Fumbling with the remote control – BBC news headline story is the shot down helicopter in Afghanistan and American casualties  Navy Seals– the guys who shot Bin Laden were the targets. Internet search –nothing yet apart from an obscure blog post. The news is definitely breaking. Sky News showing images of people running, a line of police with riot shields and helmets. A car and a bus set on fire. We have a friend who lives in the riot area – no news from him yet.

More sirens, louder whirring of helicopters, eventually the BBC picks up the story, a man was shot dead by the police on Thursday in broad daylight (as part of gun crime reduction Operation Trident), statements from the Mayor’s
office, the local MP who had earlier “appealed for calm” (obviously no one heard him), youth workers, residents, on the spot reporters (who had to stop as they were threatened by onlookers and protesters), police commanders. At 1am as
I loll off to sleep there are still reports of rioting, not in my area, sirens still going, helicopters whirring. Police say that units from  all over London are going in to contain the situation.

7:30 am the following Sunday morning, tenant Romero says he can’t get to work as all the buses and trains to Enfield are suspended. We offer to drop him to work, we have to take a diversion via New Road, Romero agrees.

On the way we see a burned out car blocking entry to High Road from Monument Road – northbound is totally blocked. Some buses are running. We are able to return via New Road from Enfield. We pass by Tottenham Hale Shopping Centre: the area is secured by police, no damage there, just some overturned bins on the surrounding streets.

9 am At Seven Sisters station there is activity at the bus stops:
some men trying to go to work to casual labouring, the men look Eastern European and their expressions are frantic – missing the time, coming late means a day without pay; women going to early morning cleaning jobs, some elegant West Indian middle aged ladies dressed up for church waiting for buses, even more elegant African women dressed up in traditional gowns with children also dressed up for church. In the southbound lane heading towards Stamford Hill, a volley of four police vans full of sweaty officers in riot gear speeds south, the last one has a shattered windshield.

I take a walk after we return home – go up to Tottenham Green – getting a Sunday paper I hear the asian male news agent telling a middle aged white lady that there are no Sunday times or tabloids as the vans refused to deliver to Tottenham, ” I don’t blame them”, he adds. I go past the green then to the burned out car, lots of people still around. Mainly photographers and
journalists, they go to the car then to the William Hill bookies, which was the only shop I can see that was damaged, the front door is kicked in and inside you can see smashed machines, though the counters are intact. I see the flashes and hear the snaps of the cameras. Further on I see the line of police behind and in front of vans some nervously clutching nightsticks and shields. Behind the police line i can see the damaged buildings, messy streets and blocked roads

Standing around are people wondering why they can’t walk to their friends houses or go to their businesses and churches. The police are resolute: no one is passing. I spot a BBC journalist clutching a handful of papers and reading into a microphone – it’s Anita Anand, she looks very small much smaller than I expect, but the oval face is very recognisable. She is talking to the sound man who also clutches papers. I see two broadcast vans further south of the police line, near the b urned out car –  the satellites are mounted on top and inside you can see men staring at television monitors amongst packed electrical equipment.
I can hear and see two men with Arriva bus company jackets talking, one says “I think we’re going to be on TV”. The police are not letting them through either. I saw no burning buildings or vehicles at this point, the people around were ordinary
citizens, it seems that the criminal element hides in the daylight. I can make out other journalists talking into phones and handhelds.

I walk back to the Marcus Garvey leisure centre: it’s business as usual, open for swimming and exercise classes.  My thoughts  ret urn to music: Gill Scott-heron’s classic “The revolution will not be televised” is not a reality here. What ever
attempted revolution that occurred last night in Tottenham was captured on camera: reported on television stations, on mobile phones, on street cameras, and soon to be posted on You Tube.

In 2002 The Arts Council embarked upon a capital development programme which resulted in the creation of two “flagship” visual arts venues: the Nottingham Contemporary and the New Arts Exchange. Both are multi million pound buildings built in the late Noughties which were reflective of the regional arts council’s vision of what Nottingham people wanted in terms of those arts visitors.  Of course before these premises were built no-one had the sense to ask the local artistic community and local people “what would you want for a premises showing contemporary art? What work do you want to be shown here in Nottingham?” The buildings both are cubic, ugly and represent the “white cube template” for exhibition space.The same steering groups that created these edifices did not create them for local artists, neither premises has a working studio space for artists to use.

The late artist Jacqueline Allen from the 2002 exhibition in EMACA

Neither steering group consulted with artists about the design of the new premises. No, they only catered for their funding bosses; build a cube.  In the creation of these buildings and their inhabiting organizations, there was the untold story of the demise of their parent arts organizations: in the case of Nottingham Contemporary, Bonnington Gallery at Nottingham Trent university, and Angel Row gallery of Nottingham City Council; In the case of the New Arts Exchange Arts Council funding was removed from Apna Arts and EMACA Visual Arts.  In all cases the managers of these parent organizations were removed or dismissed and their contributions airbrushed and whitened out of the history of arts development in the city. Hidden histories indeed.

