Hello and welcome to another special event from the British Library. My name is Jonah Albert and I am one of the library's cultural events producers. It is a pleasure for me to welcome you to Windrush Children with Dr Benjamin Zephaniah and historian Dr Aisha Johnson. Our chair for today is Kieran Yates and the event is brought to you in association with the Black Cultural Archives for Windrush Day. Before we get started here's some housekeeping for you. Below the video you will find social media links to enable you to continue the conversation. You'll also find more information about our speakers for today and resources about Windrush. Above the video you will find a bookshop tab where you will have an opportunity to buy a copy of Benjamin Zephaniah's latest book Windrush Child. You'll also find a tab for to provide us with feedback. Your feedback is important to us and it enables us to continue programming the kinds of events that you would like to see. There's also an opportunity there for you to donate to the British Library. The British Library is a charity. I'd like to introduce you to Kieran Yates, our chair for the event. Kieran is a journalist, broadcaster and editor who writes about current affairs, culture and politics. Her work has appeared in The Guardian, Vice Magazine, The Independent and Beyond. She regularly hosts events including South Bank's WoW Festival and the London Literature Festival. She has written a book, Generation Vext, where she interviews young people from SBTV. She works frequently as a broadcaster for BBC and Channel Four News. Please welcome Kieran Yates. It's my absolute pleasure to be joining you, the audience, on Windrush Day to celebrate and commemorate stories of the Windrush generation and really make the point on how richly they have contributed to Britain's past, present and future. My name is Kieran Yates. I'm a journalist and writer and sometimes teacher. Please let me take this opportunity to extend very warm love to primary school teachers and students who I know are also in the audience today. Please feel empowered to ask questions in particular and you can do that by just going into the question field which will pop up underneath the video and we'll pick some questions later. Now I'm joined this afternoon by Dr Aisha Johnston who is the Learning and Engagement Manager at the Mighty Black Cultural Archives in Brixton. Aisha's work does lots of things but mostly deals with memorialising and accurately reporting the nuances of Black British history across everything from the mangrove nine to this year's 40th anniversary of the Brixton uprisings through things like talks, events, panels and preservation of a very special archive. The BCA have also collaborated with Scholastic to publish a children's book which is a collection of stories of Windrush and it's titled The Place for Me Stories of the Windrush Generation. I'm also joined by Dr Benjamin Zephaniah who is an artist, a British literary hero and pioneer who's written for young people and novels and radio and plays and stage and poetry and his activism has provided the foundation knowledge of anti-racism for lots of young people including myself and is internationally and intergenerationally renowned as a result so thank you, thank you for all of this intergenerational learning and work that you've done and it's a real pleasure to be here to be discussing Windrush Child which I have nearly read and really enjoyed so thank you so much both of you for being here. Now I think a good place to start is to just get straight into your books and then to lead us to chat to other things so Dr Benjamin it would be great to kind of tell us a little bit about the character of Leonard who we are reading alongside in your book Windrush Child who makes the journey from maroon town in Jamaica to Manchester, the exotic plains of Manchester. Could you tell us a little bit about your relationship with Leonard as a character? Well like all fictional characters there's a lot of truth in him. I said when I wrote this book that I like my fiction to be true and it's and I really do mean it but I like to write things that are kind of unbelievable. I've got nothing against things like talking dogs or horses or whatever but it's you know it's not my thing. I really want to keep my fiction as real as possible. So Leonard is a boy growing up in Jamaica and he thinks he's in paradise. I mean he looks at the left he can block a mango, he looks at the right he can block an orange, he's got this place to play, he sits on the veranda, he talks to his mother and the wise man from the mountains and all this and he just thinks he's happy. His father is in England, he came on the empire Windrush and his father said he's going to come back to Jamaica but then one day Leonard is told that actually he's going to join his dad in Manchester. So he goes with his mother, he goes to the docks in Kingston in Jamaica. Leonard can't understand why his mother has a passport and he doesn't. His mother tells him don't worry, you're guaranteed passage, the queen promises us because we are British and so you know you get a bit upset but then he realises that you know Britain's promised him so this must be true and he goes to Manchester and he can't understand why he left paradise and came to Manchester for a bit of life and I'm nothing against Manchester but he's in a bedside you know free people in a bedside and he's just left this paradise island and he doesn't understand, of course he doesn't understand pension, he doesn't understand the security of a job and all that kind of thing so really it's a book about him growing up. When I started this book I knew the end more than I knew the beginning, I knew exactly what the end was going to be and we can't talk about the end because it comes as such a turnaround so it's difficult to talk about it but generally speaking it's about Leonard's journey from Jamaica to England and what it was like for a young black boy growing up in England then going to school, simply going to the park and playing as a young black boy, I mean I was born in England but as a young black kid I remember you know walking through the park and seeing a gang of white kids playing football and thinking can I ask them if I can join in and sometimes they'd welcome me but sometimes I would get such racist abuse and then seeing the racism that my mother experienced a lot of that is in the book almost word for word some of the experiences so that's what it's about really, it's kind of there's a lot of talk about the Windrush generation but you must remember if you're talking about the Windrush generation now lots of them were children when they came over and I just wanted me to write a story from a child through a child's eye through a child's mind you know one of the things I also really loved in terms of universal storytelling was how you also dealt with all the sort of messiness of domestic life and so it felt it feels like it's a story that does justice beyond just the idea of arriving which can be a really one-dimensional way of viewing a very rich and nuanced generation of people and there are so many like stories I hear about families I mean I was a teenager or something when my mum would turn around and told me that I've got another sister and I've heard so many stories of people like this where there's some surprise back in the Caribbean or there's something a big family issue that they didn't know about and even to do with our health now this may seem kind of completely random but my father and my uncle were very kind of stiff up a lip and I remember I lost a couple of uncles and I said to my mum about you know what's happened to them and she said oh you know it's a problem with them water works it's them water works you know and that was it I didn't know that it was prostate cancer one of the biggest killers of black men you know but men didn't talk about it you know so little thing like that that happened in the family that I realize now and were really important issues but they just didn't talk about it because they felt that they had to talk about the successful side of coming here which is why you get these photographs of them I've got one in the next room of my mum standing in front of a grand you know a record player saying that we have arrived I remember doing again it may sound like I'm going off piece here but I remember doing a TV program once about why black and Asian people in Britain don't live on water there's lots of communities in Britain but they live on boats all around the country and we found one raster guy that did it and he did it for a financial reason but a lot of the black and Asian people came back and they said I can't write to my family in Jamaica or Barbados or Bangladesh and tell them that I'm living on a boat you can't come all the way from from home and go to England and then right back I say we only bought a boat you know you know you have to put on this idea that you're moving up the social ladder yeah I show I mean obviously this is something that was you know a concern with with your book and your collection of the 12 stories as well can you give us some insight into how important it was for you to also take these stories beyond just arriving and that's the end of it and and give us a sort of an insight into some of the story tell so most of the of the 12 stories they give us snapshots of life back in the Caribbean before people came in particularly you get this sense of the close knit families particularly very intergenerational people being very close to their grandparents of that love they have for the grandparents I mean quite often families in the Caribbean because people have often I mean I'm talking mostly from Jamaica just my experience is that they if they migrate from the countryside to the towns and cities for work they they may leave their children with their parents and so grandparents were you know very important in child raising and also because people tended to have very large families as well so you know one couple would not necessarily be raising 10 12 14 children completely on their own without their relatives so all of the stories in the book give that sense of of that wrench of people being you know separated from those they're very close to I mean Kevin George's story called The Light at the end of the tunnel also talks about active recruitment in post-war building and I think this is a really important story so you know it really gives the journeys a sense of connection rather than people just randomly deciding to come to England you can see that the recruiters they're already trying to encourage people to come to take part in the post-war rebuilding but also there's another story by Selena Godden called Halon Hardy which takes it back before the wind rush to World War II so the recruiters were there already encouraging people to enlist in the British Army and then Kate Mass's story called Making Friends of British Way her character Lucille is actually a medical secretary with the British Army but in Jamaica so I think that the books really join up the history and I know that when when I was a child we we learned about World War II