Laolu Alatise is a co-founder of a collective based in Cardiff, who have conducted research on the history of the 1919 Race Riots in South Wales. The group have narrated the events of the riots in Cardiff, Barry and Newport on Twitter, as if in real time, to a growing audience. Laolu co-delivered project as a way to commemorate this element of Welsh (and Black Asian, and Minority Ethnic Welsh) history on its centenary. The group have identified larger silences in the under-represented historical period, pertaining to ensuing legislation, forced repatriations, and cross-racial gay partnerships in early 20th century Cardiff.
Project Name: TBC
Project Location: Cardiff and Oxford
About the Project:
Laolu Alatise will use the Platforming Under-represented Writers funding to co-produce a small anthology and create and deliver workshops with young people in the community. He envisions this work fitting into a larger body of work done alongside other cultural practitioners in Wales.
To support this, Laolu will undertake a short course in Ethnic and Religious conflicts in Oxford which will explore concepts such as ethnicity, nationality and identity politics. As his current creative and critical work focuses on experiences of asylum, displacement, queerness and blackness, the course will be relevant to his writing, but also any training sessions and presentations that may arise from his work. He will then visit the Oxford School of African Studies to undertake research work for the anthology.
Laolu hopes that the project will open up deeper discussions in Wales about race, but also about what it means to be Welsh (or to settle in Wales) in a time of rising hate crimes, ‘economic resentment’ and growing debars around decolonisation and independents. He aims to inspire the work of young people who also need to see themselves reflected in the history of their city.