Donovan Pennant from "Requeim" exhibition

Credit was instead given to the chairmen of the organizations who sold out the employees and their colleagues of the parent companies.  As for the true engineers of these edifices, the development workers, managers and administrators of the Arts Council who devised these plans (whilst at the same time giving dubious mealy mouthed assurances to their victims) did not succeed, most of them are retired and no longer working for the organization after a series of well deserved funding cuts.

viewing from an African cultural gallery in Gambia, 2009

Contrary to the web site link below both of the parent organizations Apna arts and EMACA   continue to operate today, in a much diminished form. So much for a career in the arts. The current staff in these places, as sincere as they are, have to contend with the uninviting and unwelcoming environments that exclude the very people they were intended to impress. For instance, many writers cite the New Arts Exchange as a space dedicated to Black and Asian arts, but this is not reflected in an “architecture award winning” black mausoleum box structure with no multicultural icons on the exterior, and with a café bar that cannot supply even a decent curry and roti. This is a premises that reflects the White coloniser vision for the Black artist and her community: put your work to death in a dark cubic prison. No Mr. Chairman, we won’t be celebrating Kwanzaa, Diwali, Eid Mubarak, Caribbean Carnival, and Black History month in your big black vault. You can keep your grey concrete walls, and grey floors with your high cold ceilings. Nottingham Contemporary unfortunately resembles a very large corrugated brass cubic shed.

http://www.thenewartexchange.org.uk/history.php

http://www.nottinghamcontemporary.org/

Last week I visited the Usher Gallery in Lincoln with a friend to see the exhibition “A Moment Of Privacy Has Passed” – a group show of the sketch books.  After a 90 minute journey by car to Lincoln, a beautiful town. After a warm welcome from the front of house worker, I was appalled at the result. Out of the 200 or so sketch books that were submitted with artist statements, the gallery selected about fifteen to be displayed and showcased.  These artists’ work was shown in glass boxes to be viewed in two upstairs rooms. You could not open the boxes to look further at the sketch books. The other artists’ work was displayed on shelves labelled with key fobs displaying numbers akin to prison labelling, their names and written statements were also ignored. These unfortunate artists were not contacted or told that their work would be treated in this way: the exhibition also did not supply a catalogue of artists who were exhibited and there was no publicity material. This I interpreted as contemptuous to the artists and the efforts they made to supply a statement and to post their sketchbooks. The Usher Gallery’s main selling point was that cross dressing Turner Prize winner Grayson Perry had submitted a sketchbook and it was on display with his statement.

http://www.lincolnshire.gov.uk/visiting/museums/the-collection/the-moment-of-privacy-has-passed/101063.article



Horary astrology in the western sense examined fate and consequence. I would read books that would say if your sun sign is in the eighth house, you will die young. I purchased and threw away books that said this stuff. I would ask myself where was the room for free will? I kept on studying western astrology books and I would seek out books on personality development and would buy them and study them at university.

VEDIC ASTROLOGY

I later discovered vedic astrology which accounted for the position of the sun signs using the wobble of the earth on its axis. Hence in vedic astrology the sun enters sagittarius around the 15th december, and capricorn, on 16th january. It also had more detailed ways of assessing the personality, which is based predominantly on the moon sign.

KAMITIC ASTROLOGY

Through involvement with a spiritual culture society I met people who were practicing astrologers according to the vedic system, but they had substituted the names of the planets with kemetic derived names of deities, for example mercury in the western astrology system becomes Sebek

summer sun

28JUNE 2010: SPIRITUAL DEVELOPMENT 

For many years now I have engaged in practice which could be termed as spiritual development. Some people believe in the existence of a higher, greater intelligence that is responsible for the creation and evolution of the world – God, the divine principle where all things, all entities begin and end.
At this time of the year it is a time for listening deeply to the words of the Creator, the words of God, the wisdom principle, awakening the wisdom faculties. It is also a time when I am coming off a four day period of meditation and physical cleansing that some people would term a “fast”. From my personal experience, coming off such a period brings an increased mental clarity and better physical performance, better health and vitality.
There are several levels to spiritual development: the fasting at specific times of the year; regular meditation; the meeting of daily challenges in your conscious everyday life; working, studying and sharing with others on the same path.
From I was a child i wanted to gain a closer relationship with the divine, I was asking the question “why am I here?”, especially when beset with the challenges growing up in a crowded home with a large family and being the youngest, and physically the weakest.
The personality and the Church. My personality did not develop until others left the family home and i was able to have my own room and adorn the room with the things that my person desired. Hence whilst away at universitybetween 18 and 21 the search for the divine led me to the Christian church, joining church groups, studying the bible, engaging in prayer. This continued beyond the end of the university days to when i returned to Birmingham in the late 1980’s. 

