Enhancing SuAndi’s legacy: accessibility funding for SussedBlackWoman resource
An audio version of the Association of Independent Museums (AIM) and National Lottery Heritage Fund (NLHF) supported SussedBlackWoman digital resource sharing the life and work of SuAndi – the Royal Society of Literature’s 2024 Benson Medal holder – will soon be accessible thanks to enrichment funding from AIM’s New Stories New Audiences programme.
The Expansion of SussedBlackWoman: Enhancing Accessibility for All
SussedBlackWoman - TMM’s digital resource celebrating poet, performer, and activist SuAndi - has been awarded additional funding from the AIM New Stories, New Audiences programme. Supported by the National Lottery Heritage Fund, the enrichment grant will be used to create an audio version of the resource, accessible to a wider audience.
Since its launch in July 2024, SussedBlackWoman has been lauded for its honest, hard-hitting and yet humourous retelling of SuAndi’s journey in the arts. In particular, visitors have enjoyed hearing SuAndi's voice in the audio clips.
Visit the SussedBlackwoman resource: www.mixedmuseum.org.uk/sussedblackwoman
Recognising the value of auditory storytelling for Gen Z learners alongside the importance of creating digital content open to visually impaired and older users, the enrichment funding will ensure that more people can connect with SuAndi’s work.
About our SussedBlackWoman digital resource
SuAndi, is a writer, poet and arts practitioner born and raised in Manchester by a Liverpool Irish mother and a Nigerian Ijaw father. In 2024, In addition to being inaugurated in July 2024 as an Honorary Fellow of the Royal Society of Literature, SuAndi follows in the footsteps of J.R.R. Tolkien, Wole Soyinka, Margaret Busby and other literary greats by being awarded the Royal Society of Literature's prestigious Benson Medal for outstanding contribution to literature.
TMM’s new digital resource not only shares her life and work in the arts, but also takes a look at Manchester, a British city with a historical connection to Africa through the cotton trade along with a well-established community of interracial families resident long before the timeline of the 1948 Windrush. Through poems, photographs, letters, audio and other materials provided by SuAndi – not least her own narrative – SussedBlackWoman provides an insight into a life and practice that is rooted in a longstanding multiracial working-class history that is often forgotten in contemporary conversations about mixed race families in Britain.
While the resource should interest everyone and anyone, it has been designed in particular with our Gen Z audience (ages 13-21) in mind. We hope that the resource will be an additional support to pupils and their teachers in the wake of SuAndi’s monodrama The Story of M being added to the EdExcel English A Level curriculum, thanks to the efforts of Professor Deirdre Osborne.
Learn more
Explore our SussedBlackWoman digital resource
Read about SuAndi being doubly honoured by the Royal Society of Literature in the summer of 2024
Watch TMM and NBAA’s webinar celebrating the launch of the resource
Find out about the AIM funding that supported the original project
Acknowledgements and Thanks
SussedBlackWoman was funded by the Association of Independent Museums (AIM) and the National Lottery Heritage Fund (NLHF) as part of the ‘New Stories, New Audiences’ programme. Many thanks to National Lottery players for making this project possible.
