Black History Month: Student Work

27 October 2022

Drawing of Lady Phyll with Colour Headscarf
Lady Phyll colour version
Type: Text
Category: Student work

As part of the Students' Union's Black History Month events, students were asked to submit work that responded to issues of identity and representation and celebrated important figures from the Black community. 

Falmouth and Exeter Students' Union planned the delivery of a bold and celebratory Black History Month 2022. Students had the opportunity to participate in a wide variety of activities that celebrate Black history, culture, and achievement, from creative workshops to anti-racist discussion forums to film screenings, focus groups and pop ups.   

We hoped that the showcase would incite dialogue, provide opportunities for connection, and highlight and empower an underrepresented community on our campuses.

Luke Court (SU President Falmouth) also organised a showcase featuring student projects to help amplify the works and stories of our Black students and the wider community. This work was exhibited on digital screens across both Penryn and Falmouth campus. Luke said he hoped that the showcase would "incite dialogue, provide opportunities for connection, and highlight and empower an underrepresented community on our campuses." 

Check out a selection of the showcase submissions, below.

Click image above to expand

"6 Goats features creative Black people from history who I think are greatest of all time – Aaron Douglas, Edmonia Lewis, Jean-Michel Basquiat, Faith Ringgold, Charles Dawson and Kara Walker. I created this illustration because we’re rarely taught about these people.”  

Celia was commissioned by Falmouth & Exeter Students’ Union to create a series of portraits representing important figures within the Black community. The collection includes illustrations of Stormzy, Octavia E. Butler, Lady Phyll, Jordan Peele and Candice Carty-Williams. 

Dandelion Milk is an internal reflection on the complexities of forming identity. Intensely personal, the work documents Brasington’s struggle with confronting her mixed-race heritage. Brasington explores notions of representation, isolation, and displacement – framing the dichotomy of a childhood in a utopic landscape to the realisation of one’s inherent otherness that comes with age. The visual presence of the other is paramount, Dandelion Milk looks to make visible what has been erased from the image of Englishness.  

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