Meditation and Black consciousness. Soon my interest in the divine realised that the church and studying the bible and praying was one way to get to the divine but that there were deeper things that were missing, mysteries that had to be developed to ensure that what was desired could be realised. At this time I was living with my mother in Birmingham at the family home whilst she was preparing her second emigration to the USA. I began to try to meditate, and saw things in the median state (between waking and sleeping) important things, but try as I might i could not remember what was seen, communicated when in the waking state. I left the church and the study groups. I fell in love with the idea and philosophy of “Black Consciousness”. I joined self determinist African liberation organisations and got involved in study groups in Birmingham which moved me from theory to direct action against injustice, racism and inequality. The influence was the music of people like Public Enemy, Bob Marley, Bunny Wailer, Gil Scott-heron, Tracy Chapman, Dennis Brown and the words of Malcolm X to “free your mind”.

malcolm x

Soon I began to see contradictions in those organisations, more importantly between the development of the leadership and their followers. Well informed children leading less informed children!
The next stage was the study and development of a historical and cultural perspective, contributing and participating in Black African history study groups, and then community organization. What was influential were the “Education of The Black Child” conferences organized first by the PACM in the early 1990s’ then Paul Obinna and Lance Lewis’s Kemetic Educational Guidance organization in the mid 1990s. These conferences helped to move Black British people’s political perspective towards the need for developing cultural ethnocentric spirituality – I remember one year the conference theme being “Spirit-duality and the Black Child”. http://www.hh-bb.com/paul-obinna.html 

There was a move from Pan-Africanism to Afrocentricity to Afrikan Spirituality. I became aware of things like cultural celebrations at certain times of the year (Kwanzaa), the pouring of libations to honour one’s ancestors, the respect of one’s elders, the need for an ethnocentric educational curriculum, a rites of passage programme, the importance of a name: its meaning and the energy the name confers on the person. (try naming a baby “idiot” and see how they turn out in life!)
Intitiation. Eventually i found a society, a group of people who were of my persuasion who were committed to spiritual development. Their programme combined multi-disciplines: Health, Astrology, Cosmology, meditation, divination, prayer, yoga, history, Psychology, Biology into a spiritual science.

I learned to meditate, to breathe well, to exercise well, to have good nutrition, to fast, to learn from within. The realisation had come that up to this point my life was led by my reliance on the person – the set of personality characteristics that was tied into me at the time I was born. In order to grow and develop I had to transcend this “personality” with its likes and dislikes and develop the other personas that were latent in the spirit – the un-awakened conscious, in order to realise my life destiny. This was evident as the challenges that i faced in life were often more than my one “personality” could manage, other energies were required to deal with the challenges i was facing as a man working in an adult world. I had challenges in my intimate and family relationships; with earning saving and spending money; at work; with my self image ( what i thought I could and could not do, who i thought i was), with my habits (emotional, mental and behavioural), and my health. I needed more than “prayer” to handle these matters with mastery. My habits were helping me, but they were also causing me to mess up opportunities.
I joined a society and had to change the way that I thought, the way that I did things. As i learned to apply the teachings in my life, I gained more mental clarity, peacefulness, my health improved: I had better vitality to do things. This was illustrated at my twin brother’s wedding in November 1999 – when i saw friends that i had not seen for over ten years – they remarked that I looked well, better than I looked ten years earlier – “what are you doing, what are you into?”. The spiritual growth I had achieved was not done by reading books and studying manuals, it was through the application of the science of meditation, which unlocked what the Afrocentric scholars wrote and labelled as the “mystery system of ancient Kemet”. Many of the scholars, African Americans such as the late Jacob Carruthers, the late Reverend Barashango, the late Asa Hilliard III, contributed to KEG’s conferences but they never got past the outward description of the mystery system and the translation of hieroglyphic texts from the Kemetic pyramids in Egypt.
So i continued with the teachings and the application of the spiritual science in my life. As time goes on the divine nature in man begins to come through, and the identity moves beyond a human identity but resides with the divine that is unlimited in its capacity to know, unlimited in its ability to achieve and unlimited in its oneness. The Creator needs men and women to develop their spirituality to become vessels that God can come into the world. This is how major achievements are created: the spirituality to transcend the person and to enable the divine to come through.
The one thing that does happen with spiritual growth is that as the spirit grows so do the challenges: It is like weight training – as the muscles learn to grow and to bear more weight, the weight increases in order for the muscles to get stronger.

the paut neteru

Tuning in to Cycles. There are annual, solar cycles and monthly, lunar cycles. At this time of year, in the solar cycle, it is a time when the matters meditated upon and visualised at the last winter solstice (21st -24th December) begin to bear the fruits which began to grow from the spring equinox (21st march). The fruits will manifest until the vernal equinox (September 21st). I was reflecting upon my life over the weekend and realised that most of the things that I achieved year-to-year occurred at the time between June 21st and September 21st, followed by March 21st to June 20th. For example, In 1990 I lost two stones in weight between March and September, peaking in August, where I had to gain weight in order to play sports. Other examples are more obvious: the achievement of qualifications from examinations, sporting achievements such as the 1987 Universities AU Basketball championships. The work is done at certain times of the year when the subconscious spirit is receptive to change – the equinoxes and the solstices. The realisation of things willed is at the summer solstice to the vernal equinox. The judgement of achievements is made from the vernal equinox to the winter solstice. My ancestors in Africa recognised the significance of the winter solstice – this is shown by the erection of monuments that lit chambers from starlight from certain constellations only at the winter solstice. The ancestors at Stonehenge also recognised the significance of the solstices and the equinoxes. The fasting and physical cleansing that occurs at these key points in the year enables the person to become receptive to the words of the divine. 

