History of Black Umbrella
A Brief History of the Struggle and Achievements of Black Umbrella
PROJECT MRB + KALA PRESS + BLACK UMBRELLA
A Brief History 1982- 2006
In 1978, Rasheed Araeen realised that something had to be done about the complete absence from the British art scene of artists of Asian and African origins, excluded as they were from the official exhibitions, art histories and other mainstream institutions. So he wrote a letter to the Arts Council to bring this situation to their notice and propose that funded research should be undertaken. Their response was empathetically No – not even a discussion of the matter. It was a depressing response. What else could he do to persuade the art establishment to recognise the seriousness of the matter? A few years later, in 1982, he approached the Greater London Arts Association (an Arts Council London organisation), where he knew some people, with a proposal to begin research on and set up an archive of the history of Afro-Asian artists in Britain. Their response was positive. This was the beginning of the struggle and work of Black Umbrella.
There are references in this account to the Institute of International Visual Arts (INIVA), because this brief history of Black Umbrella was prepared for the Arts Council in order to point out to it the inefficiency and failure of INIVA. It shows the far greater scale of Black Umbrella’s achievement in 24 years, with a budget of under 1 million pounds, compared to INIVA which has received 10 million pounds from the Arts Council in 11 years.
1982 Initiated and established by Rasheed Araeen Project Multiracial Britain (MRB), solely in order to research into the contribution of Afro-Asian artists to the mainstream art in postwar Britain and develop an archive of their work.
1983 Established Kala Press to pursue publishing work.
1984 Established Black Umbrella (BU) so as to integrate and expand the work of Project MRB and Kala Press in terms of publishing, organising exhibitions, conferences and workshops, and in collaboration with art education institutions to develop a new curriculum of art teaching that would fulfil the needs of a multiracial and multicultural society.
1986 Organised ‘THlRD WORLD WITHIN’, an exhibition of the work of Afro-Asian artists, Brixton Art Gallery, Brixton. BLACK VISUAL ARTISTS FORUM, a two-day presentation of seminars and workshops at the ICA, 25-26 October, in which a two-part talk, with slides, on the HISTORY OF BLACK ARTISTS IN BRITAIN was presented by Rasheed Araeen, who was also the organiser of the event.
1987 Founded the art journal Third Text, a resurrected form of Black Phoenix published in 1978-79. Third Text, with its unique critical and theoretical perspectives, is now one of the most important art journals in the world. It is in fact the only art journal which initiated, encouraged and promoted art scholarship from Africa, Asia, the Caribbean and Latin America in order to represent their own understanding and interpretation of the art of our age and its global history. [Without this scholarship INIVA would have not produced any publication].
1988 ‘The Essential Black Art’, an exhibition with a catalogue, organised in collaboration with and held at Chisenhale Gallery, London, and then travelled to five mainstream venues in England.
1989 ‘The Other Story: Afro-Asian Artists in Post-war Britain’, Hayward Gallery, London, then travelled to the mainstream venues in Wolverhampton and Manchester. Although this exhibition, with its comprehensive catalogue, was initiated and curated by Rasheed Araeen, it was the result of the research work undertaken by Project MRB/ Black Umbrella since 1982. [No comparable project has been undertaken by INIVA during its eleven years existence despite its vast public funding.]
1990 AIan Haydon, the visual arts director of Greater London Arts (GLA), suggested that we should cut down the programme of Black Umbrella and submit its revised version to GLA and to the Arts Council (as there was some discussion between GLA and the AC on the funding of culturally diverse art organisations) for the consideration of its funding. We submitted the revised programme to both GLA and the Arts Council in August 1990; it was acknowledged by Sandy Nairne: ‘Thank you for your letter and for the enclosed proposal which I and Sarah Wason have read with interest. It certainly sounds an exciting idea … It would … need some careful preliminary investigation before such a proposal could be fully weighed up. How have your discussions with GLA gone so far? If they are keen to involve us in a discussion about this proposal then we will happily join in…’ (3 September 1990)
1991 In correspondence with Anthony Everitt, Secretary-General of the Arts Council, about the future of Black Umbrella, suggests that we should wait till Sandy Nairne comes back from America. July: Gavin Jantjes, representing the Arts Council, visits the Third Text office to inform us and discuss a proposal called ‘The Phoenix Project’ which subsequently became INIVA. This was a gallery project, initiated by the Arts Council, but also included most of the initiatives that Black Umbrella had already proposed a year ago, which thus put BU in a very precarious situation. Sandy Nairne returns from America and invites Rasheed Araeen for a lunch ‘to discuss further’, as he put it, ‘your ideas for Black Umbrella and to give you an outline of our ideas for a gallery’. During this meeting Araeen is assured that there was no overlapping of Black Umbrella’s ideas with the proposed gallery project, and that whatever was the specific objective of INIVA it should not replace the work of BU. He in fact suggested that both organisations should work together. 15 October: A letter from Sandy Nairne: ‘The Arts Council does recognise the ideas put forward in your proposal for Black Umbrella and values enormously the work of Third Text. The Arts Council also recognises that a close relationship or collaboration could be possible between Black Umbrella and the New International Visual Arts Institute given that they might share similar objectives and areas of work in research and publishing field … Perhaps you could give me a ring and we could set up a meeting between yourself, myself, Sarah and Gavin.’ Although this meeting never took place, there was an unwritten agreement that the Arts Council would pursue a framework by which a collaboration between Black Umbrella and INIVA could be achieved; and it was on the basis of this understanding that we decided to support INIVA and helped it to develop its programme.
