madagascar, we held our first ever catwalk event, using it as an opportunity to raise funds for a children's home," they add.

Emmanuel Unaji (b.1994) is a British-born Nigerian multidisciplinary artist & co- founder of the award-winning design company, Unaji & Co.

Emmanuel’s unique style is to mechanically deconstruct icons combining collage, drawing and painting to reverse engineer the unconscious bias applied to portraiture. Influenced by popular culture and masters such as Michelangelo and Virgil Abloh, Emmanuel contemplates the Western canon and questions his place within it.

Giya Makondo-Wills is a British-South African documentary photographer and visual artist. She focuses on urgent matters of our time and how they relate to the history of marginalised communities.

Giya aims to challenge visual culture and the western gaze, recognising the role of the camera in writing new histories. Giya works with themes such as identity, race, colonisation and systems of power, using collaboration to preserve the stories of those that are often overlooked.

Giya is part of the exhibition Our Connection to Water at the National Maritime Museum.

Kelvin was born in London. He studied a Foundation course in Art and Design at City & Guilds of London Art School and is a graduate from Middlesex University with a B.A. (Hons) in Fine Art.

At the age of eight, Kelvin Okafor found himself drawn to the artistic potential of the pencil. Through that early fascination and development of his natural gift, Kelvin went on to win multiple awards after graduating from Middlesex University in 2009.

Today, Kelvin is recognised as a hyper-realist artist internationally, specialising in portrait drawing.

Smila is a London-based director and hip-hop artist.