Liat Rosenthal, Head of Creative Programmes, and the whole team at Woolwich Works are pleased to announce details of the venue’s March and April programme, as it honours the Windrush Generation with two special Windrush Front Room events celebrating African and Caribbean history both in Woolwich itself, and in wider Britain.
The award-winning Windrush Front Room Exhibition (4 – 16 March) transports you straight into an African or Caribbean living room in the middle of the 20th century in London. There’s the glass fish, Bluespot ‘Gram, Jim Reeves LP, plastic pineapple ice bucket, home bar and of course, the Axminster carpet. This free and immersive exhibition also features a reading from the best-selling novel ‘Twenty-Eight Pounds Ten Shillings, A Windrush Story’, by influential author and curator Tony Fairweather.
Fairweather was born in Clapham South to Jamaican parents and as well as working for The Voicenewspaper, founded one of the first Black bookshops and art galleries. He then went on to launch The Write Thing, a literary agency aimed at promoting Black authors which led to him working with the likes of Maya Angelou, Nina Simone, Archbishop Desmond Tutu and Alice Walker. Tony will also host a very specialWindrush Front Room House Party on 7 March in The Visitor’s Book Cafe and Sunday Afternoon in the Front Room on 9 March. Expect book signings, comedy, moving image, potent rum drinks from the bar and ACE, John Holt, Bob Marley and Jim Reeves on the radiogram.
Tony will also be hosting a series of free ‘Meet The Curator’ drop-in sessions between 8 – 16 March and reading from ‘Twenty-Eight Pounds Ten Shillings, A Windrush Story’, accompanied by tunes from his iconic Blue Spot ‘Gram on 16 March.
The Windrush Front Room installation will also host award-winning children’s authors K.N. Chimbiri and Juliet Coley on 8 March as they read from their books ‘The Story of The Windrush’, ‘Crayven The Nyamming Jancro’ and ‘Liana, Where is The Key?’. Bestselling authors Ray Shell, Atabang Esin Eminue, Garfield Robinson and Rasheda Ashanti Malcolm will then take part in a Q&A event and book signing in Coopers Studio on 15 March.
The influence of Caribbean culture continues on 30 March as the Queen of Lover’s Rock Carroll Thompson(born in the UK but raised by her Jamaican grandparents who moved to Britain in the early 1950s) comes to Woolwich Works as part of In Celebration of My Sisters: Mother’s Day Show, an all-female variety show that started 32 years ago at Brixton Academy. Hosted by comedian Felicity Ethnic, the evening will embrace afrobeat, comedy, motivational speeches, opera, poetry reggae, soul and even religious blessings.
Finally, The Effra Band are one of South London’s finest Jamaica Jazz outfits and have been plying their trade for decades as the house band at Brixton’s famous Effra Hall Tavern. A collective of supremely-talentedmusicians who have played with artists as diverse as Fela Kuti, The Specials, Jools Holland and PJ Harvey, they play Woolwich works on 25 April as part of the Woolwich Jazz Series.