At present i work in the dual disciplines of mental health and criminal justice. I work in the not-for-profit sector, though i have a master’s degree in business administration (MBA). There are challenges, for example I have a very demanding and dictatorial manager that I have to work with. Also I have to work with people in mental distress, and people who have committed some vicious crimes. I also have to train people, and facilitate training with professional people. Each day is different and each day has to be faced with the right spirit and attitude.
Spiritual development turned out to be far more profound than i had originally thought and imagined it to be and i did find out my purpose as to “why I am here”. I am part of a spiritual development group that meets in Nottingham once a fortnight: it is nice to share experiences and to grow with other people. Spirituality is deep and profound, it is not separate from living. I also realise that I am part of a long movement and a practice that was begun centuries ago by ancestors long before the idea of Christianity, Christ, and the writing of the Bible. Ancestral people who studied nature (neter) and developed spiritual development systems that became lost, hidden and distorted over time. These teachings have been re-membered in this time and I am indebted to my teachers, priests and fellow initiates in their committment to this way of life. I can attest to the light that spirituality has brought to my life.  I am challenged to live truth every day, heed the words of the divine principle, inculcate certain spiritual laws into my mind as i go about my business, and test the laws through experience. 

Some years ago i completed a masters in business administration course – it turned out to be a very interesting experience but there were some moments.

The course was part time – sessions were four day blocks of training per month for each module. In the first few months of the programme it was exhausting: I slept every night early during the first two modules. I had to get my head around all of that business language from the likes of Ivan Ansoff, Ohmae, Michael Porter: value chain, return on investment, benchmarking, balanced scorecard, competitive advantage, etc.  There were several modules, covering subjects like international business, operations management, business strategy, entrepreneurship and enterprise, marketing, human resource management, leadership/management, knowledge and information management, business ethics, organizational learning and changing, finance and accounting. We had to do assignments and in some cases examinations.  There were group assessments of consulting, one to a British based firm, and the other to an international firm that was conducted overseas.  The international consultancy to Zensar Technologies of  Pune in India was developed with other students, by this time there were nine students left on the course. On the international trip we did different assignments with different departments of the same global firm: an Indian Giant call Zensar Technologies. We all travelled together and stayed at the same hotel.

Then there were the other students. We were a small intake, about twelve began the course. There was a combination of overseas students and British managers, professionals and would-be entrepreneurs. Initially, I felt social isolation,  most of the students would not talk to me or even sit with me during lunch and tea breaks for the first three months. During one course exercise the lecturer –one of the professors – had to bark at some of the other students to “work with this man!” as three out of the group of four had their backs turned to me whilst they attempted the exercise even though they were told to work “as a group”. By this stage in my life I was used to the silly psychological antics that supposedly “well educated” White British people partake in when they feel that you are not one of them and thus are not important enough to be considered for an opinion.  Also, at the time  I was working in the third sector, in visual arts, which hardly has an international global reach and a multimillion dollar portfolio.  In addition people tend to talk to and relate more quickly with people who look like themselves or look like people they grew up with. Nevertheless though I felt like an outsider, I was confident in my abilities and my personality to affect a change and to eventually negotiate a working relationship with these people.  I also knew that at the end of the course I was going my own way.   A few MBA students very smug and self-interested: one guy boasted about the  public school he attended and his father’s share options in ICI. He ironically, had to do the most re-sits of failed exams and module assignments and was last seen on the plane back from India arguing with a customs official who told him that he had to get back on to the plane to collect his boarding card which he had left under his seat on the plane. It was satisfying to see his come-uppance via the “jobsworth” official at Heathrow airport.  Another pair of students could usually be heard discussing and comparing  the merits of their BMWs, again it was satisfying to find that in spite of their BMWs they both dropped off the course for different reasons: one due to failure of an assignment, and the other due to the withdrawal of his business partners to support his professional development.

There was a lack of career coaching from the business school, even though there were guest slots from real business people – these slots were often the most interesting, you would learn a lot about the real business world. But formal coaching as in how to market your skills, and links with consulting recruiters such as Accenture were non-existent.

There were some bad modules and assignments – The finance module was conducted by one lecturer who liked to boast about her family – she had a spot of B.O. and had one perspective “creating shareholder value, we have to view businesses as a portfolio of assets to be bought and sold”. She marked down my assignment at 54% about a Primary Care Trust hospital’s financial performance. I had gone to great lengths to get the insider confidential information.  During the taught part of the module she would refuse to talk to me unless it was in one or two syllables, she spent most of her time looking at and talking to the White males of the course, she would not explain the concepts, you were expected to keep up, during problem solving sessions she would sit with the same males in the group. During this module no one would talk to me as it was finance, they assumed that i would not be able to do the work.  The men did not also talk to the three women remaining on the course also during this module. I got 70% in the exam just to spite the bitch and her puppies.

