#BAMEOver

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 ‘Chinese is the only East and Southeast Asian ethnicity to be represented in state discourses and therefore statistics so the term Chinese itself erases entire East and Southeast Asian communities.’

Listen to a snippet from her speech here.

Dr Diana Yeh is Senior Lecturer in Sociology, Culture and the Creative Industries at City, University of London. She works on race and racisms, migration, cultural politics and activism. She is currently Principal Investigator of the British Academy/Leverhulme funded project ‘Becoming East and Southeast Asian: Race, Ethnicity and Youth Politics of Belonging’.

You can read more of Dr Diana Yeh’s work here.  

‘What was meant to be a term of inclusion and what was a term of inclusion when I first came into this business nearly 40 years ago has now become a term of exclusion. I think it’s helped to unwittingly marginalise and erase people like me whilst at the same time helping to reinforce interracial prejudices such as anti-blackness within the British East and Southeast Asian community.’

Listen to a snippet from her speech here.

Lucy Sheen is an actor and writer trained at Rose Bruford where she graduated with a BA (Hons) in Theatre Arts. She has worked in UK theatre across the UK including Manchester Royal Exchange, Bristol Old Vic, RSC, The BBC, ITV, Chanel 4 and Netflix. She is a published poet (Ungrateful: A Paper Daughter) and playwright (Under A Blood Red Moon, Conversations with My Unknown Mother). Lucy has received paid writing commissions from Nimble Fish, The Royal Court, Komola Collective and Arts Ed. She recently became one of the writers on the BEATS fellowship (her mentor is Morgan Lloyd Malcolm).

Find out more on her website.

‘It is awkward, and it turns us into a homogenous form of race and I think it’s important to say and claim who we are as people.’

Listen to a snippet from her speech here.

Miss Jacqui is a Spoken Word Artist, Songwriter, and Facilitator. She knows a lot about working with the cards that you are dealt, especially because she is someone who always tries to challenge societal perceptions, like what it actually means to be a black woman with a disability. A wheelchair user herself Miss Jacqui wants her poetry and music to help her listeners see the world differently and inspire others to feel confident in being themselves. In Miss Jacqui’s spare time, she is devoted to the exploration of theatre, music, poetry, song writing, and of course performing. Equality, community, and exploring different art forms is something that Miss Jacqui is passionate about as well as positive change.

Follow her on Twitter.

  ‘BAME more than any other acronym has been used to obfuscate and hide the systemic inequalities that are inherent especially in the cultural sector. BAME is used by people who feel their job is done if someone BAME is on a panel or is employed in an entry-level post. BAME is for people who posted black squares on Instagram and came up with anti-racist statements without looking at their all-white staff teams or their all-white boards.’

Listen to a snippet from her speech here.

Lara is a freelance consultant specialising in diversity, leadership, collaboration, ideas, innovation cultural policy implementation within the HE, cultural and digital sector. She develops and delivers projects and policy on how culture and digital technology intersect for a number of national partners as well as programmes around leadership, resilience and business development for the arts. She is currently delivering AD:Vantage Leadership programme is a development opportunity for

d/Deaf, disabled or neurodivergent people who work in arts, culture or heritage.

Follow her on Twitter. 

 ‘When we look at a word like BAME to me it seeks to solve a problem that doesn’t actually exist. In essence it is the need to characterise everyone in opposition to whiteness. We are human beings, we should define ourselves in the affirmative of who we are and how we like to define ourselves, not as the negative or as lacking something in relation to whiteness.'  

Listen to a snippet from his speech here.

Ozzie has spent over 15 years as an independent consultant for various organisations including the London 2012 Organising Committee and Business in the Community, joining the Board of Trustees at the Royal National Institute of Blind People in 2017. At 13 he became the youngest ever independent advisor on youth and policing policy for London working with the Metropolitan Police. In 2018 Ozzie successfully co-led the bid for London to host the 10th anniversary One Young World Summit in 2019. Outside of work he is a budding film producer. Ozzie has a particular passion for issues relating to race and equity within the workplace and society. He is involved with Dope Black Men, a part of the Dope Black Dads movement and social enterprise.

Follow Dope Black Men on Twitter.  

'It rounds out to something like 7.6 million people. It clearly has no specificity at all. When we talk about ourselves and we talk about our own unique narratives and our own unique lived experience I think I would ask the wider society to simply spend time to write a full sentence. I think it shows how dismissive of our issues they are that they require an acronym.’

Listen to a snippet from his speech here.

Deidan Williams is an award nominated London born playwright of Caribbean and West African heritage. He has had worked and produced for Theatre 503, has written for radio and was a part of the Royal Courts writers’ group. He leads workshops for LegalAliens Theatre who collaborate with artists from all over the world, irrespective of ethnicity, ethnicity or nationality and advocate for more (and more nuanced) representation of first-generation migrants in theatre. They believe in theatre as a bridge between cultures and use it as a tool to foster inclusion through an array of workshops for migrants, refugees, asylum seekers and anyone who can’t afford traditional theatre classes.

Read Deidan's blog about the Live Debate here.

‘I think it’s simple. You’re either Black - if you want to call yourself African or if you want to call yourself Caribbean, or South Asian or Southeast Asian, that’s how it’s got to be. It’s got to be on our terms. I think when you start coming up with more acronyms that’s on their terms. I think we need to stop empowering the establishment because we’ve done it too long.’

Listen to a snippet from his speech here.

Sheldon is a consultant who lectures, trains and consults on gang culture to various governments, police, frontline workers and engages gang members in the UK and the Caribbean. He is the founder of Gangsline Ltd. a non-profit established in 2007 to provide help and support to young men and women involved in gang culture. Central to its ethos and success is a proactive, spiritual and non-enforcement led approach to gangs and the gang violence embedded in our local communities. Sheldon has an innate understanding of societal change, social inequality and the importance of corporate social responsibility. 

 Find out more on the Gangsline website.

‘BAME is also really symptomatic of the UK’s general systemic insensitivity when it comes to race. As a biracial Chinese person I very rarely find an appropriate option for myself on ethnicity forms and I usually just have to fill in other.’

Listen to a snippet from her speech here.

Enxi Chang is a multidisciplinary playwright, actor, singer-songwriter, rapper and Mandarin translator working in theatre, film and music. Her work seeks to bridge the gap between China and the West, whilst exploring the intersections of mixed diaspora identity, growing up in London, and navigating the world as a trans woman. She is also a member of queer mixed-Asian music collective East Wave. Previous credits include Invisible Harmony at the Southbank Centre.

Follow her on Twitter.