it wasn't in this way there was no sense of of empire or of of Britain's former colonies being involved in any way so I think it's great the way the story does that and so then the wind rush moment is no longer a moment but it's just a stitch you could say a stitch in a long piece of sewing I don't know where that that I came from yeah I think that kind of describes it really yes and of course a lot of that work is done because you are you're keenly involved in the archive and you know I suspect actually Benjamin is also makes up part of that archive so you know I'm interested in asking you Benjamin if there are particularly stories from the historical archive of Black history which you particularly love and find yourself returning to um gosh there are so many stories there's there's one story and in fact I've just finished talking to um is a man called Alan Wilmot um who's um nephew I think it is is the famous comedian but he came on the ship before the MPO Windrush I mean there's two things that strike me about Windrush is that a lot of people who are not like us and interested in the history associated with a scandal um we're asking for for years we've been celebrating it and now a lot of people are associated with a scandal but that's another thing and the other thing is of course I mean I usually just allude to it it's not just one moment there that there was a ship the year before which was the one that Alan was on actually and he was the next military man and um what was the ship called? Alan Mazura and um he he was on that ship and there's a lot of ex-service people on that but then also when we say Windrush there's ships after Windrush obviously it's about a generational thing the thing with the Windrush it was when that when that ship arrived there was lots of cameras there and that's why we remember the name the Empire Windrush there's lots of water ships that arrived but there were no cameras um anyway but Alan's story is fascinating because he was the next military person he came over um and then he was in a band at one point and this band was really popular um and he played with Shirley Bassey and and um other American stars when they came over um and um it just it you know he's still alive and I think he's 97 or something like that and his house is actually like a museum when you go into his house it's like a museum and you can see him meeting you know friends on Archer and all his people um and his life kind of fascinates me because um when you speak to him there is success but there is also failure at one point of sleeping on the streets you know um at one point me and my mother we didn't actually sleep on the streets but we were very close to it and that was to do with domestic violence more than anything but um when I sat down and listened to his story it really really moved me but there are lots of individual stories like that it's very difficult to kind of pick one out and the the the other one that fascinates me which I'm just looking into is the stowaway now I don't know much about that story but I'm fascinated by a woman who's in the dock at Jamaica sees all these people getting on the boat and says well I want to go there I've got my money but I'm getting on you know and she sneeps on the ship and hides and then when they find her they make a collection the pay for her fare I mean those stories are quite amazing yeah Archer I know you've done a lot of work in particular talking about what what what history refers to as barrel children could you give us a sort of a brief explainer because I love hearing you talk about that and and also the very particular soap smell which maybe you can tell us more about as well yeah so the term barrel children was coined by social workers and it refers to the phenomenon of children of of migrating parents being left behind it's actually there's a lady called Marla Joachim who's at University of the West Indies in Trinidad and Tobago and she's doing a lot of research on this looking at the really sort of complex emotional and psychological implications of being left behind because quite often when parents travel they didn't know how long it was going to be before they could set themselves up and send for the child so it might be that they left a baby and then once once they've settled in England they may have had more children born in England and by the time they send for that sibling that sibling could be four five six years old even older the issue with the barrels is that that they would naturally send a barrel home for the people back in in the Caribbean because of course they're in England and that means they've got everything and they must send send back to the people but also there's a people looking after their child and for some reason soap was always one of the things that would figure quite highly in these barrels and people would say that everything else that was in the barrel would end up smelling of soap so even if it was food or clothing everything had this strong smell of soap I remember it happening the other way whenever because my family's quite spread out my grandmother was in the US and they they would come if they visited which is very rare because it was obviously very expensive or they sent us anything there would always be soap for some reason so it was always a particular blue bar and everything would smell of it but I think it is it is hard on on those children and I think you know some of them would have you know then have behavioral problems and maybe not not settled very easily and I think it probably resonates today with the issue of unaccompanied miners from places of conflict coming to the UK and how they're they're you know they're understood but I remember my auntie not my aunt my great aunt was here in the 40s so she probably came on the Manzor Manzor one of the ships that you mentioned there Benjamin and I know she left her son in Jamaica but he was causing so much trouble they eventually said no you've got to go to your mother so he finally came to England as well and he's still here now and I think he's in his 80s but um yeah and I think there's another thing actually if I could just jump in so Benjamin again I love the way that stories all all our stories interconnect and Benjamin you were talking about um Alan Wilmot and um back in the 80s and my brother was a reporter at The Voice newspaper that's when we discovered that my uncle in Yorkshire was in the RAF and knew Alan Wilmot and I think my brother organized a reunion between the three of them two and another gentleman his name I've forgotten and wrote an article in The Voice about it so it was just lovely to hear that that story Benjamin that you just just mentioned and he he was naughty he left as a 17 year old and pretended to be 18 so he could enlist in the RAF again but I think that's again because they have big families they were used to just being so separated people going they're different ways you know and I love how that really relates to what Benjamin's saying about you know your fiction being real you know you're writing you're writing real stories through I mean sometimes you just can't make you talk some of the stories I remember it's a it's a different twist than what we were just hearing but um my mother my family come from a place called St. Elizabeth in Jamaica and you know the saying it takes a village to raise a child it really did there and my mother's closest relative the person that raised her more than anybody was her uncle her mum they lived in the same house but my uncle spent most of the time raising my mother in fact he gave my mother her name anyway so my mother was saw part of that campaign she saw the poster on the streets of Jamaica saying come to England where the streets are paved with gold she says to her sister my auntie you aren't you aren't going to England trade out and my auntie said to them call me not going there and my mother said I'll give it a go so her uncle gave her 70 pounds and that paid for her to go to Kingston to stay in the hotel to get on the ship to come to Southampton no she was like a teenager I don't sorry I don't know exactly what age so my mother lived in England for life I as a teenager started going to and from Jamaica so I knew my mother better than her mother did and one day I said to my mother mother you want to I need to take you to Jamaica so I took my mother to Jamaica and I had to introduce my mom to her mom because she didn't really know her and it was really strange it was like they didn't really grab each other and hug they kind of shook hands and went how do you do but that was a very strange moment and you know they wrote every now and again but I knew my grandmother better than my mother because I hung out with her I went walking with her I talked with her in a way that my mother never did so I actually introduced my mother to her to her mother it's a very poignant story and very close to Leonard can you tell us a little bit I mean we'll talk a little bit about the sort of the process of of what you're writing but can you can you just let us into your writer's room a little bit and and tell us sort of how you write and what your what your soundtrack to recent work has been and you know how you how you approach that are we are we seeing your writer's room actually yeah Benjamin oh no well actually no this is my office this is where this is where I do my tax returns my writing room I wish I could show you this is the laptop I walk you out there and show you but when you look at the windows far as I can see there's nothing right just and it back in the back garden there's a family of deer living that's my interest I'm writing and these years come along and look at me and so and it's like a little library I'm fascinated with books I've got a massive collection of books fiction or kind of things I'm also fascinated with theology so I've got a massive collection of books on Islam Christianity Hinduism stuff like that which is really weird because I don't write about those things but if I could study if I had the opportunity to study I would be theology I'm fascinated fascinated with how religions come about but back to Inrus child this is the this is the book I've done most research on I don't normally I kind of write the story and then I think about research issues what I've got to get technically right with this book I mean when Leonard arrived in Southampton from Jamaica I looked at what the weather was like on that day I looked at the train time the train time timetables to get him to Manchester where would he change all that kind of stuff I literally check the weather on all the days if I had to mention it everything that just so thoroughly thoroughly research and probably for the first time ever I use my mother as a source of research because talking to her was really interesting there's a scene I wrote in the book that I had to change where you know Leonard is watching television in Jamaica and seeing what it's like in England and when I spoke to my mom my mom said no there was no television in Jamaica she never saw the television until she came to England right and that really blew me away there was little things like that that really