The organisational learning module was a riot: the lead lecturer JF used the group as a social experiment and split them into two groups and students were encouraged to develop their own learning contracts and to take a greater responsibility for their own learning and studying. This went okay with the odd grumble until the final submission of assignments where the same lecturer, JF said that he had not planned a session for the last afternoon of the week (a Saturday afternoon) only that students would peer review and mark each others’ assignments! There was a tacit agreement that no students failed another student’s work. I smelled trouble as i had seen groups of students going off together earlier in the week to have coffee, and I was left on my own a lot of the time outside of lectures. I said that i was not comfortable with this as a process and that there would be potential repercussions. It soon became apparent that the lecturer JF was using this session to assert his authority, his mark was to be seen as final, and in the process some students would fail. JF would let the students talk and discuss their marks for a fellow student’s assignment before coming in at the end with his final verdict: his marks were final. This did not sit well with the group who became  more resentful as the afternoon wore on. My assignment was to be the final one to be discussed. At this point  a student (who was the son of another student) proposed  an argument that I had created an unfair advantage or myself as my work was submitted too close to the official deadline  to be reviewed  and thus should be penalised. It was true that most students had submitted their assignments for review a week before the official deadline, but I had not as there was no assignment but I had emailed all of the students to stop submitting assignments to me as i would not read them and I did not want them to prejudice my work.  The second lecturer on the course cross checked the rules and gruffly said “Akin has acted lawfully, well that settles it”. At this point about three students said that they had not the time to read my assignment and so were unable to allocate a mark. The father-and-son pair said that they had not read the assignment in protest. The public school student said that he had read the assignment, and felt that it was too long – I was getting no favours from him. The remaining two students felt that it was a good assignment. The lecturer JF read it and said gruffly “it is skilfully written – 61 per cent”.  At this point the father of the family pair exploded and accused JF of “having lost the plot” and expressed his anger that he was paying for a course module where the lecturer had not even turned up with a session plan.  The session ended with the other lecturer attempting to cool things off and the other students hurriedly leaving. The two students who had marked my work positively   walked with me to the city centre, but i was cautious with my words to them. Later that evening e-mails of apologies were sent from father-and-son.  JF was removed from participating further on the MBA  course, and the assignments were remarked. My mark was upgraded to 63%. I quite liked JF and arranged for a one-to-one review over a coffee which he duly delivered and gave very detailed feedback about the assignment. The assignment is my favourite of all the work that I submitted over the course.

The international business was split into two parts: part one was a taught module with an assignment, this  first assignment was a nightmare for me – I couldn’t do it and had by then taken to drinking whiskey and port just to get to sleep at night, as my work pressures, personnel life issues and course pressures were by then taking their  toll. My first attempt was a shambling draft version, submitted just to avoid the 50% penalty for late submission. During the taught part of this module I also got into an argument with one of the international business lecturers who was using his slot as a lecturer to broadcast his political opinions on Zimbabwe, which I challenged. “you can tell us about the business world and international models of working but your views on Zimbabwe are not welcome here” were some of my words during one angry exchange.  My resubmission got a bare pass – the marker was a very compassionate and helpful man who supported me with academic articles and help to complete it.  After this i was playing catch-up and struggling with burnout, not firing on all cylinders and having late submissions of assignments: the university were very understanding of my problems and granted me time extensions to three elective studies.

The International consulting trip to India with other students went smoothly. We had to do a market penetration strategy for three European countries for the products of the Indian based firm. I was very impressed with the Indian professionals. Whilst in India I did a spot of shopping myself, getting meditation whites made by a tailor: what was most impressive about this was that the tailor sent a man round to the hotel with a moped to take me to his shop for the final fitting. I saw the other students jealously eyeballing me whilst I held on to the back of this vehicle in my colonial brown suit. One student hated India and Indians – they reminded her of Gypsies back in her native Romania, and she was especially put out by Indian men shouting and whistling at her wearing a boob tube in Bombay at night. She complained from start to finish, even on the plane to Britain – the other students sat her next to me, and I told her that I am sick of hearing complaints about Indians and Indian practices. She apologized and kept quiet for the rest of the journey.

Elective botch jobs.  There were three electives on the course. Electives were opportunities to study an area of interest further, the course leadership had to have a critical mass of students for the electives to be economically viable, and so they made students choose from a range of ten subjects their three most desired topics.  The other students got together and decided which topics we should all study. I chose my favourite topics anyway, an the majority on the course, which by now had dwindled from twelve to nine, got their way. We studied entrepreneurship, constraints management, and human resource management. I attended all of the taught sessions and submitted all of the assignments behind the time schedule, but my marks were surprisingly good: 61% on entrepreneurship – I did an interpretivist study on businesswomen; 64% on human resources – I did a study of downsizing in the third sector with my employing organisation as a case study; 72% in my hated subject of constraints management – I did a study on the Theory Of Constraints Thinking Tools and related this to Senge’s Fifth Discipline and  Covey’s Seven Habits Of Successful People,  I also related the theory of constraints thinking tools to a real problem: the dilemma of loss of funding for a small visual arts organisation – EMACA Visual Arts and their strategic options.  Most of my marks were due to a brilliant book called “Thinking For A Change” by Lisa Scheinkopf, which explained weird concepts such as Necessary Condition Thinking, Evaporating Clouds, Current Reality Tree, Future Reality Tree, etc.  Determined to make the lecturer look an idiot, I painstakingly read the book from end to end with a view to critique it to death and shoot his enthusiastic philosophy down in flames.  It had the opposite effect – I became a convert to his “evaporating clouds” as a problem solving tool – especially after scoring 72%

