Live! SussedBlackWoman digital resource
SussedBlackWoman, the digital resource created from our collaboration with poet, writer and arts practitioner SuAndi project, is now live. The daughter of a Liverpool Irish mother and a Nigerian Ijaw father, SuAndi was born and raised in Manchester, and her work is now acclaimed around the world. Funded by the Association of Independent Museums (AIM) and the National Lottery Heritage Fund (NLHF), SussedBlackWoman shares SuAndi’s life in her own words. Though of interest to all, it has been designed to provide additional support to our Gen Z audience (ages 13-21) who are increasingly studying SuAndi’s monodrama The Story of M at school and university.
SussedBlackWoman webinar recording
To celebrate the launch of SussedBlackWoman - our new digital resource sharing the life and work of SuAndi in her own words - TMM and NBAA held an online panel on 12 June 2024 discussing the history and experiences behind the resource .
The panel, chaired by our Director Dr Chamion Caballero, featured Dr Phil Mullen, Michael Ohajuru, James Mayer, and Dr Parise Carmichael-Murphy, along with a Q&A with SuAndi.
The webinar was recorded for TMM and NBAA's channels. Click on the link below to view.
About SussedBlackWoman
All oral stories are testaments to history. I hope mine is insightful and informative.
SuAndi
SuAndi, is a writer, poet and arts practitioner born and raised in Manchester by a Liverpool Irish mother and a Nigerian Ijaw father. Our 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 – along with her own narrative written especially for The Mixed Museum – 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.
Gallery: some of the archival material that you can find in the SussedBlackWoman digital resource.
Supporting student and teachers of The Story of M
The resource should interest everyone and anyone, but has been designed in particular with our Gen Z audience (ages 13-21) in mind. The news in 2018 that Professor Deirdre Osborne had succeeded in having SuAndi’s monodrama The Story of M added to the EdExcel English A Level curriculum was greatly welcomed. However, it also became clear that there were still likely barriers to young people being able to study the work. While there are many brilliant scholarly resources on SuAndi's writing, these mostly take the form of academic book or journal papers.
Less available is material on SuAndi’s life and work that might help students and teachers in particular understand the historical and social context of racial mixing in the North West. Without this context, we worried that pupils and their teachers may lack the confidence to choose to study The Story of M.
Creating SussedBlackWoman
In 2022, The Mixed Museum and SuAndi were awarded a grant by the Association of Independent Museums to collaborate on the creation of the SussedBlackWoman digital resource. The funding, part of AIM’s New Stories New Audiences programme, has enabled us to work with SuAndi to explore her personal archive. Ably assisted by conversations and workshops with young people and creatives in the North West, we are delighted to share the final output online story of her life and work online.
The resource has been designed so that readers can enjoy it by dipping in and out of each of the 9 Chapters written by SuAndi, or read through all the chapters in order. We are also delighted to share the outputs of our wonderful Gen Z workshop participants who have inspired us with their own conversations and reflections along the way. You can view all the creative outputs at our dedicated SBW Workshops page.
Many thanks to the participants from Manchester Metropolitan University’s National Saturday Club, St Margaret’s Academy, The Belvedere Academy, and 'Our Room' for your fantastic contributions; to our creative workshop partners Faith Bebbington and Kevin Edward Turner; and to our additional supporting freelancer and volunteer partners who have helped bring the SussedBlackWoman project to life.
A selection of images from our SussedBlackWoman workshops held from May to September 2023.
Next steps
The beauty of digital means that an ending is often only the beginning. We very much hope to build further on the resource to grow our SussedBlackWoman collection, ensuring that the life and work of one of Britain’s pioneering and talented Black mixed race writers can be widely accessed and shared with a new generation. Please do get in touch if you have ideas for how we might further develop the resource.
SussedBlackWoman is funded by The Association of Independent Museums through the New Stories New Audiences programme. Thank you to the National Lottery Heritage Fund and National Lottery players for making this possible.
Learn more
Explore the SussedBlackWoman digital resource
Read our Feb 2023 blogpost on being awarded AIM/NLHF funding for the SussedBlackWoman project
Visit our entry on The Story of M in our Mixed Race Irish in Britain, 1700-2000 exhibition.