helped me from my mother even the way that kids played in Jamaica and things like that it was very useful just sitting down and talking to my mother she was expensive she charges a fee but what's your what's your writing soundtrack or what what has it been recently you write maybe musically yes and I have to I have to be in silence really I have to listen to the birds outside if I'm doing something which is just kind of shifting things around then I can have um do not take me out on television on the background how do you begin this yeah seriously I can have just frivolous things nothing serious because then I'll engage with it I can't really have a lot of music on but if I do want music then it's got to be classical because I'm not going to get into beat I'm not going to engage with it in the same way but most of the time I like silence I like the sounds of birds and the sound of my mind working um what about you Asher is there a sort of there a soundtrack or a snack of of choice in the Black Cultural Archives when you're working I would I would say I agree with Benjamin if I could have in Black Cultural Archives we don't have silence we could have silence it would be great but I know if I want to be creative you've got to be silent otherwise if you hear words as he said then those words start to take you in a certain direction and insert themselves into the book whereas the classical music there's there's nothing to latch on to in that way so ditto okay um can we go back to the the barista because I guess you know like like you rightly mentioned you know post 2018 in the sort of British states failings of a generation of people I wonder how you metabolize that as a writer and as an archivist for you Asher you know I wonder how much of that period for you was about giving yourself a period of reflection or how much of that was sort of you know I think about Toni Morrison looking at an article and feeling like I have to write the story of this escaped slave that I've seen in the newspaper you know what what was the sort of relationship between like having a time of reflection and feeling like I wanted to write directly about this issue to Benjamin Benjamin yeah Benjamin and then oh sorry um that's interesting I mean I have uh I knew I wanted to write about this I just didn't know how it was going to come about in this case scholastic approached me and I think I alluded to before I knew exactly what the ending was going to be and at one point controversy it was suggested that I may think about changing the end the ending and I was like no this is the ending you know I was so strong about how we should end um but um I do I wanted to write about it but look I mean when the scandal happened I remember I was doing a tour and I most of my tour well naturally of course was in not in multicultural places there were in you know places that were rural and Devon and places like that places where there's not a big black community and even within some of the cities people were talking about the Windrush scandal and I would get on stage night after night and say that this has been happening for a long time you know a particular really good journalist at The Guardian picked up the story and and kind of gave it publicity but if you read the voice newspaper almost every week they were telling you about somebody that went on holiday to Jamaica wasn't being let back in the country or even went to France wasn't being let back in the country um and then a lot of people well people of a certain age may remember the extra distance squad I think they were set up by Margaret Thatcher whose job was to go around and get people who were deemed illegal immigrants and forcibly move them from the country then we had the death of Joy Gardner I think it was in July 1993 I'm happy to be corrected I think it was then you know and I do my I would then on stage perform my poem the death of Joy Gardner and people would be horrified by it you know she died in 13 feet of tape you know in front of her son so this is not new so I have been writing like this in one way or another but when the when the story broke as people started talking about Windrush I knew I wanted to come back to it again in a more kind of holistic way and probably a lot more personal way um that's our job as a writer it's um in the spirit of the Black Cultural Archives you know if if we don't do it we can't then complain when other people do it for us we've got to do it for ourselves we've got to kind of collect our history we've got to tell our own stories um otherwise people will do it for us I remember in the 70s reading a terrible report on mental health in the Black community and it was criticizing saying that Black people had mental health problems because of the way they walk when they walk with a lean and they walk with rhythm I mean they kissed their teeth and then on the front of the paper it actually said um report written by Professor so-and-so an expert in Black people you know so here's somebody who's taken the liberty of calling himself an expert in Black people and claiming that he can write and and these reports actually condemned a lot of people into mental health institutions I mean it's not like this right in the story and that it's a fictional story that's not quite right I mean this was a real kind of powerful stuff that really condemned people for a long time so we have to tell our own stories and we have to archive our own history um taking liberty is such a it's such a good way to describe that that's exactly right um I sure I guess that that leads me on to thinking how much does your role you know you're you're you know you're a real you know a site of much of the Caribbean diaspora and activism in Brixton so how does when a scandal like this breaks how much does your role become or move out of historical archivist and move into community activist who really has to provide things beyond just telling stories I mean the great thing about Black Country Archives is we get to tell our own story you know we were founded by members of the Windrush generation the materialist here I know Len Garrison did say when he got at one point in time that if nobody had gone out and collected this material it would have been lost and once your your history or the evidence of your history is lost in that way then people can say anything they want about you so the preservation of the archive material is key and I would say um I mean we've always done offered workshops on on Windrush primarily to school children but adults as well but since the scandal has has broken there's been a lot more engagements um I mean I don't want to talk about the scandal in a positive sense obviously everything it's terrible but sometimes something comes out of something terrible and what has come out of that is is the fact that we now have a national Windrush day is is a moment on which we can pin the story that we want to tell so on the one hand it can be a great celebration of the of the contributions and the struggles and the bravery of that pioneering generation but it's also an opportunity for us to to really explain what has happened and what people can do to get involved to to try to campaign or to try to anything to ensure that those people who have been affected can have their rights returned in some way or at the very least a recognition and an apology and and something to be done that to make sure this never happens again I mean we we then I mean we we we also this is not within my role to my role is more is with the learning but we do we did put on um surgeries so free advice surgeries from 2018 onwards for people affected by this first to try to help them to get their status established and secondly it was to try to get compensation and again this is where the community comes together so we had a lawyer who um Jacqueline Mackenzie you know donated her time for free supported by our volunteers and I think it means it's a drop in the ocean in a way I think we've helped around 400 people I don't know how many thousands have been affected but um yeah so it's like BCA is so much it's it's the archiving it's the learning and then it's the activism and we began with activism so we don't want to you know we want to stay close to our roots in that sense moving forward you know Benjamin how do you know how do you metabolize the rage I guess is the question you know how do you deal with the sort of the visceral response before you put pen to paper well I have to put pen to paper I have to do it creatively sorry I'm laughing because people say that when I do interviews I'm a lot of the time I'm too honest and I get too personal but I have to be you know to understand my work you've asked me a question but when I didn't express myself creatively I kept ending up in the police station and I ended up in prison you know when I see some people who are angry with society and the only way they can express themselves is sometimes by putting a brick through the police station window stuff like that because they've been stopped and searched night after night I'm sorry I've been there I know it's like I've been in the police station forward the foot on my neck saying I can't breathe it just happened that I happen to live I happen to escape it and you know I could have smashed a lot of windows I could have done a lot of dangerous things but I found art and I found a way of expressing myself I'm still angry there's so many things that anger me now especially after being a child of the after living through all the things I've lived through and seeing the kind of seeing everything come back you know the kind of racism and sexism and me fighting the same battles again there was a time in the 19th but I thought he was all over me going to sail into a great future and then it all came back and now it's back and it's on the internet it's bigger than ever and now you've got people who are kind of I hate to put the two words together because I don't think they should go together but you know they're they're almost racist intellectuals that's their living you know um so I use my art to express myself and if I can't do that again this is very personal to me but I have my martial arts and my meditation to go to otherwise I probably could still be out there on the streets doing all those things I used to do back in the 70s. Both of you sort of obviously work with young people and children some of whom have we have in the audience today and my question is um uh really about a passage in Windrush Child where Leonard's mum sort of talks about the surprise in her lifetime of you know first jumping aboard the Erosa star and taking a two-week journey from Jamaica to the UK and then you know just sort of 20 or so years later suddenly having an airplane and being able to do that in sort of you know a day or you know much much quicker and I was wondering you know about how you sort of make the point that this this technology change almost makes it feel like this is like you know the Victorian period in history this like this old time in history where people took ships how do you make the point for young people that this is actually very new in our history and this impacts