Tottenham Rights & Forensic Architecture Guest Professorship & Scholarship Announcement (2022)
Following on from last year’s collaborative exhibition, War Inna Babylon, with human rights agency Forensic Architecture (FA) alongside independent curators Kamara Scott and Rianna Jade Parker, Tottenham Rights has been given the exciting opportunity to join FA at Goldsmiths University, this year, as guest professors on their MA course in Forensic Architecture.
We are delighted to have this space to expand on the WIB-style narrative of Black British histories and campaigning strategies that were featured in the exhibition in more depth, through a series of lectures, workshops and other activities, alongside FA’s current curriculum; which gives students the opportunity to utilise a range of technological and research skills to investigate human rights infringements across the globe.
2022 - 2023 Forensic Architecture MA Scholarship:
This year, we are also proud to announce that there is a new scholarship for one individual to receive full-time funding to study in the Centre for Research Architecture, at Goldsmiths University in London, on the Forensic Architecture Masters course for the academic year 2022-2023. This scholarship (25,000 euros, approx. £21,400) will cover all tuition fees and provide a generous monthly stipend to a talented incoming student who is keen to develop advanced spatial and media skills aimed at investigating human rights and other violations such as environmental, with and on behalf of affected communities.
Candidates should normally have (or expect to be awarded) an undergraduate degree of at least second class standard in a relevant subject.
For more information about the Masters in Research Architecture please explore these websites:
https://research-architecture.org
https://www.gold.ac.uk/architecture/
We are, first, reaching out to our private networks to share this great news in hopes that we can help locate a suitable candidate; whose desire to contribute to the grassroots struggles for justice extends itself to high-level investigatory and technological work, alongside an in-depth knowledge and passion for Black British activism and communities. Forensic Architecture’s 2019 investigation ‘The Killing of Mark Duggan’ has been a transformative piece of work, especially for the Black community, which builds on grassroots efforts to hold the state, and the police in particular, accountable for its injustices and brutality towards the community. This project radically and thoroughly addresses police corruption, state impunity and challenges the legal processes for accountability in new ways, using digital reconstructions of first hand police testimony about the events, which many grassroots campaigns do not have direct access to. Through this relationship, and our experience at the ICA last year, we see new opportunities to expand the network between Black British grassroots organisers, communities and other disciplines to maximise our impact in the community and extend our understanding of other human rights infringements, globally and locally.
To apply for this scholarship please provide an Expression of Interest (including your contact details) that highlights why you would like to be considered for this unique scholarship and what kinds of research and investigative projects you would like to carry out during your MA. Feel free to include your CV and other related materials such as web links.
War Inna Babylon : The Community’s Struggle for Truth and Rights
7 July – 26 September 2021 at the ICA, The Mall , London SW1Y 5AH
While War Inna Babylon was originally scheduled to open in May 2020 – the delay due to Covid-19 – has inadvertently made this the most timely exhibition it could possibly be.
In light of events over the past year, that have shown how little value is placed on Black lives – the Covid-19 Public Health England Review, BLM demonstrations, the Sewell washout, the increased use of police violence, and stop and search procedures against members of the Black community – we view this as the perfect time to focus on grassroots activism in Black frontline communities across the UK; which have been at the forefront of resisting state oppression and creating unfounded change for racial justice since the 1970s.
– Stafford Scott, co-Founder of Tottenham Rights
The Institute of Contemporary Arts reopens on July 6th with War Inna Babylon: The Community’s Struggle for Truths and Rights, an exhibition curated by London-based racial advocacy and community organisation, Tottenham Rights, together with independent curators Kamara Scott and Rianna Jade Parker.
Ten years on from the UK-wide riots sparked by the police killing of Mark Duggan, this exhibition shines a light on the vast range of collective actions, resistance and grassroots activism undertaken by Black communities across the U.K in response to over seven decades of societal and institutional racism.
Using the ‘symbolic location’ of Tottenham, a neighbourhood that has received much attention in recent years due to its history of racial conflicts and heavy-handed policing; this exhibition combines archival material, documentary photography, film and state-of-the art 3D technology to ‘act as a window to the past and as a mirror for our present-day social climate’.
War Inna Babylon will chronicle the impact of various forms of state violence and institutional racism targeted at Britain’s Black communities since the mass arrival-upon-invitation of West Indian migrants in the late 1940s.
The exhibition will include original tributes from victims’ families, case studies of the controversial 'sus’ (suspected person) laws and the Gangs’ Matrix and highlights legal developments that have resulted from Black justice campaigns.
War Inna Babylon will also present a new investigation into the killing of Mark Duggan by Forensic Architecture
The exhibition, the first of its kind to accurately assess the conditions of Black lives across Britain, will be accompanied by an extensive public programme presented both in Tottenham and at the ICA that will include film screenings, community educational groups, talks, cultural events, performances, and a digital presentation focusing on the interrelation between artificial intelligence (AI) and racism.
