Residents will come together before, during and after Windrush Day on Saturday 22 June for a packed schedule of cultural events and activities for all the family as well as engaging discussions.
Bruce Castle Museum will be organising a Black history walk along West Green Road (Thursday 20 June, 10:30am-12:30pm) to Althea McNish’s home and blue plaque to help commemorate the much-celebrated, late textile designer’s centenary year.
2024 also represents the 10th anniversary of the author Andrea Levy writing Small Island, while living in Haringey. Levy (died 14 February 2019) and McNish (died 16 April 2020), passed just 14 months apart, with the former writer’s ashes being buried in nearby Highgate Cemetery.
The documentary film ‘The Barrel Children’ will be shown at Hornsey Moravian Church on Priory Road on Saturday 15 June (3pm – 7pm). A Q&A session with the producer of the film, journalist Nadine White, will follow the screening.
There will be activities for children, light refreshments and some brief updates from a few of the barrel children who featured in the film.
‘Windrush Secret’ will also be on at the Jacksons Lane Arts Centre on Archway Road in Highgate on Thursday 20 June (7:30pm-9pm).
The Mayor of Haringey, Cllr Sue Jameson, will be raising the Windrush Day flag in the borough on Friday 21 June and that event will help set the scene for a lot of activities for Windrush Day itself the following day (Saturday 22 June).
The Bernie Grant Arts Centre shall be having a Block Party (12noon-7:30pm) while Collage Arts will be staging a Windrush exhibition (1pm-3pm).
There will also be a community garden party at Marcus Garvey Library on the Sunday (23 June, 12noon-4pm) that weekend.
Haringey Council’s Joint Assistant Directors for Culture and Creativity, Yamin Choudury and Kenneth Olumuyiwa Tharp CBE, said:
Windrush Day this year promises to be particularly poignant, as 2024 would have been the centenary of Althea McNish’s birth.
Althea blazed a trail in the textiles industry and her influence and legacy lives on here in Haringey with a blue plaque adorning her former studio on West Green Road.
Althea’s life story is synonymous with a great many others who have come to this country and made a positive and valued contribution to life in the borough and to the UK as a whole.
It is her immense contribution and lived experience that we’ll be looking to celebrate for Windrush Day and beyond.