the day-to-day life that many people live and black people in this country live today how do you do that Benjamin? If I could just jump in first because a couple of things come to mind I remember I used to go back to Jamaica to the little place where my family lived and um one day I said to them do you remember it's almost like a walkman I had that kind of cassette player it's a little bit bigger than a walkman and I put it down I said can you talk and send the message to the family in England so they they first of all they didn't know what to do and I said just speak and they went hello Valerie how are you and then I played it back and they literally jumped because I'd never heard a recording and that was the technology of the time and um I brought that back home and played it to my mother and my mother loved it and I've actually recently transferred it to CD but CDs are obsolete now I'm transferring it to you know saving it on a hard drive but that does kind of tell you how progress I think progressed not so long ago a young girl a student of mine at university said and I was talking to her and I said you know give me a ring sometime and she went um why do all you old people say give us a ring I had to explain to her that once upon a time all phones rang you know I mean for her ring was just one of the many tones on her phone I think you know we just tell them the stories about how difficult it was communicating um with family you know you had to write an email and they tell you how to put it in the post wait for it to arrive and then wait for somebody to do the same or give it and come back it's and we have to do this in a way of that we don't patronize them and say well you know you're better when we were younger or you know things were just different basically I mean I I I really don't like people that criticize young people's music because it's too loud or whatever I don't understand the words and those rappers are talking too fast well you know my parents said something like that when I started listening to dub him reggae you know and that's how you can tell somebody's getting old you must always remember that you were once young and so you tell people stories and you remind them I always remind young people when I'm speaking to them that the technology that they have now and the music that they're listening to now will seem really old to their children and the next generation that's just the way right but what's interesting about that is that there's this an idea that technology is sort of enabled a greater connection or global connection to the global world and we like to think that that will impact our politics or you know impact our feeling of global connection but of course that's not always the case and I share for you you know how do you how do you make that point for some of the younger people who come through your doors well what I do is I think it's really important when they come in for workshops that they're not just listening to me speaking or looking at pictures but I love to include objects so one of the things I do include is a paraffin heater this paraffin heater well if anyone's got grandparents in this country you know as soon as you go in through the door and you smell the paraffin it just reminds me it reminds me of my great aunt I think of fried fish and the smell of paraffin but I asked the children first to work out what it is because they would never have seen such a thing and when they work out this is how people heated their houses and that then gets them to have a stronger connection with how it would have felt to come from the Caribbean speak if he came from a warm place they're not everywhere in the Caribbean was warm as I always do add up in the hills could have been very very cold but generally if he came from a hot place to England and then you have this paraffin heater that only works in the room that you're sitting in so you go from one room to another and it's price cold or the toilets at the end of the garden I think all of those things really get them to really think about how life has changed and the thing they love is a typewriter I bring out a type writer because of we tell the story of Connie Mark who was a medical secretary in the British Army and then she came to England and did all kinds of great work with remembrance of women in war but again looking at typewriter and then they make those connections themselves whether between that and their laptops and why the design of it is the way it is so yes it's old-fashioned but it but it's kind of they can see the development over time the same with them those old those busty kit machines remember when you get on the bus and throw out the machine and now they just use an oyster card or kids don't use anything they don't pay at all but seeing that development in history and things which are within living memory and I think the good thing about that sort of thing is that it encourages that intergenerational dialogue because most of our pets don't really talk about unless you're going to ask them they're not going to talk about things that they did in their life which to them was just their life they don't they didn't see themselves as making history but the moment you put it before the children in the workshop when the adults were sitting at the back on their phones not paying attention suddenly come to life and want to speak and tell the children about these things and they just see that dynamism begin and it's just so nice I mean you don't have to do anything because they do it for you on that point before we open for questions you know what are some of the things that you both find come come up or you know what are some of the tired tropes or narratives about this this period of history that you often hear and you just feel like that's not true I need to debunk this. I'll jump in there. Everyone came for a better life because you say that it then presupposes that everyone came from something worse to something better the reality was often the opposite people had to start absolutely at the bottom when they came here but they a lot of people had a better standard of living where they came from a lot of the ex-service personnel were very very skilled but they weren't offered skilled jobs I remember the same uncle I mentioned who was an RAF engineer when he was demobbed and he sought a job they only offered him a job digging potatoes so nothing that would utilize his skills to think it's important to know that you know people came with a variety of skills and knowledge and also that there was a diversity of ethnicities as well so the Caribbean is obviously predominantly people of African descent but there are others as well I know when my mother came as a nurse and I see all the old photos she was surrounded by a lot of Chinese women and people wouldn't necessarily recognize that these Chinese women were Jamaican and they were part of the Windrush generation although and another thing is not everyone came on a ship because if I say Windrush generation to my parents they say but we never came on the Windrush so I also want to make it a point of saying people came by plane as well you know we did we have technology over there too and just finally that as I said earlier that that it's all that the Windrush isn't this a moment that's part of a longer migration ships came before and people came afterwards by plane and so on for because we were so again part of the British Empire and so integrated into that empire and I think I would like to see people look at the history more from an empire wide or global perspective yes and also that people you know they bought with them sort of you know great knowledge of organizing tactics of you know Jamaican sort of labor party tactics and you know union work and sort of labor understanding so people were also bringing activism and knowledge that they could then use for sort of you know the labor workforce that they would come and sort of in industrial organizing this idea that you know people really really came and shared the knowledge that they had used and tried and tested I think is always important but Benjamin yeah what are some of the things that you hear that are tired and you you'd like to debunk all your entry narratives it's kind of connect with what I should have said that this is the real type that everybody was kind of poor I mean and educated almost Alan Wilmott was a fighter pilot and an engineer you could strip a plane down and fly it but he found himself on the streets of London unimplied and almost living like a tramp and there was I know it again slightly up east and it relates to the Asian community but I think it's true also with the Caribbean community there was a figure once and it was in the 80s so I'm not sure how true it is now but something like 90 percent of Asian shopkeepers had a PhD some very highly educated people came from the Caribbean and they ended up you know giving tickets on the bus or sweeping the roads or you know all that all those kind of things so the idea that everybody was poor came here and uneducated and it's not really true some people especially when it comes to English history and almost respect and I say this as somebody who's not a monetist but respect for the monitoring thing like that you know well Jamaican history that what they were taught at school was more English than what they were getting in England my mother said when she came to England she couldn't understand why everybody wasn't quoting Shakespeare and why everybody didn't have a picture of the queen in their house but you know I'm just making at the moment a film I'm not plugging the film here but I'm just making a film about the Windrush generation and how they've impacted football and literally 20 minutes or so before we came on here are tweeted about it because it's going to come out in some in September and they almost immediately somebody tweeted about because there's some there's a blurb about how the Windrush generation helped the NHS and it helped the train services and so I'm going to talk about football and then somebody tweeted back and said yeah and you brought gun crime and muggins and things like this right trying to say that we were all criminals why does somebody say that it's because of the media because the way crime is reported in the black community because of the way poverty and all these things are reported in the black community you know not put into context you know when there's white people doing much more crime it's much more serious drugs that is not reported but you know a guy selling some splits in Brixton is reported I'm not saying one is better than the other it's just about the way they are reported um trust me when and this as I said earlier it's not just about George Floyd it happens here when a racist person be that a police officer or just a civilian has their foot on the neck of a black person or is trying to kill them or trying to shoot them or whatever they must have no sense of the history of black people they think that this person is uneducated not worthy of life and and um is either a criminal or doing something suspicious and I probably might really answer the question but