What is Black All Year?

Sara and Carrie from Connected Voice sat down with Steph Edusei, founder of Black All Year and Chief Executive of St Oswald’s Hospice, to talk about Black All Year and Black History Month. Black All Year celebrates Black people and aims to educate and campaign around issues through webinars, podcasts, and videos all year round, and not just during Black History Month. Connected Voice will be sharing the podcasts and webinars from Black All Year both internally and in our widely distributed monthly bulletins.

Steph started Black All Year after feeling frustrated about being asked each year, during Black History Month, to speak for free about her experiences of being a Black female leader in the North East. Steph was doing multiple events each year and noted that many times the rich conversations and excitement generated during Black History Month did not go anywhere beyond the month of October.  So last year, Steph decided to do something about it and created Black All Year.

The webinars and podcasts on Black All Year address a number of important topics such as anti-Blackness, the youth perspective, and Black maternal lives. In each episode, Steph speaks with both professionals and those with lived experience who share information and highly personal stories in a moving and accessible way. In our interview, Steph linked the themes for these episodes with current events but also events in her own life or personal history.

Impact on young people

Of the conversations leading up to the youth episode ‘Inclusion and the Youth Perspective’, she said:

“[I used my] contacts at the Angelou centre to have a discussion about the young perspective and I found that really kind of inspiring and uplifting and depressing in equal measure and it was inspiring and uplifting because the young people I was speaking with were amazing. Really fantastic, intelligent, articulate, passionate, committed, all of that. And I thought, there’s hope for the future. But the issues they were raising were the same issues I was experiencing as a teen and early 20s…and I’m 50 now, so things haven’t moved on so that was quite depressing..” 

On health services

In reference to the episode ‘Black Maternal Lives Matter’, Steph spoke about examples of racist misinformation that medical professionals are still being told today, such as the idea that Black people have higher pain tolerance than white people and even information about differences in anatomy.

“I used to work in cardiothoracic surgery, as a secretary but I was actually told by a cardio thoracic surgeon that Black and Asian veins and arteries were smaller than white people’s arteries which is why you tend to get higher incidences of coronary artery disease. It’s absolute rubbish, there’s no difference whatsoever but that is what he was told and so that’s what he was passing on.”

Up until very recently, students have only been taught how to recognise certain illnesses or conditions on white skin. These practices directly contribute to health inequities and mistrust in medical systems. This highlights the importance of representation in the health care system and challenging of practices and stereotypes.

Connected Voice offers cultural competency training for frontline health practitioners and training to understand health inequalities.

What’s been the successes of Black All Year?

Steph shared some of the things that have gone well since starting Black All Year

“The interest that we’ve had from people like yourself has been great. One of the things I really wasn’t expecting, and was so grateful for, was one of the HR directors from the NHS in Gateshead got in touch to say that she’d been following the events and she’d learned so much. She said it really changed her perspective on so many things and that she thinks we need to change the way we do things in the NHS.”

What have the challenges been so far?

Challenges have mostly been around finding the time, resources and capacity to continue this project.

“I think time has been the biggest issue. This is done alongside everything else. And it’s getting harder to get guests.”

Steph commented on the times, especially during Black History Month, Black people are asked to deliver presentations or appear at events without being paid. 

“If you are asking people to speak, particularly in Black History Month about ethnicity and you are not paying them, then that says everything you need to know about you and your organisation. Some organisations will get speakers for a myriad of other things and they will pay”

What change do you hope to see from Black All Year?

We asked Steph about her desired outcomes for this project. Steph wants these resources to be shared far and wide but also to see engagement and action coming from organisations.

“I think what I’d like to see is people actually coming back and following it up and saying ‘I want to learn more’ or asking ‘how can I contact people?’ … I want to hear about the changes that people are making.”

She encourages white people to take on the labour of having these conversations and planning actions, even if it is uncomfortable or intimidating to do so. 

“I gave a talk a while ago and one of the questions I was asked was, ‘who needs to take action on racism?’ And I said white people because it’s not Black people being racist and believe you me, if we could end racism, it would have been ended a long time ago. It’s not our problem. It’s our issue that we have to live with. It’s not our problem to deal with.”

Steph spoke about how she would like to see organisations making space to create conversations and sharing how they have done that.

“To me, that would be a major success, if an organisation said, ‘we really want to talk about how we’ve addressed some of these issues.’ That would be great.” 

Steph described some of the actions St Oswald’s Hospice is taking. The organisation is part of the Haref Allies and is keen to change who they reach, putting in the work throughout the year.

“Equality, Diversity and Inclusion are essential to our charity and we’re working hard to make them part of our everyday at the Hospice. Our slogan is 'Quality time for everyone', and that truly is what we’re striving to deliver. A place where everyone feels welcome whoever they are, whether they are cared for by us, employed by us, volunteer for us or support us in any way."

“We know however, that not everyone is accessing our care or applying for roles within St Oswald’s Hospice for example, and we want to understand why, what are the barriers and how can we remove these."

“Earlier this year we started work to gather views from people who are ethnically minoritised. This work is ongoing. It’s a slow process but one we’re committed to. We are determined to continue to reach out to our local communities and get to know them better and in turn hopefully help to reduce any fear and myth around hospice care and working within our organisation.

Steph acknowledged that there was still a lot to be done but was happy about the drive from colleagues to make change.

“As well as bigger projects like the work reaching out to communities, one of the more simpler things we do and I’d recommend to other organisations to try, is we send out a micro teach every month on a different protected characteristic to staff and volunteers. No more than around 5 minutes of video or something similar. We’ve had videos on a wide range of topics and staff and volunteers also suggest micro teach topics to share now too which is excellent. ”

Supporting employees

Steph concluded our conversation with some thoughts on how taking actions to support Black employees within your organisation benefits everyone.

‘When you do work to raise and improve the experiences of Black staff in your organisation, the experiences of everybody improves, including your white staff. If that were shared more widely and if people recognised that if you focus on this group of staff, everybody does better. Everyone has better experiences… it would be really useful.’