Community Centre

From the collection of

MACE is the strategic lead organisation for screen heritage for the East and West Midlands regions. An independent charity based at University of Lincoln, MACE preserves and makes accessible a collection of more than 100,000 historic moving images representative of the diverse cultures and histories of communities throughout the heart of England from the Lincolnshire coast to the Welsh border.

Community Centre

Media Archive for Central England
Wolverhampton
1984-04-08
Sound
6m

A centre for the "undertones and outcasts". Breaking down cultural and generational barriers at Wolverhampton's first Rastafari centre.

Ken Chambers has big plans for the new Rastafari centre in Wolverhampton. After a slightly awkward opening speech by the mayor of the town, Alfred Laws, Ken gets down to business in conversation with Hilary Minster. In ten years time, he says, "it's going to be massive". His enthusiasm is infectious and, with plans to reach the Wolverhampton black community with everything from nursery care to meals on wheels, you're inclined to believe him.

Black Lives

Portraits of public and private lives against the shifting social climate of 20th century Britain.

Black communities, like many Global majority groups, have long been ill-served by a mainstream British media accustomed to reflecting predominantly white, middle-class lives - a problem entrenched in the second half of the 20th century with the rise of television. Yet a rich tapestry of work from across the boundaries of fiction and non-fiction, film and TV, made for (though not always by) black people, does exist. This selection contains many surprises – some joyous, some sobering, some heartbreaking – and highlights the often painfully slow progress in addressing negative representations and stereotypes on screen. Impassioned and sometimes violent dispatches from the front line in the fight for racial equality can be found here, but so too can records of progress: in the pioneers breaking new ground in culture, politics and sport, and in the more mundane glimpses of everyday life. And this story is not just London’s story: the selection takes a journey around Britain, to a Nigerian wedding in 1960s Cornwall, an ‘African village’ in Essex and a Caribbean restaurant opening in West Bromwich; Newcastle