that's what I'm thinking about now no you have thank you well I think it's so important that we're writing for children because before by the time people reach adulthood certain misinformation has become entrenched if we can teach these stories to children the next generation will rub with a much better understanding than our generation did and that should go in some small way to promote social cohesion and progress and combat some of these issues that we're facing today Benjamin that football project sounds amazing I could do another hour chatting about that but um I'm going to open up for some of the questions and we have one here saying kind of relates to what you were saying actually is there a sense of a reversal of Windrush where the descendants of the Windrush generation are sending their children to the Caribbean for a better life well I remember there was a trend for this in the 80s and 90s I don't know if it's still happening what was happening was um it was about education and a lot of Caribbean parents thought that the schools in the Caribbean were a lot more disciplined it's not to do with the level of education it's just to do with the discipline you know in Jamaica you you always when you refer to your teacher you do with respect Mr so and so on Mrs so and so you never shout back you very rarely argue with them or anything like this you know you can have a debate with them but discipline is really really tight and so there was a trend for that I don't know if it's still happening and and I do remember once again sorry I'm going up to another continent but I remember once being in India and talking about truancy in Britain and I said to these kids and I was in the school and I said is there any truancy here and they were just like we so appreciate school the idea of playing truant like somebody can just take our place so in the Caribbean I find again I find that in Asia people value education a lot more so there were these parents sending their children to the Caribbean for education and can you just can you just just because you've teased us a little bit of football knowledge can you just give us a little bit of sense of some of the some of the things that you've learned on sort of on the way to making your film and also what your what's your team who do you support Aston Villa of course I've got the pencil oh well it's about you see I'm the Empire Windrush there were no footballers actually many of the ships afterwards and the airplanes afterwards but their descendants were interested in football right and so you know who are those people those are Rio Ferdinand you know Anton Ferdinand um uh Hope Powell the England ladies captain we speak to her about you know history of her parents how did they how they came here I found out that she literally comes from down the road from where my family come from in Jamaica um and um and it's just stories about what their parents thought about them when they were going into football Andy Cole a lot of people don't realize this but Andy Cole's father was one of many black men I think it was all men that came here that went down into the coal mines I mean we know about the windrush generation with the buses and the NHS and I think but there was windrush generation coal miners the pits of Nottinghamshire and Yorkshire so um yeah lots of those stories I could go on for a long time but uh what's your program like I said it's coming out in September and it's easy sports we like a commercial now we're happy to buy what you're selling um I'm gonna we're gonna close now but just some final thoughts it'd be great just hear just some sort of final notes of joy from both of you sort of what are some of the things to be optimistic about whether that is local actions that you guys have seen or you know some of the teaching work that you've done can you give us something to take away with us to make us smile I could say the book a lovely colorful book right um and as I mentioned before I think the activism and that's a wet we're reopening our windrush surgeries that's something positive but great but for my role at BCA it's it's got to be the the engagement with with schools and heritage organizations which I think um obviously there was a great impetus after the death of George Floyd um many organizations had a reevaluation of their position and we got a lot of you know a lot of people got in contact with us and so we're looking at developing some relationships and really expanding our learning program and I'm feeling quite optimistic from that point of view moving forward and and just as I say I believe in doing everything from the grassroots so we're not I'm not into sort of campaigning with government I'd rather just do what I can do here at Black Cultural Archives with the local support and then take it nationally and I can see that happening slowly but surely great thank you Benjamin can you give us a bit of spring in our step right through the start I remember doing a tour of libraries in London many years ago and there was a young boy who was playing truant and he was following me and in those days I mean Brixton Tottenham everywhere was burning there was you know uprisings and police stop and search and I just thought I'd rather him be with me than be on the streets and Adrian Mitchell his poet had just written a book and in the front of his book he wrote not to be taught in schools and I was doing this talk in Brixton and I said to the audience that I'm going to bring a book out and I'm going to be like Adrian Mitchell I'm going to write it not to be taught in schools and this 14 year old kid pulled me up and he said Benjamin he said if your books were in school I'd go to school wouldn't I you know and that really just changed my mind in a moment the great thing is now is that we have a growing body of literature of black British writers writing about the Caribbean experience and the African experience and the Asian experience we're kind of building a can of work and we have teachers who are inspired and fired up and want to do something about the kind of inequalities that we see in our country and so I think that is a major major change but for me one of the most inspiring things was I was on a Black Lives Matter march a few months ago and I first of all I noticed that unlike the ones I used to go to like three or four years previously there were so many white people you know and they were passionate and they were like angry than me I mean and I'll never forget this girl she had a banner and it said Black Lives Matter don't you understand dad I mean this is a message to her racist father so I think there is hope in the young people and I hope that young people through reading our literature through listening to our stories can understand that we work best of the country when we work together that is one of the strengths of Britain is its multiculturalism you know it shouldn't be the enemy of Britain it's not a negative it's not government sponsored multiculturalism this is when we play football together this is when we eat together when we make music together when we just play together when we share each other stories and when we fall in love together I needed that thank you so so much thank you I feel like you know completely uplifted and happy Windrush day and thank you for an opportunity to to hear from you guys in the sort of a moment of celebration and commemoration and thank you everybody that has joined us I know that we've had I think 500 people so thank you for taking time out thank you both of you for doing the work thank you especially to the British libraries living knowledge network of libraries who are across the country who have also made this event possible and I hope you feel inspired and and energised to continue the work wherever you guys are thank you very very much and goodbye thank you Kieran bye thank you very much to our special guests Benjamin Zephaniah Aisha Johnson and our chair Kieran Yates and of course a very special thank you to the to you our audience and our partners the Black Cultural Archives please remember to have a look at the bookshop to get your copy of Windrush Child go to our website to find out more about our cultural events program and for resources on Windrush thank you very much for being with us this afternoon


These are my top five tools for working off-site. Welcome to the We Are Slam show where we share marketing insights, best practices, and ideas to help your business grow. My name is Tyler Kelly. I'm the co-founder and chief strategist here at Slam Agency. We're a digital-first marketing agency with our own in-house creative. We're really fortunate to be able to all work in the same room together, the creatives, the strategists, the copywriters to kind of make magic happen. But what happens in a world where people don't go into the office, they're working from home, and they're trying to collaborate and do amazing things without ever being in the same room? So this is the question that many marketing directors are asking if they tell everyone that, you know, we're just going to work from home for a month. How are we going to get things done? Is it even possible to do your best work when you're not in the same building? I'm going to share with you the tools that we use to do our best work from anywhere in the world. Now, I know that there's a couple agencies nationally that they don't even have a physical location, that they just work with freelancers and they have team members all over the country, all over the world. And that's a really great model. It doesn't work for SLAM because, you know, we like to connect in person. We do our best work when we're together. But there are times when we're not able to always be together. So these are my top five tools for working offsite, working from home if you can't make it to the office. As a marketing director, these are the tools that you have to have in place to be able to do work online and in the cloud. First up is communication. Now of course we have email, but email can sometimes get bogged down. The way that I like to use email is as a tool to communicate with people outside the organization. If I'm communicating inside the organization, then the tool that I use and number five on my list is Slack. Slack is a chat tool that allows you to connect in ways that you would expect through chat. I like Slack because it's simple and in its simplicity and ease of use, there are advanced features that allow you to do some really cool things with hashtags and private channels and connecting with other Slack workspaces. This is what makes Slack amazing. It allows us to, number one, be connected on our phones and on our desktops. And it allows us to communicate, the way that I like to communicate with digital communication is if it's super important, pick up the phone and call me. If your number's in my phone, I'm going to answer. If it's slightly less important than a phone call would require, then send me a text. If it is something that you just need a response back within the hour or two, Slack me. And if it's something where you need a response back today, possibly tomorrow, depending on what time you send it, send me an email. This is that priority of communication. My team knows that regardless of where I am, if they need me, they can Slack me. Number four, project management. As a marketing director, you need project management in the cloud. You need to be able to go to the www.and access the projects that you're working on. You need to be able to communicate with your team. You need to be able to see deadlines and requirements and files and all this good stuff should all be within one system. The system that we like to use is Asana. It really is, I think, the best project management tool and here's an insider tip. We've been using the free version for over five years. There's so much that you can do with the free version of Asana that you don't even need to upgrade. We've been using it with, you know, 100 plus clients and it works. We love it. Asana, number four, project management. Number three, video communication. This is critical. Number one is a marketing director. You want to make sure that your people are engaged. Conference calls, you don't know what they're doing.   