EMOHA started March by attending the launch of an exciting new project from Serendipity – Institute for Black Arts and Heritage, Leicester. Serendipity has been awarded a grant by the National Lottery Heritage Fund (NLHF) to support the development of a regional project Unearthed: Forgotten Histories.  The project aims to grow and develop an archive that reflects the rich diversity of the African and African Caribbean communities across the Midlands. This is one of the largest grants given by the Heritage Fund to a Black arts and heritage organisation and adds to the strength of the cultural infrastructure in the city of Leicester. You can find out more about it here.

Both February and March have seen EMOHA running training sessions for a number of groups in the region. Navrang Arts are recording memories of local people for the 50th anniversary of the expulsion of Asian Ugandans from Uganda in 1972. Uganda 50 will be marked by a number of events and exhibitions in Leicester later in 2022.

Steaming Back to Kirby is a project being run by the Kirkby Living Memory Group, based at Kirkby Heritage Centre (Kirkby-in-Ashfield, Notts). This eighteen month heritage project is funded by the NLHF and is about Kirkby Loco Sheds and Sidings, marking the 50^th anniversary of its closure.

Always Community, Nottingham, are helping to record memories for ‘The Windrush Decision’ project, which looks at how and why people in the Caribbean made the decision to migrate to the UK in the 1950s, ’60s & ’70s.

EMOHA’s Colin Hyde has very much enjoyed visiting local school, Castle Mead Academy and introducing oral history to students who then quiz family members about their family history. A sort of ‘Who Do You Think You Are?’, this has resulted in stories from around the world and photographs of family members meeting both royalty and a President of the United States!

This month has also seen us recruiting people for a new project, Sounds for the Future, which will be fully explained in a future blog!