Living Archives : heritage in motion.  

What we do

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Honouring the work of those before us
in a constant process
reimagining just societies.

Building on legacies of anti-racist work, we are co-creating spaces for healing and liberation. 
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​Our streams of work centre on
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· Research and Reflection: to respond to and learn from historic and current lived experiences and anti-racist practice.

· Healing and Liberation: exploring the intersection of race and wellbeing, platforming tools and different bodies of knowledge for    collective resistance, resilience and healing from harmful systems and structures of oppression.
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· ​Critical Histories and Futures: remembering, amplifying and recovering black and brown histories, disrupting the singular euro-centric lens through which history is determined and constructed and expanding our foundations to re-imagine futures where we can all thrive. 

Our values and mechanisms of resistance are
·      Slowness
·      Non-linearity
·      Creativity 
·      Balance 
·      Justice
·      Wholeness
·      Valuing nuance, multiplicity and plurality
·      Prioritising the value of lived experience 
·      Interrogating power and privilege in practice
·      Knowing we are all inherently valuable
·      Working in local partnership / collaboration
·      Cultivating Intergenerational dialogue
·      Working from the margins (bell hooks)
·      Expanding the body of knowledge that we draw upon 


 

History

Every Voice was founded in 2009 in the borough of Islington. We started as a forum of representatives from local community organisations and  community activists with a vision to come together to address persistent social inequalities affecting black and brown communities. Since then, through collaborative networks, projects and community research, we have engaged thousands of residents and community organisations to influence local policy and decision making across issues such as employment, education, crime, young people and health, with an aim to disrupt the systemic underlying structures that perpetuate racial injustices.  Outside of our campaign work, for five years we delivered Islington Black History Month Festival – an annual lively festival of films, arts and cultural events, conferences and work with schools, community groups and libraries, which quickly became renowned for being London’s leading programme for Black History Month. In 2015, after much research and campaign work, looking at how to decentralise the structures that marginalise, devalue and homogenise black and brown histories, we moved towards our All World History All Year Round campaign, to embed critical pedagogies in the history curriculum, all year round. Every Voice influenced Islington Council to pass a motion in 2015 to commit to the approach.

Team

A'Ishah Waheed - Projects Manager
aishah.w@everyvoice.org.uk


Shahla Omar - Projects and Communications Officer
info@everyvoice.org.uk
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Aisha Forbes - Co-Founder/Director
aisha@everyvoice.org.uk

Board of Directors

Josette Punter - Chair
Anthony Salla - Vice Chair
Muhsina Akhtar - Treasurer
Dr. Zibiah Alfred - Board Member