On the sales side, on the biz dev side, video communication is important because it allows you to build familiarity, likability. It allows you to make that personal connection. Very important things that video allows you to do that at just a regular conference call. Wouldn't. So what are my favorite apps for this? For most communications, Google Hangouts is my preferred choice. Number one, it provides a conference line and a video link that is right there in the Google Calendar. So I can just, I can just select to use Google Hangout. And then my person on that calendar invite, my inviteee will get a link to meet me in the Google Hangouts room. And in that room, I can present my screen. I can share my desktop and I can really, I can do what I need to do. I can see their face and we can communicate that way. If you're working with a larger group of people, then the hot app right now is Zoom Video Communications. With recent world news, Zoom, I believe has just like exploded, you know, in the stock market. They're doing amazing because they really do allow you to connect with large groups of people via video communication and it's stable. That's what makes it, that's what makes it great. But at number three, you need a video communications tool for most people. Google Hangouts will suffice and for everyone else, Zoom Video Communications. Before I go to number two, just a little side note. Something to think about is, you know, how are you going to connect with people on the phone when need be? A lot of people use VoIP. We use Grasshopper in many cases. I know there's several others that are out there. But think about that generally, though, all you need to do today is forward, if you're still using landlines, forward that landline to the person's cell phone and done, right? Easy peasy. The other thing to think about is time management. Now we don't currently use time management tools here at SLAM, but if we did, you know, we might look at something like a toggle or a rescue time just to keep track of what it is that we're doing. You know, one of my first jobs out of college, I developed websites, and this is pre-word press, websites for a home builder based in Eden, California. And what I found very quickly is after about a year of doing this was that I wasted a lot of time during the day, which just made me have to work longer at night. But ultimately, you know, this was not something that I necessarily enjoyed. Being home all day, waking up, rolling out of bed, jumping straight on the computer, like that human connection was missing. I mentioned video as a way to kind of make that personal connection. But the other way is to make sure that you're spending your time effectively.  Number two, I want you to think about jotting down notes, and there's a couple of different ways to do this. Number one is if you're proofing or if you're making corrections on any sort of image that appears on your screen, then you're going to need some sort of screen grabbing capability. A lot of times this is just baked right into Windows or iOS, but in those instances where you don't have that as part of your capability, then full page screen capture, which is an extension for Google Chrome, is probably one of my favorite screen grabbers. I love it because in a browser, unlike the snippet tool in Windows or something, unlike that where you can just kind of just get the screen, the full page screen capture will actually scroll down your website page and capture the entire page, which is important and you can take it into paint or into your graphics editor, mark it up and run with it. Typically if you're used to working with the team, you might just print that out, you might make some notes on it, but when you're not in the same place, that's not possible, so you need some sort of screen grab with the capability to jot down your notes. The other thing I really like for jotting down notes is Everlast Rocketbook. I've got one right here. Check this out. This is a Rocketbook and essentially what this is, is it's all these pages that aren't actually paper. I use an erasable pen. I'm able to jot down my notes, I'm able to shoot, you know, take a scan of this QR code and then I can direct where I want this page to go and it's going to do that based on the app. It's going to shoot it to wherever that final destination is, all based on this and then this is super sustainable and great for the environment because at that point I can erase this page with a little bit with a damp rag. I can erase this page and good as new, I can use it again. So one of my favorites, combine this with a Evernote and you've got yourself a great way to make notes and store notes online to communicate with your team that way. And my number one tool for working from home to be able to do the things that you do in-house when you're not able to be in-house. My number one tool would be a password manager. There's a lot of password managers out there, but essentially the idea is that it's super secure and that it allows you as an organization to put all of your passwords into the cloud in a way that each site has its own password that's you know, super encrypted and hard to hack and each person has their own password so they don't even see all the different passwords that are in your organization's folders, if you will, but what they can do is they can access them and they can go to each site, they can go to each login and they can do what they need to do wherever they are on a computer with a password tool. This is super important. If you're not using one now, you should be. The one that we like is Roboform everywhere. You know, we tested a lot of password manager tools and this one really was for us the best one. So we pay per user and we've been doing that for several years. It was one of the best decisions we made. At first it was a nightmare to kind of organize, you know, client passwords and internal passwords and all these different passwords. But once you get those organized, it's super secure and it allows your team to work from any computer anywhere in the world without jeopardizing security. OK, so if you've been watching the news and you're thinking that what am I going to have to do? Should the time come where it's like we have to go work from home for a while? If that's the case, this list of tools, jump on it right now. These are the tools that you need to get to the place where you're able to do that. Of course, I don't think it's going to get that bad, but in the event that you need to travel and you need to keep in touch with your team, you need to continue to do work. If this is the case, then these are the tools that can set you on the path to be able to work remote. If you've enjoyed this episode, do me a favor, subscribe, rate and review. And if you're watching on a network where you can leave a comment, do so. I read every comment that you leave and I look forward to engaging with you. Visit us at slamagency.com. I look forward to getting to know you. Thank you for tuning in. I will see you next week. Thanks for watching. If you like what you just watched, subscribe, then hit that bell. You'll be the first to be notified when new content goes live. After that, you can watch more videos from Slam Agency. We've picked something we think you'll love.


Harper Audio presents Head Strong, the bulletproof plan to activate untapped brain energy to work smarter and think faster in just two weeks by Dave Asprey, read by me, the author, and Rob Shapiro. To you, dear reader, at the first time you hit the wall, when you reach deep within yourself only to find that there is no reservoir of energy and willpower waiting for you, this book will help you move that wall out of your way. Introduction If you're like most people, you learn the same things I did growing up. Your intelligence is fixed and your performance is a matter of effort.  If you fail, it's because you must be lazy and didn't try hard enough. Or maybe you're just not that strong. Next time, you'll have to summon even more willpower to work harder.  It's your fault. The belief that we either need to have superhuman smarts or put in an incredible amount of effort in order to be successful is built into our culture. We worship the struggle and the idea of natural talent. Trying hard is how you win. Being smart is how you win. But what if it doesn't have to be that way? What if it can be easier? In my experience, fear of failure could drive an amazing amount of achievement. Before I was 30, I was fortunate enough to have already attained the kind of career that would have made someone happy who was decades older than I was. I'd run technology strategy for a company valued at $36 billion, played a meaningful role in creating the infrastructure of the modern Internet, and set on the highest level advisory board of IBM, international business machines. I'd already made and lost $6 million. I was getting my MBA at Wharton, one of the top Ivy League business schools in the world, while working full-time as an executive at a startup that eventually sold for more than $600 million.  But behind that success was a constant hidden struggle. The people around me could see my physical challenges, but most had no idea about the level of inner struggle it took to perform. For example, it was obvious that I was overweight and out of shape, and I famously fell asleep in meetings. But few people knew that it was a battle for me just to get through the day because my brain wasn't working the way I needed it to. I couldn't focus at work, I had trouble retaining new information, and I had started to feel a chronic, debilitating fatigue that couldn't be explained away by an entrepreneur's lack of sleep. I felt foggy, as if I had a constant hangover. It seemed like something was broken in my brain. I was irritable and cranky, quick to anger, and I made impulsive decisions. But I kept pushing myself. My middle finger got an excellent workout thanks to my driving habits, but the rest of my body was bloated and out of shape. It felt like I had to work twice as hard as other people to get the same amount done.


