CYNDI HANSON-ELLESSE

Would you mind telling me a little bit about what you do and yourself?

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I wear many hats, but the main things people know me for I guess are putting on events and DJing. I'm also a co-director of Peckham Palms, a business space primarily for Black and Black mixed heritage women. It's in Peckham, and it was part of a regeneration initiative via Southwark Council. I’m passionate about challenging gentrification and community issues, so it felt like a great project to be involved in. Beyond that, I have other creative pursuits. These days, you have to juggle multiple roles. On my LinkedIn, I call myself a multi-potentialite, which is a fancy way of saying I manage a variety of things.

 

What does Blackness mean to you?

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Blackness can mean different things on different days. Context is key. Politically, for me, Blackness relates to ensuring Black lives matter and that our basic human rights are prioritized. But on a more holistic level, Blackness encompasses the entire African diaspora—not just the African continent and its respective nationalistic subcultures, but also the diasporic cultures in the Caribbean, Latin America, and parts of Europe where Africans/Diasporans, like us, reside. For me, Blackness is about all of that.On a personal level, if I went to Brazil, I don’t speak Portuguese, but I’m confident I’d be able to connect with someone who looked like me, and that’s a powerful, unspoken bond. I consider myself a Pan-Africanist in that sense, believing in the greatness of us all with similar ties to hoping for the eradication of colonialism. Some people may see Blackness as an identity more tied to Western Black people because of the impact of Blackness in a pop cultural sense. I have the privilege of calling myself Ghanaian one day, and Black British another, but I recognize that others from more distant diasporas, with the history of the transatlantic slave trade, may not have that same privilege. For them, Blackness is even more central to their identity.I’m careful when discussing Blackness because it’s complex and intersectional. It’s important to approach it with sensitivity and respect for the diverse experiences within the community.

 

Yeah, it’s a really interesting topic because Blackness is something that can’t be easily defined—it means different things to different people. But there’s also a shared, unspoken understanding of Blackness within the community. It’s a fascinating subject, and that’s why I kept the question open-ended. I want to hear how different people interpret it. So far, the answers have been quite varied. What is your view on how Blackness is curated and represented in contemporary British exhibitions, particularly in visual arts?

 

When Black curators with a genuine interest in Blackness lead exhibitions, they can be executed very well. A recent example is The Black Fantastic curated by Ekow Eshun at the Southbank Centre and Serpentine Gallery. It was literally and figuratively fantastic, and it was clear that he had the trust and freedom to execute it as he saw fit. However, for the most part, I don’t think many are done that well. For example, I attended an exhibition at the British Library about 400 years of British Black music, which was a topic close to my heart. While it was decent and great for introducing the subject to a broad church of people, it was problematic that the launch itself was led by white people for me and many Black creatives in the UK community. These individuals were certainly qualified, but it seemed far-fetched that there weren’t equally notable Black figures in British Black music who could have taken the lead. The launch week was led by a number of talks/ interviews and events by the likes of Gilles Peterson and Paul Bradshaw, who edited the commemorative book. It could be argued fairly that the same names repeatedly get to be asked to lead the charge in these arenas and we really should enquire why that is in a current cultural zeitgeist where institutions are attempting to self-interrogate why they still have a distinct absence of diversity and inclusion.I remember posting about it online, and a lot of Black people were messaging me, questioning why so many white faces were at the forefront of the press coverage. It's an issue that also comes up in events where Black participants might be present, but when the press covers it, our faces are often left out. The responsibility doesn't fall solely on the press, but it reflects a larger issue: white people are still largely in charge of curating these stories.It’s disappointing because, in spaces like the British Library, people may assume the exhibition is watertight credible because of its prestigious setting. But even though two Black people were listed as curators, they didn’t appear to have the power to shape the exhibition and all of its related events in the way they perhaps could have. I don’t know.

 

Do you have any methods that you might use to kind of ensure that you’re working ethically, when you’re working with communities such as Black or other marginalised communities?

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I think one of the most ethical things is paying people properly. Whenever I'm offered a project, I make sure to discuss money upfront. The issue is that many of us are already financially strained, so there's often a scarcity mindset. For example, if Tate Modern approached me to run a series of events and offered a certain amount, we're so eager that we just agree without considering whether it will allow us to pay people fairly.For me, the first thing I do when someone approaches me is talk about money. If they're not serious, they usually stop talking to me. Talking about money is difficult, especially with white institutions, but I make it clear that we're going to discuss it. I’ve had to remind people that they can’t just post a Black Lives Matter square or make mission statements and then claim they don’t have the budget to pay for things. A well-known BBC chef’s show recently wanted to film in our space with two Nigerian sisters. They asked to film for free, saying they had no budget.I gave the person a lecture. I said, "I know you're probably an intern, excited to do this job, but you're being asked to negotiate terribly with people who need money the most. Please feed this back to your bosses—it's not acceptable to try to get things for free, especially in an area like Peckham, where Black women are underserved in business."Paying people properly is the bottom line for me. Unfortunately, it's still not happening enough in the creative industries, and it's a problem across the board.

 

What do you think about funding? I’ve had really interesting conversations with people about what ethical dilemmas exist around funding: do they want to receive funding from oil companies or people that have a touchy history, that might be trying to engage in ‘race-washing’ with their provision of capital. How do you feel about that?