1992 In order to facilitate BU’s collaboration with INIVA, we were offered a three-year Publishing Franchise by the Arts Council. Furthermore, we were persuaded to help the Arts council in putting together the programme of the forthcoming INIVA symposium. In fact, without our contribution there would have been no conference, as those who were in charge of the conference had no idea what the conference was about and whom to invite. As we had already developed international contacts, through the work of Third Text, we had no problem in providing the Arts Council with a list of participants (Arts Council did have its own names, but we contributed 75% of the participants); and we also undertook to publish all the papers as a book entitled Global Visions.
1993 Various meetings with the Arts Council about the agenda and programme of the INIVA symposium and BU’s relationship with it. It became clear from these meetings that the Arts Council wanted to push its own agenda regardless of whatever we did and contributed. It also became obvious that the Arts Council was interested in our ideas only to appropriate them. The resulting friction was resolved in favour of those in power. The fact that ideas are the product of human endeavour and a long and sustained struggle over the years was of no concern to the Arts Council bureaucrats, nor did they accept ethical responsibility to recognise and respect those who initiated those ideas and had a track record of doing so properly and efficiently. This was a depressing encounter with officials who claim to be the guardians of our culture and its achievements but who act in blatant violation of them.
1994 Gilane Tawadros is appointed the first director of INIVA, followed by the symposium in April. Tawadros visited our office (she was at that time a member of Third Text editorial) and expressed her desire to work in collaboration with us — which we of course welcomed. But, after we published the symposium papers, Global Visions, at the end of the year, no further collaboration with INIVA took place. In fact, when INIVA became an independent organisation, it dropped its gallery idea and adopted a programme more-or-Iess as put forward by Black Umbrella. By this time, we realised that we had no choice but to accept the fact that ideas should not be anybody’s monopoly, and if INIVA could achieve what we wanted to, we should be happy. BUT THIS DID NOT HAPPEN.
1997 Published the last of the six books franchised by the Arts Council, including two comprehensive monographs on David Medalla and Uzo Egonu [no comparable publication has been done by INIVA.]
1997- 1999 After Black Umbrella’s programme was taken away from us and no funding was available for what we wanted to do, we continued with the publication of Third Text.
1999 INIVA’s 5th anniversary made it clear that the organisation was not doing what it was established to do [see Arts Council's Final Report on INIVA, December 1991, in which INIVA's objectives, priorities, agenda and programme were listed in detail]. We would have to resume our work abandoned in favour of INIVA. As we had also lost our faith in the Arts Council, we wrote a letter to Mark Fisher MP, then Minister for the Arts, highlighting the problems of Afro-Asian artists excluded from the official narratives of the history of art in Britain, and asked for his help. After a year or so correspondence with both the DCMS and DfEE, Alan Howarth, who had by then become Minister for the Arts, wrote to us (4 July 2000) in which he recognised the importance of our proposals. But he could not directly fund our work, as he put it: ‘you will be aware, under the arm’s-length principle, my Department channels funding through the Arts Council and a number of other non-Departmental public bodies … I would therefore encourage you to pursue a dialogue about your proposals with them.’ He then assured us of his support: ‘What I can give you is an assurance of my agreement with the ideas behind it, and a promise of my officials’ help and advice in seeking to establish the right connections in the relevant organisations.’
2000 Following the advice from DCMS, we approached the Arts Council again and submitted a comprehensive programme for the establishment of Black Umbrella as a multicultural Arts Centre. But even after a two-year struggle and numerous consultations with Arts Council officers, during which we were offered support and promises, our repeated applications failed. Reason: our programme and ambition did not fit in with the Arts Council’s own perception and agenda of multiculturalism — now called cultural diversity.
2001 Routledge, Taylor & Francis Group, accepted to publish and distribute Third Text which relieved us from the stress of working on the Arts Council’s shoe-string budget and allowed us to attend to other things. Since the collaboration with Routledge, Third Text had progressed from 4 issues to 6 issues per year, and in 2006 planned to increase the pages per copy but also publish more special issues.
2002 Kim Evans personally intervened to support and fund The Whole Story project, which involved researching and re-writing the history of art in postwar Britain. This history, when completed and written, will be the most comprehensive and inclusive history of art in Britain. It will also lay a foundation for further work in terms of publications, exhibitions and resources development for inclusive art teaching courses as part of the mainstream art syllabus that will truly reflect the cultural diversity of British society and its achievement in art.
2005 After numerous discussions with art historians and writers of the The Whole Story began to take shape, with 75% of the writing to be ready by the deadline of December 2005.
2005 Gilane Tawardos resigns from the directorship of INIVA. We then wrote to Professor Stuart Hall suggesting that Black Umbrella and INIVA should work together. After an initial response from Hall about the importance of the points we raised in our letter, no further response came. Since then INIVA has appointed a new director and there has been complete silence about our proposal. INIVA is clearly not interested in holding discussions with BU and developing the future of INIVA in collaboration with us, despite the fact that we are undertaking the work (on a very small budget) which should have been INIVA’s priority (according to the Arts Council’s own outline of INIVA’s basic responsibility and programme, which INIVA has failed to undertake and fulfil).
2006 By March 2006, we will complete the publication of 80 issues of Third Text – which is equivalent to the publication of thirty 290-page books.