Welcome to State of the Pacific 2014. I'm James Guha, editor at the A&U College of Asian and Pacific. Today I'm joined by Professor Sinclair Dinnan and Dr John Cox from the State Society and Governance in Melanesia Programme here to discuss some of the major transitions taking place across the region. Gentlemen, thanks for joining me. Monty James. Sinclair, if I could turn to you first. Perhaps one of the biggest developments in 2014 are scheduled elections in Fiji and the country's seeming return to the democratic fold. What does this mean for the country itself and the Pacific in general? Well it's clearly very significant for Fiji having experienced almost eight years without an elected government and having sort of resisted quite a lot of international pressure over the years to return to democracy. We've also witnessed very recently a significant change in Australia's policy towards Fiji from a fairly sort of standoff, sensorious position to one of one of engagement and I think there's great expectations in Fiji as well as more broadly around the region about this prospect of returning to democracy. I think some of the bigger issues, I mean there's been a lot of fallout indirectly from what's happened in Fiji, including with regional organizations like the Pacific Island Forum which is based in Fiji and previously was certainly the premier regional organization for member states. PIF has been adversely affected I think by developments in Fiji and we've seen a growth of sub-regional organizations, most naturally the Melanesian spearhead groups. There's been a lot of movement that has been going on around the Fiji situation so its resolution I think will hopefully provide a clarity that has been missing. And more broadly speaking there's been a lot of major political developments in the region as well, Solomon Islands, Bougainville and New Caledonia. What do these mean for the region? Well there are other examples of fairly significant transitions in particular countries in the case of New Caledonia and in Bougainville there is the possibility of referendums which will determine their future political status in the one case whether independence occurs or it continues to be part of France and the case of Bougainville whether it it also moves on towards an independent political status or remains an autonomous region of Papua New Guinea. In the case of Solomon Islands what we see is the the first election following the drawdown or the transition from the decade long regional assistance mission to Solomon Islands and during that period there's obviously been a great deal of engagement in the area of working with government institutions in the area of trying to improve governance more broadly and service delivery. How is that going to be reflected in the voting patterns of Solomon Islands faced with an election later this year? In some ways all of these developments are separate but they do I think sort of indicate that the the the region doesn't stand still. It's a region of considerable diversity and the international actors who are engaging in that region are also changing the larger geostrategic environment in the Pacific sees the return rhetorically at any rate of the US after a long period away. We see relatively new actors like China taking a great deal of interest in the region and we see other actors engaging as well so the the geostrategic sort of shifts that are taking place I think are very significant. We'll have to watch how these play out. They clearly have implications for Australia for a long time Australia as an external actor has had this part of the world very much to itself. That is no longer the case in some countries notably Papua New Guinea the economy has been growing at an incredible rate on the back of a major resource boom and that has an impact on the leverage of external players such as Australia that traditionally have sought to exercise their influence primarily through aid. We see as a result of these economic developments considerably less reliance on aid in a place like Papua New Guinea. And John a range of new actors as Sinclair has just mentioned like countries like China operating in the Pacific in very different ways. What are they doing? What impact is this having on the region but also in terms of development what are the Pacific populace and people doing themselves? Yeah I think these are the big questions that our presenters are going to dig into in the course of the next two days in the State of the Pacific conference but they are really big questions and we just can't ever know enough about China's role in the Pacific and we have a number of scholars here at the ANU who are working on that kind of thing. I suppose I don't know how much the audience here knows about China and the Pacific but it's not necessarily a story about a threat to our interests as a country and I think some of the material that will be presented in State of the Pacific will show how China and Australia are actually cooperating on development assistance. That said I think Australia is used to being the dominant regional power and so there is a change in that dynamic not only at the government level but also in terms of private sector investments and I think one of the disturbing things that a few of us are picking up in P&G, Solomon Islands and perhaps in other places around the region is populace anti-China is activism so that's a matter of concern and unrest I suppose is a bit of a wake-up call to to some of us about you can read the economic statistics at one level and yet that's not necessarily how the population experiences economic growth or economic change and I think again in some of the the sessions that we're holding over the next few days we'll see how are people in Papua New Guinea or people in Vanuatu or people in Fiji responding to some of these changing economic dynamics what are they doing themselves to earn their livelihoods what are the some of the new opportunities we've got some people in from the Pacific Pacific Commission who do work on organic agriculture and free trade and that's really a movement about creating new markets for Pacific agricultural products in New Zealand and Australia and further afield so there are some very creative things happening it's it's it's not a story of doom and gloom and disaster although of course you know we have had some big disasters in the region this year I'm thinking of the Solomon Islands floods in March and you know we're still looking at what the longer term impacts of events like that are and and that'll be a little bit tested I suppose in the Solomon Islands elections this year which we we're also bringing in some experts to discuss so there's there's there's an enormous amount going on and it's sort of hard to to encapsulate it in a snappy answer but but it's a very dynamic region and there's lots of change and a lot of the change is quite progressive and exciting as well as in some cases a bit disturbing and foreboding and you also alluded to this notion of aid from the region rather than aid coming into the region earlier can you extrapolate on that a little bit more and explain what you mean by that premise well I mean there's there's lots of different ways of approaching it but I mean I think aid donors are always trying to find more effective ways of delivering their aid and they're always trying to generate more buy-in I suppose from their recipients more ownership more initiative and I think one of the things we'll be profiling is how people in the Pacific are actually taking that initiative themselves and in a sense are not sitting around waiting for Australia to rescue them from some terrible situation they're there they're selling Beetle Nut in the markets this is Papua New Guinea's biggest local commodity which aid donors have absolutely nothing to do with and a whole lot of livelihoods for well probably millions of people in BNG are connected to that trade so that that's that's sort of one example of of this kind of local initiative things that are happening outside the state things that are happening outside the regulatory frameworks outside the influence of aid donors and yet shape those the grounds of the kind of interventions that perhaps Australia wants to try out in stimulating economic growth in the Pacific fantastic and now if I could turn to both of you on this question and as Sinclair alluded earlier Australia seems to be retreating from the region to some extent particularly with major aid spending cuts by the most recent government how would you describe our country's future in the region and in particular does the region need us for its future I think it was a very big question and and again I mean the region is made up of lots of different countries with different needs different challenges Australia I think will continue to be a major player in the region for all kinds of reasons geographic historical and so on I think the the current sort of emphasis on reviewing the nature of aid relationships I mean this is something that goes on all the time so it's not necessarily something new and it's something that has to be done I think with significant changes some of which we've been talking about occurring within the region business as usual is no longer an appropriate way forward and Australia has to think very carefully in relation to particular countries how it can best assist processes underway in those countries and I don't think that there is a one size fits all approach that it can adopt I think I mean of the lessons of a very long history of aid being provided by Australia in the region one of the very clear lessons is that Australia needs to have a much better understanding of those countries with which it's engaging the nature of the the dynamics of work in those countries and to be able to tailor its engagement you know to those very particular contacts I think another thing and this alludes to what John was saying earlier on that a lot of the transformation that is occurring in the region has nothing to do with aid it's