Showcasing new material on the Grenada Revolution at Black Cultural Archives with Merle Hodge
In October 2023, exactly forty years after the fall of the Grenadian Revolution, BCA hosted a sold-out event ‘Remembering the Grenada Revolution’ at One Windrush Square. That event celebrated and showcased the newly deposited Jacqueline Creft Memorial Collection, a globally significant collection of artefacts, documents, and recordings commemorated to Minister of Education Jacqueline Creft. You can read about and listen to a recording from that event at the BCA blog here.
Two years on, we invite you to join BCA once again to celebrate and remember the Grenada Revolution, and to learn about a brand-new collection of materials deposited at BCA by internationalist educator Liesbeth de Block. The event will preview objects and materials from the collection relating to education and internationalism ahead of their being made available to visitors and researchers later this year.
We are thrilled to welcome renowned Trinidadian writer Merle Hodge, who will join Liesbeth de Block to share insights on developments in education during the Grenada Revolution, including the National In-Service Teacher Education Programme (NISTEP). The event will also feature insights from researchers at University College London, without whom the cataloguing of this important collection would not have been possible.
You are warmly invited to join the discussions and reflect on the significance of this important geopolitical event today.
This event is made possible by the UCL Institute of Advanced Studies.
Whilst the event is free, we require a minimum donation to secure your spot. All proceeds go to BCA, allowing us to further our impact in the communities we serve.
Event Summary - The event will take place across two rooms at BCA, the Learning Centre and the Meeting Room. Attendees will be invited to browse archival materials from the newly deposited collection including scarves, t-shirts, books, and pamphlets. The event will also include short presentations by UCL students on collection material and the cataloguing process. The main part of the event will feature a chaired 'In conversation' discussion between Liesbeth De Block and Merle Hodge covering topics including: teacher training in Grenada, education and language, legacies of colonialism, histories of resistance, memory and archiving, and how we remember the Grenada Revolution today.
About the speakers:
Merle Hodge is a retired Senior Lecturer of the University of the West Indies, St Augustine campus. She has also taught at the Mona campus of The University of the West Indies; The University of the Virgin Islands, and in the US. Among her areas of interest are Caribbean language and family. She has published three novels: Crick Crack, Monkey; For the Life of Laetitia; and One Day, One Day Congotay, as well as short stories, academic papers, and textbooks. She has been active in the women’s movement and was leader of the Language Arts programme for National In-Service Teacher Education Programme (NISTE) in Grenada, 1979-1983. In 2022, she was awarded the Bocas Henry Swanzy Award for her work over more than two decades as a creative writing teacher and mentor.
Liesbeth de Block is a teacher and retired academic. She taught in London schools (primary and secondary), teaching literacy skills and working with refugee children. She also worked in adult literacy and publishing programmes in Hackney and Islington. Her academic teaching and research at the Institute of Education, London (now part of UCL) focussed on the intersections between childhood, migration, and media. She worked in Grenada on the Teacher In-Service Education Programme (NISTEP) on the Language Arts programme between 1980 and 1983.