On travelling from Stockton-on-Tees to London, the Black Atlantic Makers, and the phrase that changed how I describe my own work.
On Friday 15 May 2026 I sat in a room at the Crafts Council gallery in Islington and listened to makers talk about rebellion and healing.
I did not expect rebellion. I did not expect healing. I expected a programme of maker talks at a prestigious national arts organisation carefully curated, professionally delivered, excellent.
What I got was all of that and something more. Something that has stayed with me since I walked back out onto Pentonville Road and made my way to Kings Cross to travel home to Stockton.
The event
Meet the Makers: Black Atlantic Makers was the final programming event for the Black Atlantic Makers: Conversations exhibition produced by Paula Ogun Hector and co-curated with Dr Stephen Knott. Paula described the makers as storytellers of material and memory. Every maker in that room proved her right.
Ceramicist Bisila Noha. Stonemaker Marica Bennett-Male. Weavers Doreen Gittens of Coin Street and Makeba Lewis. Woodworker Donald Baugh. Errol Donald. Multidisciplinary artist Angela Ford.
Each one spoke freely about their practice, their passions, their relationship with their material. But also, as Paula wrote afterwards, about rebellion and healing.
Not as abstraction. As lived practice. As the reason they make things.
A Crafts Council board member described the event as their favourite London Craft Week event by a long way remarkable given it was not officially part of the London Craft Week programme. That detail tells you everything about what Paula and Dr Knott built in that room.
The phrase I am taking with me
Paula described the makers as storytellers of material and memory.
That phrase stopped me completely. I have been searching for the right language to describe what I do with African heritage textiles , what I mean when I say I decode them ,and those four words hold the whole argument.
Storytellers of material and memory.
Every African heritage textile I work with is a material carrying memory. The Adire cloth of Abeokuta carries the memory of the Yoruba women who developed its resist-dye technique across generations the specific knowledge of which plants yield which tannins, which cassava starch produces which resist pattern, which motifs carry which cultural meanings. The Kente strips carry the memory of the Ashanti court. The Ankara print carries the memory of its extraordinary journey from Indonesian batik through Dutch industrial production to the West African market women who claimed it, renamed it, and made it entirely their own.
These are not decorative patterns. They are memory systems. And the makers, the wearers, and the storytellers who preserve them are doing exactly what Paula described , holding the story inside the material, refusing to let cultural knowledge be separated from the thing it made.
What being named meant
In her post about the event, Paula named me among the contributors to a space that felt open, generous and necessary.
I did not exhibit at this event. I attended as a guest. But being named in that list alongside Tosin Adegoke, Keith Piper, Alvin Kofi, Jo Sealy, and the makers themselves meant more to me than I expected.
It confirmed that showing up matters. That being present in the right rooms, with the right people, doing the work of paying genuine attention to what makers are doing and saying that is itself a form of contribution.
I came from Stockton-on-Tees to be in that room. I will travel further.
The exhibition
The Black Atlantic Makers: Conversations exhibition runs until 23 May 2026 at the Crafts Study Centre in Farnham. The new African Romans in Britain tapestry designed by Alvin Kofi is part of the exhibition. Paula will be at the Crafts Study Centre on Friday 22 May.
What comes next
I am preparing my first professional exhibition collection for October 2026 five garments in Ankara, Adire, and Aso-oke, each displayed with cultural story panels at Taste of Africa North East in Middlesbrough.
Every garment I am making is an act of material memory. Every story card beside it is an act of storytelling.
I know now, more clearly than before, that this is the work. And I know the community doing it alongside me.
Thank you Paula for building the room where I found them.
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