Paula Akpan

Photography: Courtesy of Yvonne Taylor and Eddie Lockhart
In the mid-80s, Black lesbians in Britain were isolated – shut out from both white lesbian culture and Black women’s spaces. Sick of it all, two women took matters into their own hands and created a pioneering space for affirmation, refuge… and maximum fun.
“A dinner party!” Eddie Lockhart and Yvonne Taylor exclaim in unison when asked how they first met.
That night, loosely remembered as taking place “sometime early 1985”, would prove...

Coaches barking instructions, darting footballers crying for the ball, and scattered applause from onlookers provide the soundtrack to our evening spent at Hackney’s Mabley Green. Here, under the unforgiving glare of floodlights, Arsenal staff are gathered for a special training session. Not too long after, we’re joined by a host of Wonderkid FC footballers – a local grassroots LGBTQ+ inclusive football club of women and non-binary players – decked out in their signature all-black kit, who be...

As fewer young people feel safe in their classrooms, it’s time we examined whether ‘Safer Schools Officers’ are needed at all
When the strip search of Child Q trickled into the public domain in March of last year, it sparked widespread outrage. A 15-year-old Black girl was pulled out of a mock exam back in December 2020 to be intimately searched on the false suspicion of carrying cannabis – while menstruating – by two Met Police officers without the presence of another adult. Her experience w...

Londoner Naomi Ackie is stellar in a biopic that’s reticent rather than revelatory
The thing about biopics is that the creative team begins at a disadvantage – not only do they have to produce something that satisfies as entertainment, but their representation of the historical figure has to win out against the viewer’s own preconceived notions. We’ve already formed a pretty robust image of that person in our heads and, let’s be frank, we often don’t like to be challenged on what we feel to b...

As the UK’s most famed sprawling metropolis, London’s queer scene has long been characterized by the LGBTIQ+ clubs and bars that line Soho’s streets and Vauxhall’s historic presence as a gay haven. However, the last decade has seen the capital’s nightlife undergo a dramatic makeover as London’s queer communities have carved out more and more of their own spaces catering to specific needs.
Whether you’re after somewhere to shake a leg, holistic community spaces, or the latest literature from q...

RESEARCH AT NEW YORK UNIVERSITY

ISSUE #3 / 2022

How did African Americans’ critical contributions to the developing World Wide Web get all but erased from memory? Author Charlton McIlwain chronicles the hidden truth.

Meet the inspiring group behind the moving anthology.
Aashfaria A. Anwar
It takes minutes after walking into the Milk Honey Bees headquarters in Brixton to understand the drive and vision behind the South London-based organisation. Set up by Ebinehita Iyere, Milk Honey Bees provides a creative and expressive safe space for young women and girls, especially those affected by both the education and criminal system. In the five years since launch (and what a challenging five years those have bee...

This well-observed novel about five South London half siblings is just as immersive as the author’s bestselling debut Queenie
Candice Carty-Williams’s 2019 debut novel Queenie became a bestseller with its touching, vivid portrayal of an adrift 25-year-old. People Person is just as immersive as it follows five south London half-siblings who share little more than a father who never stuck around.
The focus of the story is directionless Dimple Pennington. She is 30, an aspiring lifestyle influen...

At just 19, reggae star Koffee (Mikayla Simpson to her friends and family) cemented her brisk rise to fame with a Grammy Award for Best Reggae Album, becoming both the youngest person and first-ever woman to win the accolade. With only the critically-acclaimed 2019 EP, Rapture, to her name, no one was more surprised than the Jamaican artist herself, as she admitted to the Evening Standard: “I didn’t know the world would show me so much love so quickly.”

Koffee’s hotly anticipated debut album ...

Back in 2020, a 15-year-old Black girl on her period, come to be known as Child Q, was victim to a strip-search by Met Police – without parental consent.
The reasoning? Teachers believed she smelt of cannabis.
When the child safeguarding review on Child Q was released earlier this week, it was revealed that the child was taken to a medical room by two female officers, with no appropriate adult. An intimate search was carried out, in spite of her being on her period.
No drugs were found, and s...

In Nigeria, much of Western Africa and throughout the African diaspora, everyone knows what you mean when you lament all the “wahala”. Nigerian pidgin that translates as “trouble”, it might even be paired with the classic refrain: “See me, see trouble”. With both phrases emblazoned across the front of Nikki May’s debut, the novel could spell only drama and chaos.
We follow the lives of three best friends in their thirties living in London. Ronke, Simi and Boo are all black women of mixed Nige...

Join tmrw:CLUB to read our intimate interview and exclusive shoot with Ray BLK.

Living through two years of a pandemic, and about to enter a third, has been life-altering for everyone – this has been no exception for Rita Ekwere. Publically better known as Ray BLK, the award-winning south London artist, whose 2016 breakthrough track ‘My Hood’ catapulted her to fame, was forced to pause – something that was not always feasible amongst the EP releases of Durt in 2016 and Empress in 2018, tourin...

"We’re trying to express and exemplify that Black history is [not] something for just one month," says the Black History Walks consultant.
Courtesy of Dr Michelle Yaa Asantewa
Over the last few years, discussions around Black British history and the importance of teaching it in academic settings have become increasingly common. Black communities have begun to ask why history books traditionally skew so white and why Black people in Britain have been denied the ability to ground ourselves in t...

The acknowledgements section of Candice Carty-Williams’s new book, Empress and Aniya, includes a list of the friends who helped her when she was young. “I thought about how grateful I was for the friends, and their families who took me in. If it wasn’t for them, 15-year-old me wouldn’t have been safe in any sense of the word,” she writes.
The author, now 32, greets me at the door of her south London home with a warm smile and a pair of lurid green Crocs for me to slip into. She worked as a ma...

This year marks the tenth anniversary of the fatal shooting of Mark Duggan. Duggan is one of many people to have died or been seriously injured during an interaction with British police, yet no officer in the UK has been convicted of murder following a death in custody since 1969, and only two have been found guilty of manslaughter. In ‘Those Left Behind’, we meet British families from different generations who have lost loved ones to police brutality.
Having just turned 40 in 2008, Sean Rigg...