'I’m not your… ' was featured at the Tate Modern earlier this year

An exhibition of the work of young people from the Bollo Brook Youth Centre in Acton is now available for all to see online.

Earlier this year their work was featured at the Tate Modern. In an exhibition entitled ‘I’m Not Your…’ they investigated young people’s attitudes and experiences of race and racism.

The youth centre is attended by a mix of young people from all walks of life, creeds and circumstances, mainly from ethnic minorities and working-class backgrounds.

At the heart of the project is a collection of over 18 hours of recordings of interviews with the centre’s members. They engaged in unstructured discussions and talk openly with art tutor Yasmin about race. The recordings are full of hope, anger and engagement with the complexities of the subject.

Bollo Brook Youth Centre

18-year-old Sonny Inglis says on the project web site, “The interviews tell of young black men feeling they have the responsibility to prove themselves as ‘safe’ when entering white-dominated space, of young Somali women feeling fetishised by the Western gaze, of mixed race young people like myself feeling excluded by both white and black people alike, and of white young people feeling shut out from conversations about race whilst also suffering racial abuse themselves. These tales of modern day racism will not find easy answers in good intentions or policy changes alone. It is only by asking ourselves difficult questions about our own conditioning and the role of race in ours and others’ experiences, like we have in the project, that we can really start to understand the role of race and racism in our society.”

You can view the project on their new web site.

July 2, 2020