Pickyheads Movement Link Up Kickstarter

What’s the Kickstarter campaign all about?
I want to do a research trip to New York to arrange a unique event, increasing the love for black women in Nottingham. I want to link two unlikely cities – I’ve never heard of that being done before. There’s a huge black population for such a small city and I want to change how things are for black women here really. It all started with this Facebook page called Contemporary Natural Hair that was basically about bigging up about black women – their skin, their hair, afro hair texture, locks, things like that. Not just women, men as well. That grew.

How did the page come about?
It was basically a tool I used to brainwash myself into loving myself. Every day, hoarding images. I do that anyway, as a graphic designer. The page has attracted 11,000 people now. I wasn’t even trying to attract people to it. People started asking me what I was going to do with the page, so I thought I’d like to do an event that connects two weird places. An odd combination. Because black people are everywhere, and there were people in that group that were surprised that we were in England.

Really?
They don’t seem to know that there are black people in England because the media portrayal doesn’t include black people very much. They don’t think we exist. And they don’t think there are any cities outside of London. Some of them thought Nottingham was a fairytale place, that it didn’t exist, because of Robin Hood.

So it’s very much about raising awareness?
Yeah, and sharing information, discussion, thoughts, art. My vision is for the event to be Fight Club meets some kind of opulent place that serves cocktails. I’d get The G.O.A Choir down. It’s just to big us up, we need it. The racism and sexism that black women have to put up with is a lot. I’d like to do my part to help.

This Kickstarter project aims to raise £6,100 by Wednesday 19 August – dab in duck!

Pickyheads Movement Link Up on Kickstarter