occurring because of economic change it's occurring because of technological change and also there are organic changes taking place Papua New Guinea is another good example where you have an embryonic middle class emerging which is not dependent on the state for its well-being and which is beginning to be quite vocal I think about a lot of the the challenges that Papua New Guinea faces including for example corruption and it's really when when people in the country's concerns start addressing those issues that I think we're going to see significant progress so another broad lesson from this much longer history of of aid in the region is that aid is only one relatively small part of a much more complex picture of transformation and change and that perhaps in the past our expectations of what we can achieve through aid have been unrealistically high but I think the the changing reality on the ground is that that lesson is is is becoming very apparent I think simply that in some ways our keynote speakers encapsulate those two trends that on the one hand we've got Amanda Dinegi who's a young businesswoman from Papua New Guinea she's a publisher she's put out this new women's magazine that is full of very empowering images of a whole range of Papua New Guinea women and one of our colleagues Kevin Spark has done some research analysing this but but this Stella magazine Amanda's magazine has this vision of empowered Pacific women it's not what you'd think of as a conventional feminist you know kind of tractor or anything it's something that gets a very wide readership and it's an intelligently put together magazine but and on the other our other keynote speaker Vera Cillipour and drama is perhaps more a traditional leader of a feminist organization of Fiji Women's Rights Center which has been established with the help of aid donors and has done an enormous amount of a world of good for women in Fiji and across the region in terms of changing those gender roles so I think we've got a mix of of both and I suppose we haven't mentioned gender really is one of the transformations that's going on in the region but I think that is also something that's a big focus of this conference is how are men's roles and women's roles changing in the face of all this economic change and is there a backlash against women taking you know more empowered roles within the economy we're tracking that through some research projects here at SSGN and but are there other kind of shifts in gender roles like the influence of sapendic cost of Christianity that's just changing the way that men and women think about themselves and their relationships to each other so we're getting a bit off track with the Australia question but I think too and I don't know what I don't know how keynote speakers personally but I think you know both of them are people who do their work in in relationship to Australia and we're very very pleased to have them here but they both accepted our invitations very quickly which we're very grateful for so I think if nothing else Australia will have a role in nurturing the talent in the Pacific in giving education in assisting people with skills and I suppose developing those person-to-person relationships is that have an enormous depth of time and they're often not visible to mainstream Australia but people who live in the Pacific all have Australian friends they follow Australian footy teams there's a lot of very very very close cultural connections and increasingly they have relatives who live here as well and I think that's that's also something that the conference will focus on is the flies of people between the Pacific and Australia and and some of the futures of things like greater mobility schemes and how they contribute to the mix of a sustainable and prosperous Pacific deep into the future great well thanks gentlemen for joining us today and giving us an oversight of some of the challenges opportunities but also change which is taking place in the region it's a pleasure thank you and you can check in with the ANU iTunes channel for podcasts from the conference from all our keynote speakers and panelists exploring these issues in greater depth


M-M-M-M-M-M-M-M-M-M-M-M-M-M-M-M-M-M-M... HEY! M-M-M-M-M-M-M-M-M-M-M-M-M-M-M-M-M-M-M-M-M-M-M-M-M-M-M-M-M-M-M-M-M-M-M-M-M-M-M-M-M-M-M-M-M-M-M-M-M-M-M-M-M!ROCKED! E-E-E... Be reactioned idiots, you already know who we are, we already know who you are! Hey! No need for introductions! NO! I'm Corbin, and this is Rick, and I can do this! Please follow us on Instagram and Twitter! Juiciness. It's so juicy. I think you're always forced on Patreon. Thanks. All the money on there is going to our first trip to India. So we can, one, get there to eat all the food when we get there. And get to as many places as we possibly can. Yes. But are we spending six, seven, eight, nine years? Years. Oh, it's years, great. Years. Cool. Years now. Sorry. My wife, she understands. But it's called Masan. Been very requested for a long time. No idea what it's about. It has Vicky Krashal in it. Cool. So we've seen him in multiple things. We have. How long ago, Vicky, because he's done stuff like he put on quite a bit of weight, muscle, and otherwise for Uri. 2015. All right. So who knows? Because remember, we saw another trailer that was really early. He was really slender. Yeah. So clearly he does take all that physicality very seriously. Here we go. That's him, he's so slender. He's a good boy. My life has become a mess. Oh my God! There's a lot of other things to do.  One kiss, one gun. Now we're friends.  Don't be too sensual. I'll never talk to you. I know what you're talking about. Why are you born to be here?       We didn't do anything. I mean, yes, I've been living here since I was a kid. If I didn't do anything, I'd be on YouTube. Because a couple things. One, the cinematography was beautiful. The shots were awesome. And then the music behind it was great. And it looked like the acting was top notch. I don't understand what it is. You know what I think? And I want to. I want to too. You know what I think it is? What? I think a lot of this is cultural things that Indians would pick up immediately. Even the name. I don't know what the name is. But it would not surprise me if the name has something. Everything that we saw. The guys beginning. I think they're getting coins out of the water. That, the lily or flower, whatever it was going by him. The cast differentiation. I think this has. Who said that? In one of the movies we saw or a trailer we saw.  You pointed out there was a whole lot we would mess because of the cultural things.  There's so much of it Bengali and differentiations of region and culture. Same director as gangs. Well, yeah. Well, I would want to watch it just for that. Because there I can learn about India and different things pertaining to the culture and insider information as it were about life there. I want to. Yeah. 109. Wow. Quick runtime. The four lives intersect along the Ganges. The low cast away. Hopelessly in love. A daughter ridden with guilt.  A hapless father with fading morality and a spirited child yearning for a family. We need to click the C more. Long to escape the moral constructs of a small town. Yeah. So I'm guessing there's a lot of cultural stuff in there. A lot of cultural stuff. I didn't know why they kept beating that woman. Right.  I don't know. I don't know if it's a... I don't know if I called that a sexual encounter. No. No. I think that it may have had something to do with wrongful accusation. Kind of like in pink maybe. Where she had had where she had been raped. But I don't know. Looked really good. Like I said, the two things I really or three things I really noticed about it was the songs in it were really, really good. And I like to know which ones they were because I'd like to put them on a playlist. Yeah. Two would be the cinematography. Every single shot if you watch it again. Because I knew you probably try to figure out what it was. But I was looking at the shots and they were all just gorgeous. Yeah, they were. And then the acting on top. I don't even... I hardly recognize Vicki. No, right. The first thing we saw him in was... Really? Was where he and he's, you know, he looks like a soldier. And this he looks like a... Look at even that synopsis. The complexity of this and it's got to have all of those different cultural relativities because the four lives intersecting are a low caste voice. Instantly you have the caste system situation, right? Who's hopelessly in love. With obviously a daughter. Who's of a different caste. But she's also dealing with guilt of a sexual encounter that ended in a tragedy. With a hapless father who has a fading morality. And a spirited child yearning for a family. Who all long to escape the moral constructs of their small town. There's a lot going on there. I wonder if the small town is Masan. Or if that's her name. I don't know, but did you notice the imagery of Masan looked like it was floating away embers in a fire which I think may be significant to the fact that he lives near and around the place where bodies are cremated? Oh, does he? Yeah, he said that at one point. He said at one point when he's talking to her about him being such a lower caste, I guess he's the lowest of the low because he would live at the place where the bodies are burnt. Like in other words, that physical depiction of my life is the metaphor of where I am in the caste system. And I saw in the final wording, the word Masan had what looked like the embers going up and away. Yeah, I wonder what it looked like. Man, it looks like it's a real educational emotional. We'd learn a lot watching this, I would. And let us know how it is, obviously for one, if it's worth a watch. Because it looks really, really good, like a really good drama. Which we love. And very deeply personal in terms of the insider information that we don't know about life with the cast and morality constructs within a particular town, I'm really interested. Yeah, so please let us know. Thank you.