Black Modernism: Historical geographies of cosmopolitan lives in interwar London

Black Modernism: historical geographies of cosmopolitan lives in interwar London will highlight and share with broad and inclusive audiences the research findings of the pioneering AHRC-funded project Drawing over the Colour Line: geographies of art and cosmopolitan politics in London 1919 - 1939, which was carried out by The Equiano Centre, Department of Geography, University College London between 2012 and 2013. This 22 month project explored the Black presence in London in relation to the interwar art world, exploring themes including the life experiences and public reception of artists and artist models of African and Asian heritage, and spaces of the London art world in relation to political and anti-colonial activity, gender, sexuality, and race and identity. The research focused on recovering and recording two main strands of these geographies. First, the artworks created during the period of Black people in London, and second, artworks created by African and Asian artists while they were studying, working or travelling through interwar London. Within these strands we focused our research on locating and investigating artists and sitters, along with the social and political networks surrounding these individuals. The results of these searches were compiled into a publicly accessible database with over 600 entries relating to the fields artists, sitters, artworks, and exhibitions.

The aim of this aspect of the project is to engage the public, particularly BME and queer audiences with the many historical geographies recovered as part of Drawing Over the Colour Line. This will be done in two key ways. Firstly with an exhibition at Tate Britain 'Spaces of Black Modernism' will enable tens of thousands of visitors - perhaps more - to view, for free, material not previously accessible to the public. Accompanying public events will include a 'show and tell' of archival materials at Tate Library and Archives and two self-guided tours of Pimlico and Chelsea to add to the tours of Black Bloomsbury and Soho already created for Drawing Over the Colour Line. Secondly we will be engaging community groups with the empirical findings of Drawing Over the Colour Line through the project's database completed as part of our research project, and through workshops curated in partnership with museums including the Black Cultural Archives in the year it officially opens.

Dr Gemma Romain will be Black Modernism's Research Associate, and with Dr Caroline Bressey will curate the public programme and with Dr Emma Chambers co-write and co-curate the Tate Display as well as organising the development of public events based at University College London.

There are three main groups who will benefit from this follow-on project: members of BME and queer community groups; the wider general public; third sector heritage institutions and their practitioners especially those working for and with art museums and galleries in Britain.

Spaces of Black Modernism*: The most high profile aspect of the 'Black Modernism' public programme will the be the formal collaboration between the UCL Equiano Centre and Tate Britain in creating the spotlight display at Tate Britain to open in autumn 2014. Tate Britain received over 1.5 million visitors in 2012 and will bring a sizeable new audience to the research recovered during the Drawing over the Colour Line project. For Tate Britain 'Spaces of Black Modernism' will represent an opportunity to increase the diversity of visitors to Tate Britain's galleries and its library and archive, while also introducing 'core' regular visitors to the diversity of the Tate's collections, bringing material out of the Tate archive that not previously seen on public display. The spotlight display will also utilize curatorial methods developed in the heritage sector that seek to ensure a diversity of collections and voices are represented at heritage sites and evaluations of these with be conducted through discussions with an advisory group, evaluation questionnaires and interviews with visitors.

Online outreach: During the period of follow-on funding the project aims to attract at least 30 000 unique hits on the project's website. To engage a range of users with the project's findings a series of new collaborative activities will be created including the commissioning of themed essays and blogs on material from the Drawing over the Colour Line database, inviting artists and art students to respond to the visual material collated in the database and the uploading of their responses as artworks or blog postings. Linking with online, media and press resources at Tate Britain and the Black Cultural Archives in addition to the creation of a film for the UCL Youtube channel, press releases, and flyers will be created to highlight and promote the project to local, national and international audiences.

Timescales: There will be both immediate and long-term time-scales for benefits of the project. Immediate benefits will come through a curated programme of events taking place during and after the Spotlight display. The curated programme of events will include public lectures, seminars, public workshops and a symposium. In addition two downloadable self- guided walking tours of Chelsea and Pimlico will introduce the Black Historical geographies of these spaces. Though most public activities will be held in London, a workshop with the Henry Moore Institute, Leeds is proposed to ensure that outreach activities that are not online are not solely restricted to London.

Following the publication of the London Mayor's Commission on African and Asian Heritage report 'Delivering Shared Heritage' in 2005, the heritage sector's response 'Embedding Shared Heritage' (GLA/MLA, 2009:18) acknowledged that "Diversifying collections is not a project. It doesn't have a finite beginning or end. It is a question of achieving a lasting and widespread change of attitudes, values, practices and priorities throughout the sector." Black Modernism will contribute to this long-term process through two peer reviewed papers co-written by Caroline Bressey, Gemma Romain and Emma Chambers, one peer reviewed and one for a professional policy publication. The papers will be written in 2015 reflecting on interviews with visitors to Black Modernism and the impact of the co-production curatorial process on Tate revisiting its collections.

Mayor's Commission on African and Asian Heritage, 2009, 'Embedding Shared Heritage: The Heritage Diversity Task Force Report', GLA/MLA.

* In 'Black Modernism' the term 'Black' refers to men and women of both the African and Asian diasporas.