Decolonising Narrative: Creative Approaches to Black Healthcare in Britain
A collaboration between the Black Health and Humanities Network and Narrative Practices lab at the Discovery Research Platform for Medical Humanities.
This event brings two academics and artists from the Black Health and the Humanities Network, Dr Yewande Okuleye and Rianna Raymond-Williams, to reflect on the creative methods they engage with for healthcare education and empowerment in Black communities in Britain. Bridging art and advocacy, Yewande draws on poetry, feminist ethics of care, psychographics, and participatory, methods to create spaces to examine language and power; Rianna draws on the digital to raise awareness about sexual and reproductive health. This session will begin with Yewande and Rianna sharing snippets of their practice, followed by a discussion session in which the audience will be invited to think with us about issues of race, place, and voice in healthcare and healthcare research ecologies. What does it mean to ‘decolonise’ narrative practice’; whose voices and what modes of expression are privileged in the production of knowledge about health? How might the stories we tell engage with the political realities of healthcare, and what are the possibilities for policy change? How might we meaningfully attend to the diversity of embodied experiences?
All are welcome – we look forward to a rich, generative discussion on narrative across different disciplinary positions and practices!
Bios:
Dr Yewande Okuleye has a decade of research and public engagement experience in medical cannabis. Her AHRC/ GW Pharmaceuticals-sponsored Ph.D. examined the trajectories of resistance and innovations that facilitated the medicalization of the cannabis plant. She received her PhD in the History of Medicine from the University of Leicester. and her thesis on the emergence of medical cannabis provided policy insight (Written evidence to the Select Committee for the Government Review on Cannabis, European Green Party), Patient lived experience Engagement (PLEA trustee), Drug Reform (Transform drug policy trustee), and Public Engagement (BBC expert, The Conversation), Yewande has conducted research in Europe North America, and Australia. Her research and public engagement praxis is informed by Pan-African feminist ideas of solidarity and collectivism as an emancipatory and liberatory practice for marginalized populations. Yewande devises and facilitates safe spaces that invoke embodied learning, and collaborative creative activities as channels to encourage critical thinking about blackness, intersectionality, and power. She is a fellow of the Royal Historical Society and a published poet, recently commissioned to author a poem to commemorate the 400th anniversary of Anne Hathaway Shakespeare’s death (in Anne-Thology: Poems Re-Presenting Anne Shakespeare, 2023), and the publication of Shakespeare’s First Folio. She has taught at the Masterclass Medicinal Cannabis (Leiden & Canada ), University of Oxford, Cambridge, Leicester, Liverpool, and the University of the Arts. Yewande’s transdisciplinary research praxis in science, health humanities, literature, fine art, cultural history, public engagement, and system design makes her well-placed to work in collaboration and partnerships toward the UN Sustainable Goals for people, planet, and prosperity.
Rianna Raymond-Williams is a 3rd Year PhD student at Glasgow Caledonian University London. Her research explores how Black Caribbean women in the UK experience sexual and reproductive health (SRH) care. In 2020, she co-wrote and directed a short animation called I Know He Loves Me, which aimed to shine a light on Intimate Partner Violence (IPV) from a young Black woman. In 2021, she edited and self-published an anthology titled More Than Talk: Perspectives of Black and People of Colour (BPOC) working in Sexual and Reproductive Health (SRH) in the United Kingdom (UK) which highlights the inequalities experienced by Black and racialised people within sexual and reproductive health. Over the years, Rianna has merged youth work, community organising, health awareness and journalism to forge a range of projects. Rianna has 10 years of experience working in sexual and reproductive health, her previous roles include working for the National Health Service (NHS) in Britain and the Terrence Higgins Trust (THT). She has also freelanced as a journalist, predominantly covering community news and health and wellness for The Guardian, The Metro, Black Ballad, The Newham Recorder, The Stratford Recorder Recorder, The Voice Newspaper and The Independent.