The dissertation. Doing the dissertation was the hardest thing that I have done in my life. It was a period where I was suffering from executive burnout and I had developed some very bad habits such as smoking menthol cigarettes, drinking whiskey, port and the odd spliff to get to sleep. The taught part of the dissertation I found confusing – it was focused on deductive research and towards SPSS software for undertaking quantitative analysis.  The supervision that I had was nearing on the incompetent – the supervisor was like a harassed GP – whilst his patients depended upon his advice to save their lives, his mind was on other things, such as becoming the Vice Dean of the university and his attitude like theirs (GPs) was “ hurry up and get on with it, I have a host of other things to do… next patient please!” .  He was a minimalist and it was not until the eleventh hour after six months of bullshit (three months before the deadline) that he advised me to undertake inductive research. Inductive research involves research where you are building theory from scratch as there is a lack of academic stuff on your chosen subject matter. So I was left to fend for myself finding academic articles and wading through a host of materials which was time consuming and exhausting.  I did the research eventually with the help of faithful friends and family submitting a 21,500 word piece on “Turnarounds In Non-Profit Organizations”. I came up with a theory and conceptual framework from all the work and research that I had done: case studies and interviews with experienced professionals and executives. Writing up all of this with a tight deadline and timescale  took all I had emotionally, physically and intellectually – I spent the next two months in bed after the submission, thankfully I had taken a “career break” to do this. I graduated a year later than all the other students – the university were very understanding of my burnout issues.

Finding my  literary voice. The amount of writing on the course enabled me to experiment with some of my ideas about management and leadership and I was encouraged to be reflexive – write about my experiences from my own point of view, recognising its limitations and identifying myself and taking ownership for my viewpoint. It was thus I found my own voice and learned that it was valid to write in this way, which I doing for a long time privately. This was one of the hidden benefits in doing such a course and i did discover from the other students who were positive about my assignments, that i had a valid and unique voice and a unique way of involving the reader in the subject concerned.

However, the other side was he made us cringe with his publicity antics: the oxygen tank, the issues with children, the high spending on trinkets, baubles and trivia, the skin lightening – ok he said he had vitilligo – some of the cringeing singles like “Heal the world, Black or White, Earth Song”, the peter pan-like behaviour, the high speaking voice. Michael Jackson was an oxymoron but he did make a stand for Black musical artists, protesting with Rev Al Sharpton against the Sony Music group. he was highly influential to his and the next generation of american musicians such as justin timberlake. I am not a michael jackson devotee but i do recognise his contribution to the world, makng millions of people in the world happy with his music and his entertainment.
When Michael jackson died I was browsing the internet whilst my lady was sleeping and i saw some breaking news on MSN – i switched on the television and within an hour- at 12:30 am his death was confirmed. Some friends told me that they were devastated and had felt a loss when they heard the news of his death. I was shocked but not surprised – this was someone who for me had achieved his dreams in life – however twisted they may have seemed – he had done more in his time than most of us dream of. One person – who was a university lecturer- tried and failed- to get a minute’s silence from the students at a lecture he was giving (hah hah). Other people said that they shed silent tears and whispered prayers. In fact the week following his death you could hear his music playing from many cars passed by driven by Black men and women. I went to a carnival launch party the following weekend and when the DJ put on “Thriller”, the place erupted with mothers, grandmothers, getting out of their seats to crowd the dancefloor to dance and sing along to tunes such as “bad” “rock with you” and “billie jean”. Also in the week following his death many shopping malls blasted his music over the tannoy systems.
The more afrocentric spiritual and esoteric discussion forums debate michael jackson’s life and its spiritual meaning,they say that he came to the earth to unify people, bringing joy through music and entertainment, but his death was caused by negligence, a lack of care – as a result of which he may become a lost soul, a desperate dark deceased, stuck wandering the inner plains ignorant of his impact to the world. They will have to do some work to get him to recognise the light!
Michael jackson’s family celebration of his life showed that no matter what anyone else says, he was African-America’s Michael Jackson, a family man, a friend, a star, an icon, a father, a brother, a son.

I do not subscribe to the British habit of knocking successful people who achieve what they could not perceive to be possible. You see any of his videos today and they are exceptional compared to the dross that we have to endure today masquerading as “pop music” or “rnb” such as lady “madasahattershutyourmouth” gaga. Michael left a fantastic body of work.
Rant over.

In Record Mirror magazine charts researcher Alan Jones would write a weekly article about the charts and facts and figures about other charts in general. He would however mock some of the people who wrote to him with personal charts of various kinds. Mr Jones was also very skilled at compiling  material on singles, albums and chart positions, whilst his advantage was that he knew how much each single sold per position, and he was in direct touch with record company executives who would confirm sales. One of my favorite posts of his in Record Mirror was after the top 100 of the 1970s was published by BMRB/Music Week and broadcast officially. Alan Jones wrote an article in one of the January 1980 Chartfile columns about how inaccurate the final survey of the 1970s was and then compiled his own top thirty  best sellers of the 1970′s based upon his phone calls to record companies and other research info. Mr Jones was correct on the point that BMRB had omitted data from the last week of the year in all the years surveyed due to the “christmas break”. This meant that many records best week of sales were not added to their total sales on the final survey.  His survey is today considered to be the more authoritative.

I aimed to develop a businesslike or personal style of publication for my own chart articles. I developed a very strong love of music that still exists today. As for the charts, I developed a points system to allocate to each single’s position and I would use these to create my own “chart performance charts”. I would pretend that I was a DJ or a journalist and write articles on each chart that I had written. I would read and re-read the artcles  I had written,  My siblings could not understand what I was doing, they used to tease me about it, but I still persisted until my mid twenties. By then my “chart performance charts” were  more of an art-form, lists of singles, with fields such as weeks on chart, this week, last week, date of entry, highest position, points this week, etc., all with colour codes.