This exhibition is part of an ICA programme dedicated to racial justice, social justice and liveable futures for all, with programme highlights including the return of the ICA’s Artists Film Club; a week-long convening dedicated to the experimental writing of M. NourbeSe Philip; and Dykegeist, a choreographic work by Eve Stainton and Mica Levi. See more on the ICA’s programme here.
Join us
Saturday 12 September 2020
1pm-4pm
New Scotland Yard
Victoria Embankment
SW1A 2JL
Please remember to comply with COVID-19 Restrictions. Those with symptoms must not attend. Vulnerable groups in particular need to protect yourselves.
Sign the petition here
https://www.change.org/p/sadiq-khan-it-s-time-for-the-metropolitan-police-commissioner-to-go
Tottenham, in North London, is one of the country’s most vibrant, diverse, and poor places. Its grass roots Black community is one which has survived through self-help, mutual support, and resilience. It is also a locality in which institutional racism through policing, housing, social services and benefit office policies, has had a significant impact leaving the Black community marginalised and isolated from the mainstream . Again and again it has taken groups of committed local citizens, dedicated to justice to unite with the objective of overturning a miscarriage of justice. This can be seen through the work of the Broadwater Defence Campaign who fought tirelessly to free the ‘Tottenham Three’, Roger Sylvester family campaign, Justice for Mark Duggan campaign and many others. Tottenham Rights is a community led initative which continues to address issues around social justice and accountability in Tottenham and beyond.
We will not forget our history
Cynthia Jarrett
On 5th October 1985 four police officers went to search the home of Mrs Cynthia Jarrett, near the Broadwater Farm housing estate in Tottenham. The visit caused panic, and in the furore Jarrett’s mother, Mrs Cynthia Jarrett, collapsed. She was pronounced dead on arrival at hospital. The death caused tensions as a week earlier in Brixton, a black woman named Cherry Groce had been shot by police during another raid and paralysed below the waist.
Tottenham 3
In March 1987, three local men, Winston Silcott, Engin Raghip and Mark Braithwaite, were convicted of murder and sentenced to life imprisonment for the murder of PC Blakelock, despite no witnesses and no forensic evidence. The Tottenham Three are Innocent Campaign and the Broadwater Farm Defence Campaign pressed for a retrial. On 25 November 1991, all three defendants were cleared by the Court of Appeal when an ESDA test demonstrated police notes of interrogations (the only evidence) had been tampered with. Braithwaite and Raghip were released after four years in prison, and Silcott Silcott was released on licence in October 2003. The officer in charge of the interrogation of Silcott and the other two men was cleared of perjury. In July 2013, Nicholas Jacobs was charged with the murder of PC Blakelock. On 9 April 2014, Jacobs was cleared of all charges.
Joy Gardner
On 28 July 1993 a 40-year-old Jamaican woman was arrested by police and immigration authorities for removal from the United Kingdom. Having been bound and gagged by the police, Joy Gardner collapsed, fell into a coma and was pronounced dead four days later.
Roger Slyvester
On the night of 11 January 1999, Roger was found naked by police officers outside his home in Tottenham, north London, after neighbours called them. Two police officers initially attended the scene, but they called for back up and another six officers arrived. Roger was then restrained, handcuffed and, according to police officers, carried face up to a police van and taken to the emergency psychiatric unit at St Anne’s hospital, Haringey. At the hospital he was taken to room 136, for emergency psychiatric cases, where up to six police officers continued to restrain Roger (who was still handcuffed) for over twenty minutes. Roger collapsed and stopped breathing, then was resuscitated but was in a coma. He died seven days later in the Whittington hospital without regaining consciousness.
Mark Duggan
Mark DugganOn 4 August 2011, Mark Duggan was shot to death by police in Tottenham, north London, after undercover officers forced the minicab in which he was travelling to pull over.
As the vehicle came to a stop, Duggan opened the rear door, and leapt out. Within seconds, an advancing officer known only by his codename, V53, had fired twice. The first shot passed through Duggan’s arm, and struck a second officer, known as W42, in his underarm radio. The second, fatal shot hit Duggan in his chest.
V53 would later tell investigators that he saw a gun in Duggan’s hand, and felt his life to be in danger. Duggan was being monitored by Operation Trident, a controversial unit of the Metropolitan Police focused on gun crime in London’s Black communities; firearms officers had followed him from a nearby meeting, at which he had reportedly collected a gun. But following the shooting, the gun in question was found around seven metres away from where Duggan had been shot, on a nearby patch of grass. But no officers reported that they saw Duggan throw the gun, or make any kind of throwing motion.
Jermaine Baker
Jermaine Baker, aged 28, a father-of-two from Tottenham, north London, was killed by a single shot to the neck from a police officer on the 11 December 2015 during a police operation near Wood Green Crown Court. The shooting led to the officer being suspended and a homicide investigation launched by the Independent Police Complaints Commission (IPCC).