Sounds and Stories from the Windrush
The Thelma Matilda Alves Foundation, in collaboration with Poet in the City, is hosting an exhibition to commemorate 75 years since the arrival of the HMS Empire Windrush. The exhibition is a space to showcase the stories of the Windrush generation in London.
The exhibition will feature artwork from Black London-based artists such as Sade Popoola, Rudy Loewe, Tamia Stone, Jacob Joyce, and Yvadney Davis. As well as personal pictures and stories of experiences of migration and life in the UK from the late 1950s to the early 1970s. The exhibition honours those from the Windrush generation by showcasing artwork and poetry that captures their experiences.
Book exhibition tickets here (22 June-1 July)
About the Thelma Matilda Alves Foundation
Started in April 2020, Thelma Matilda Alves Foundation is dedicated to supporting women of African and Caribbean descent in their mental health and well-being journeys. The Thelma Matilda Alves Foundation is dedicated to the founder’s grandmother, who emigrated to the UK from Jamaica to provide a better life for seven children. Many of the stories about her grandmother confirmed she lived a life of undiagnosed mental health problems exacerbated by emigrating to the UK during the Windrush era. The story and experiences of her grandmother have shaped her doctoral research, which aims to investigate how immigration to the UK in the Windrush era has created a generational effect of racial melancholia, mourning, and mimicry and the effects that it has on the psyche of the mothers and daughters of Windrush.
She began her journey by researching the mental health of three generations of Black Caribbean females in the UK. She realised how underrepresented Black females are in the mental health sector, both as professionals and patients. Many of the gendered and racialized issues that affect Black women’s mental health in the UK have been pushed into the shadows because of stereotypes, stigmatisation, and misogynoir. Inspired, she created this foundation to combat all the prejudices and discrimination that Black women face trying to practise and access mental health services in the UK.