When ever I  do compile and write up the occasional charts now it is more as a hobby and for artistic effect, using colours and layout. I cannot remember some records as well as I used to but my memory of singles from between 1978-1982 is pretty good. In later years I started to study the influence of the record companies and the way in which the industry trends would support some genres at the expense of others. The worst example being in 1981 when Frankie Smith’s “Double Dutch Bus” sold some 2 million copies in the USA, 1 million on 12″, one million on 7″, yet was surveyed as only peaking at no higher than position 30 on the billboard USA singles chart survey.  It did peak at number one for 4 weeks on the USA Billboard RNB charts with a 31 week run. As a teenager i would listen to the german service of Radio Luxembourg and the Dutch station Radio Veronica on medium wave 558. I got to hear a broader range of hits by doing so, and “Double Dutch Bus” was popular in Europe but received no airplay on national British radio.  At that time there was no RNB radio show on the national stations, for a record to be a hit in Britain one of the national DJs had to endorse it. So in the early 1980s many RNB and Reggae singles, as well as other genres such as country, jazz, heavy rock did not feature in the charts because firstly, they were not played on daytime radio, and secondly and more importantly, the shops that sold such product in large quantities were not on the “chart panel of shops” surveyed by the market researchers commissioned by the music industry and the BBC.

Some of that prejudice in the UK music industry still exists today, certain genres are supported well by industry marketing and promotion. But today there is much better market research and data capture of actual record sales and popularity through downloads.  It is a trend that i have embraced: the influence of technology. Many great records that I missed  buying in those days due to unavailability in Birmingham shops, as a teenager, I have been able to since get through downloads. The days of thumbing through musty boxes at rare record fairs for a beloved track are pretty much over for me. Today we understimate the power that music as an entertainment form had in those days (1978-1984): there was less television, a very small and emerging electronic games market, no internet.

An interesting note about my chart performance charts: the most points recorded over the 1980′s for top 40 singles was Frankie Goes to Hollywood’s “Relax”. For the 1970′s this honour went to Boney M’s “Rivers of Babylon/Brown Girl In The Ring”. I stopped doing those charts in the 1990′s due to work and life pressures – I had to grow up and buy a house, get a career, get a car, buy nice things,look after girlfriends,stepchildren, etc. I did continue to collect the original primary data.

In developing my own charts has brought me some internal benefits: of self-hypnosis, an increased concentration and memory and an appreciation of  business skills, discipline and hard work.

Later on in life I discovered that I was not the only chart freak: there are many chart forums that exist now such as UKMix, where the geeks get together and compare notes freely, having escaped the vitriolic critique of Alan Jones, the BMRB/Music week/Record Mirror resident chart statistician. The material and information about the mainstream charts from any year in the UK is easy to get hold of on the internet now, and hey, who knows I may even publish a few of my charts here as PDFs.

As an additional note, for those of you interested in chart archives, you can get the official dutch top 40 charts online, every week and position since its inception in 1965.  There were some interesting number one singles in the late 1970s and early 1980s where reggae was very popular such as Dillinger’s Cokane in My Brain ( 4 weeks in 1977), and Someone Loves You Honey by June Lodge and Prince Mohammed (6 weeks in 1982). see this link http://www.top40.nl/index.aspx?week=34&jaar=1977

I would appreciate anyone who can tell me where to find an online link to the disco chart archive of Record Mirror and Black echoes. The British Library’s catalogue of Black echoes is patchy and inconsistent.

gallery director

I worked for many years as an art  gallery director in Nottingham.  The organisation I directed was called EMACA, and the gallery was called the Art Exchange. Those who know me may ask the question what is a chemistry and biological sciences degree graduate doing directing visual arts? Well I had gotten into it by accident. But once in, i developed a very strong passion for displaying the creativity of African Diasporan people (Black British, African, caribbean, etc.)

inside EMACA gallery

I began working in the gallery as the education and audience development officer and within two years both of my other colleagues left suddenly and I was promoted to the director position. this was funny as i had planned only to stay for two years before moving on to another institution.

The time that I spent there really acted as a lightning conductor that focused my skills and energy, I did many creative things that I had planned to do in my life: organized African History Month events, talks, creative schools, and performances;  there were many fulfilling times spent organising exhibitions and events, one of the highlights being  Nottingham’s Black Question Time which we filmed in 2004. There were many other highlights interms of exhibitions but these are for a later post. But as most things the gallery and EMACA’s role in it came to an end mainly due to a lack of financial, social, personnel and environmental support and infighting.

There were some odd exhibitions and odd-ball individuals: the artist who made up a photgraphic exhibition of Black and nudes of himself in various poses: the arts programmer at the time tried to tour the show in its unabashed glory only to be told “no cocks, no tour” by many venues, the bipolar arts programmer who tried to seduce a visitor(an ex-lover) in the basement broom cupboard, the exhibition of a deacying model of a dead foetus over four weeks, which was vsisted most by the primary school age girls in the area!  So much for shock, taste and Decency.

