These recordings were made as part of Wolverhampton Art Gallery’s Collecting Cultures ‘Black Art’ project, supported by the Heritage Lottery Fund.

1. Sylbert Bolton is a Black Country artist who spent his early childhood with his grandparents in the Jamaican countryside before coming to Wolverhampton to join his parents in the 1970s. When he arrived he couldn’t read or write, so was put in a special school, but eventually he obtained a first class degree in art and later an MA. Examples of Sylbert Bolton’s work are on show in this exhibition.
2 mins

2. Eve Richards was born in Wolverhampton in the late 1960s.  Her parents came from Jamaica, but didn’t teach her about black history and she doesn’t remember seeing many black people on TV until the screening of the TV series ‘Roots’. She talks about her desire to imitate white people, which led black friends to call her a “Bounty bar” (black on the outside, white on the inside). 
1 min 20 seconds

3. Zara Sykes is a musician from a Caribbean background, who was born in Birmingham in the 1980s. Her mother was a single parent and Zara was the eldest of four children. She talks about her mother’s influence on her and the different effects on boys and girls of being brought up without a father.
1 min 45 seconds

4. Joy Baines is an artist who came to England from Jamaica nearly 50 years ago, when she was 7 years old. She grew up in Stafford in an area where there were few black families and she talks about how she kept in touch with Jamaican culture.
1 min 30 seconds

5. Komlaish Achall is an artist who was brought up in Oldbury and has a Masters in Fine Art from Wolverhampton University.  As a teenager in the 1980s, she rejected her parents’ Indian culture and adopted the culture and music of her black schoolfriends.
1 min 30 seconds

6. Herbert Walters is a documentary photographer, aged 54, with a degree from Birmingham City University. His work includes a project with the police to deter young people from violence. His parents came to the UK from Jamaica and he had a happy childhood growing up in Handsworth in the 60s and 70s. He talks about the Sandwell Valley, Rastafarianism, police harassment and the Handsworth riots.
1 min 20 seconds

7. Shirin Housee lectures in sociology at Wolverhampton University. She was born in Mauritius and came to the UK with her parents in the 1960s.  When she was studying for A Levels in London in 1981, a white teacher called Chris took her and her classmates on a demonstration to protest against police failure to arrest anyone in connection with the New Cross Fire which killed 13 young black people during a birthday party. She describes how the demonstration changed her life.  
1 min 45 seconds

8. Nathan Lawrence is 25 years old and is a videographer, MC, rapper, singer, songwriter, producer, artist and actor. He pays tribute to the way his mother brought him up on her own, and encouraged him to be creative.
1 min 40 seconds

9. Olivia White is 24 years old. Her mother is white and her father is black, but she grew up knowing little about black culture and it’s only in recent years that she has begun to identify herself as being black. 
1 min 30 seconds

8. Nathan Lawrence Extract

Wolverhampton Arts