The first talk in the Women on Aeroplanes public programme focuses upon the critical roles played by women such as Amy Ashwood Garvey, the revolutionary Pan-Africanist whose life and work provides the starting point for Carrying Yours and Standing Between You, Emma Wolukau-Wanambwa’s new installation at The Showrooom.

By inviting renowned historian Marika Sherwood to conduct a personal tour of the Ashwood Garvey archive that she has created, Wolukau-Wamanbwa continues her longstanding preoccupation with the challenges encountered by generations of historians whose research has aimed, and continues to aim at redressing women’s underrepresentation within the mainstream historiographies of black internationalism.

In books such as The 1945 Manchester Pan-African Congress Revisited with Hakim Adi, 1995, and Claudia Jones: A Life in Exile, 2000, Marika Sherwood has devoted her working life to researching black radical movements, and in conversation with Woluakau Wanambwa will discuss her research into Ashwood Garvey’s pioneering Pan-Africanism, drawing connections with some of the many women whose political interventions constitute an underacknowledged geography of struggles for emancipation.

This talk is the first in a weekend of events focusing on Women in the Pan-African Movement as part of the Women on Aeroplanes public programme. On Sunday 9 December 1-4pm Ego Ahaiwe Sowinski, Yula Burin and Nydia A. Swaby are running a Black Herstory Archives Workshop which will be exploring the importance of documenting and preserving black women’s herstories, as well as developing a black feminist archival consciousness. For more information and to book click here

This event is part of the Women on Aeroplanes public programme which aims to expand upon and collectively develop new knowledge. Writers, researchers, critics and artists will be considering the activism of women - and in particular women of colour - in the struggles for independence from colonial rule in the 20th century. They will look at how and why the immense achievements of so many of these women have come to be marginalised within the official or mainstream narratives of these struggles, and what these women’s erasure might teach us about the workings and priorities of mainstream western forms of historical representation. Through these events speakers, participants and attendees can work together to develop new or alternative strategies for recording and recounting such women’s lives and work in order to do a more lasting justice to their efforts and achievements.

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A recording of the event is available here