Description
For over 100 years, during the month of March, Women’s International Month has celebrated women’s social, economic, cultural, and political achievements across the world. During this month Women stories of overcoming human rights issues and gender barriers are highlighted and shared so that we all understand the importance of gender equality.
Wednesday 8th March 2023 is International Women’s Day (IWD), we will be discussing the themes of Women and Activism, where women have used the arts, politics, and education to deal with human rights and gender equality issues within the UK.
Our panel will be Phyll Opoku-Gyimah, Co-Founder & Executive Director of UK Black Pride and Executive Director of Kaleidoscope Trust; Sharon Watson MBE DL, CEO and Principal of the Northern School of Contemporary Dance; Jacqui Beckford, Co-Founder of Interpreters of Colour Network, British Sign Language (BSL) interpreter, D/deaf campaigner, and Actress;Esther Ole, singer, activist and Youth Leader Advocate at Marcus Lipton Community Enterprise. The panel will be chaired by Lesley Thomas, Journalist and Writer.
#IWD2023 #EmbraceEquity
There will be two BSL interpreters at this event.
The Panel
Chaired by Lesley Thomas
Lesley Thomas, a long-time Brixton resident, is a journalist and commentator, currently working as Editor of Weekend at the Times Newspaper. She has held senior roles at The Telegraph, The Sunday Times and The Daily Express and written for everyone from The Face to The Observer and The Spectator during her 30-year career in journalism. With a passion for news, popular culture and writing – she decided on journalism as her path as a teenager growing up in Old Trafford, Manchester. Her first job was just across the road from Brixton House — as a reporter at The Voice newspaper on Coldharbour Lane.
Phyll Opoku-Gyimah
Phyll Opoku-Gyimah is the executive director of Kaleidoscope Trust, the charity working to uphold the human rights of LGBT+ people across the Commonwealth. She is also the co-founder and executive director of UK Black Pride, Europe’s largest pride celebration for LGBT+ people of colour. Phyll is an experienced community builder and organiser; an Albert Kennedy Trust patron, and a writer and public speaker focusing on race, gender, sexuality and class.
Sharon Watson MBE DL
Appointed CEO and Principal of the Northern School of Contemporary Dance in May 2020. Prior to her recent appointment, she was the 7th Artistic Director of Phoenix Dance Theatre. During her tenure at PDT, Sharon received a number of awards and accolades: In 2010, she was named as one of the Cultural Leadership Programme’s ‘Women to Watch’, a list of 50 influential women working in arts and culture in the UK. She was awarded The Sue Ryder ‘Yorkshire Women of Achievement in Business Award’ and named ‘Yorkshire Woman of the Year’ in 2016. Acknowledged at the 2017 Northern Power Women Awards as part of the very first ‘Top 50 Power List’ and in 2018 Sharon won the First English Woman’s Award for Arts and Culture and was presented with an Honorary Fellowship by Northern School of Contemporary Dance.
Jacqui Beckford
In the infancy of her career Jacqui worked as a Communication Support Worker for City Literary Institute, supporting deaf students in FE and HE. In 2000, she joined a 3 year Interpreter Training Programme at RNID (now AOHL) where she undertook mostly community interpreting. She has specialisms in mental health, television broadcast, (11 years In-Vision covering all programmes and BBC news 24), theatre, festivals and the arts generally. A background in contemporary dance lends itself well to her long standing work as a performance interpreter/actor. Since her first national tour with Graeae Theatre Company (What The Butler Saw) in the mid 1990’s, she has been on an extraordinary journey. A few notable highlights amongst many were interpreting for Chimananda Ngozi Adichie, Michelle Obama and the opening and closing ceremony of the 2012 Paralympics.
Esther Ole
Esther has been singing since she could talk but her real musical journey began in East London arts and music school where she got to perform and work for the likes of YouTube, Polydor, Island records and Universal and has had the opportunity to meet and work with some amazing people (The Compozers, Migos, Stefflon Don, Lil Yachty, Donaeo, Darko, Nizzy and more)
During this time she received renowned training from BBC which resulted in a final performance in the coveted first night of the Proms at Royal Albert Hall.
Esther helped set up a society during University for Creative People of Colour and her university refused to give funding to support it. She was forced to crowdfund and raise money and lobby for change for intersectional arts and creatives and got immense support from external sources and students alike, which helped make the society a huge success till this day.
Esther is also working as part of the Youth Leadership Programme at Marcus Lipton to reduce crime and violence in Lambeth.