As an organisation we worked in partnership with other arts organisations, most notably Apna Arts and City Arts on group shows and open submission competitions.  The exhibtions would attract a wide range of people from various ethnic backgrounds, contrary to the view that EMACA only catered for Black audiences, the Black audiences were ususally the minority.  

There was also the on going “cold war” between the Black cultural self determinists and the Black apologist assimilationists. This manifested in debates, power struggles and ideological concerns. When the two camps eventually split, the assiimilationists gained the upperhand by aligning themselves with the Arts Council and promising them a new premises. Where the old gallery once was, a georgian building is replaced by a forty foot high Mausoleum, a great lifeless Black capstone Lego Brick structure. The new edifice’s structure represents the vision of not the local Nottingham community but the Arts Council of England, and their confederate  lackeys on the committee of the premises.  

the old art exchange in 2004 - now replaced by a modern building

I learned a lot and developed spiritually and professionally from the event, even though at the end when I left in 2006 I was washed up and burnt out. I recovered to complete a master degree in business, i found my literary voice where I began to write up and publish the story of the gallery, the organisation and its history.

But as most things the gallery and EMACA’s role in it came to an end mainly due to a lack of financial, social, personnel and environmental support and infighting.

Now here I am some twenty odd years later, more life experiences, more qualifications, education, and I am in that industry working on a project related to health and criminal justice.  I work for what is called a Race Equality Council.  Racial Equality Councils were funded predominantly by the now defunct Commission for Racial Equality (CRE).  Their remits was to improve race relations and their organisational and working structures were determined and controlled by the CRE.  However since the inception of the 2007 Equalities and Human Rights Act the role of the racial equality councils have diminished and the CRE was disbanded.  What this meant was that a sizable amount of the most beneficial work – racial harrassment casework has diminished due to the downsizing brought about by disinvestment by the new  Commission for  Equalities and Human Rights (CEHR). It is now very difficult to obtain training on racial harrassment casework even though there was a national network of trained professionals in this highly specialised area.  So the person that lives in an area where indigenous white people feel threatened by another new resident (perhaps due to the colour of their skin, and thus feels obliged to bully, intimidate and harrass), such a person is less likely to receive the same support as before the inception of the new CEHR legislation.

As a person who grew up in the now multicultiural Handsworth in Birmingham, I remember as a child moving to Handsworth Wood in the early 1970′s.  Within a few weeks of our move, several windows in the house were broken by stones thrown by resident teenagers. These teenagers were incited to do so by the security guard of the Student hall of resisdence across the road from where we lived.  So as a family we were forced to stay and fight, involving the police and whatever means. But this was before the days of the 1976 Race relations  and Discrimination Act – there was no Racial Equality Council to complain to.  The stonings continued for months. But there were some good people in the area who had a sense of justice:  the security guard soon lost his job even though he maintained a menacing presence in the area, staring hatefully and with malicious intent at us as we went about our business. We nicknamed him “Spock”, on account of his very personable manner.

We as children fought and then befriended the teenagers in the area, found out who and where their parents lived and the stoning eventually stopped.

In the present day I work in an organisation that is crippled by a lack of funds and investment, beset with a hostile public sector and a very competitive voluntary sector. The organisation and those involved in its non-executive mangement are mainly retired or close to retirement age, they have lost their sense of anticipation of the external political and social environment, unable to generate significant external  interest in the work of the racial equality council. This is compounded by a out of condition, out-of sorts premises that is in much need of an upgrade to 21st century standards.  What this means is that visitors would not be impressed by the slug infested basement kitchen, the piss stained carpets in the toilets accessed only by steep rickety stairs, let alone the peeling paint of the external front door and the window frames, the threadbare worn carpet tiles and paint stained seats. So it’s no surprise that service user numbers are falling. 

So this is a synopsis of the some of the worst aspects of the equalities industry – from the disnvestment to the legislative mess to the resultant degrading working conditions. The losers at the heart of this are not the workers in the sector, most of whom are well qualified and should be able to take their well honed skills elsewhere, but the helpless and desperate people who experience bullying and harassment on account of their race, skin colour and culture. People who are not skilled enough to know how to organise with others to stand up for themselves. Socially isolated people who need and appreciate a listening ear of someone who understands what it feels like to be targeted for punishment on account of being “different”, people who are struggling to maintain asense of dignity, mental clarity, mental well being in the face of sustained oppression and opposition. Whatever happened to equality, anti-racism, racial discrimination, anti-oppressive practice and equal opportunities?

In addition some twenty odd years later after my first encounter, i notice that the workers in the “race industry” are different. They are less gentle, sold on the performance management/bullying culture that is now very pervasive in the English public sector, jackbooted suitwearers who are more prone to manage by barking orders and issueing frivolous commands about “new intiatives” than to offer realistic help and practical support. There is also a lot more of what Human Resources and personnel Professor Tony Watson of Nottingham University refers to as “management bollock speak” – which are the terms such as ” window of opportunity”, “service delivery”, “action plans”, “performance review”, deliverable outcomes” , “capacity building”- you get the general idea. People more motivated by wielding power and authority over others than by public service, empathy and altruism. This is refective of the highest levels of the industry the CEHR itself as well as in the third sector itself. Too many sandal wearing Hitlers.