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I’m a highly doubting capitalist. I don’t like capitalism, but we live in it. Until that changes, I’m not going to be as precious as some people feel they need to be. When you start looking seriously at private ownership and who owns what, not just in the superficial way, you realize we’re all part of the system. If you really want to be ethical about who you work for, you’ll be unemployed, frankly speaking.For example, we curate events at Brixton Village, where we book artists and DJs. We’ve worked with Taylor McWilliams, who is a controversial person due to his ownership of the market and his now scuppered plans for the Hondo Tower development in central Brixton.When I first spoke to him, I said, "I understand that you're trying to represent the brand with faces that show you're down with the people, but here are my terms: We need to only promote Black music in this space. Brixton is listed by English Heritage for its African Caribbean community, and if you ever tell me I need to play something like Taylor Swift, that’s the day I’ll leave and let everyone know why.” I also made it clear that I expect to be paid well and on time, with no delays like those 60-day invoice situations. He agreed to all of that, so that's why we’re still working with him.So, the dilemma is: Do I book artists and provide them with a livelihood, or do I refuse to work with him because he’s a billionaire and part of the bigger capitalist problem? It’s a difficult choice, but I take the hit. There are people who talk a lot about these things but don’t actually work. They have wonderful ideals, but I’m not about that. I’m about getting things done.

 

 

I agree, I think you’re a very privileged person if you can really choose where you take your money from, and it must be nice. At the end of the day, the work has got to be done and it’s important work that you’re doing. Thank you for sharing that. In terms of engaging Black communities to attend events, have you ever struggled with that? Have you ever found that sometimes White communities might flock to the event for the sake of fetishising the fact that it’s a Black event? Do you find it hard to bring Black people in?

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I don’t particularly, and honestly, as much as we say we love “Black music,” there was a time when calling it that would upset certain venues. They’d say, "Can we just call it soul?" But I’d say “no, and here’s why”. And the more pushback we got, the more I realized how political it was. The reason we started calling it “Black music” was because, in the early 2000s, the music industry began calling R&B and hip hop “urban,” not the artists themselves. Around that time, the faces of the genre started becoming lighter skinned and whiter. Artists like Eminem and Christina Aguilera began dominating the scene, even though they weren’t representative of the genres in totality. We saw the term "urban" as problematic, so we just started saying “Black music” to see how people would react. Some venues wouldn’t work with us because of that, but we stuck with our principles. A lot of our events are genuinely multicultural. I’m a Londoner, so I know people from different cultures, but we do have a love and appreciation for Black culture, and that’s what we’re promoting. Everyone is invited, as long as they behave themselves. Sometimes, when our events get busy with attendees, I’ll get on the mic to remind people that this is about the culture. You can’t just stand on the dancefloor with a beer while people are dancing. We have a way of helping people understand the respect we expect in our community. So, no, I haven’t had any challenges. If anything, when we do something Black-centric, like an event at Somerset House, we see a lot of support from people who don’t usually attend our events. I guess that they were committed to being there because of the venue.

 

Do you think that could be generational?

 

No, no, I don't think it is. I think it's interesting just because I know that lots of large arts institutions or cultural institutions do struggle to kind of get that reflection. They don't employ the people, like me, that can do that.

 

I think that’s because they're alienating black people through the way that they try and advertise to their patrons. I think grassroots activities like yours don't really do that in the same way because there's community involvement from the start. And I think that's probably an endemic problem with curation. So how could curation around race be improved in predominantly white cultural institutions in Britain?

 

But it’s also so obvious—just employ the right people and stop overcomplicating things. I respect your education, and education is important, but it doesn’t always have to come through institutionalized routes. A lot of what you’re studying is from an arts perspective, using the example of artists and creators who didn’t go through those formal methods anyway—those paths didn’t even exist before. So, there’s a lack of understanding when it comes to sourcing people from grassroots communities. Either they’re being dishonest or, when I’m being polite, they’re too disconnected from those communities to know how to approach them. It’s just really tedious.

 

How do you think that those institutions could make those connections to those communities? What kind of things should they be doing?

 

I think the problem is that everything always goes through this academic stream. You’re learning from a colonial institution that thinks it knows the “right” way. And you’ve got to remember that someone like Pippa, bless her, has done the work. She means well and sees herself as an ally, but she’s clocking in and out of her job. After a while, she has to report upwards, and often that comes with these frustrating metrics. I know this from our experience with funding for Peckham Palms. For example, I had a meeting with our team yesterday about how we can better support our tenants. One of our tenants had a bereavement, was struggling, and needed time off, but her agreement with us requires her to be open at least five days a week. So it sparked a wider conversation.What we’re trying to do is run our business in a more radical, meaningful way because we’re dealing with Black folks, and we’re Black too. One of the team, who’s mixed heritage, suggested setting up a fund to support our tenants when they’re struggling. And I said, ‘I get that,’ but sometimes we need to think more culturally. Our tenant who’s Jamaican probably just needs two weeks to go back home for the traditional “nine nights” mourning period. So instead of making her fi the foll a generic form and deal with all that paperwork, maybe we just give her two weeks of rent relief and let her handle her situation. The problem, though, is that this approach doesn’t make sense to funders. They want spreadsheets explaining how we’re supporting people, and it’s exhausting. The metrics they measure things by don’t always make sense, especially for Black communities.