A teenage schoolgirl who said she dreamed of bringing the world together by becoming the first-ever hijab-wearing ballerina looks set to achieve her goal after being awarded a life-changing scholarship.
Sports fashion brand Björn Borg – named after the former number one Swedish tennis player – has announced it was moved to help 14-year-old Australian student Stephanie Kurlow after being “genuinely inspired” by the teen’s story. More
February is LGBT History Month and with this in mind we have chosen Paris Lees as our Inspirational Diversity Champion of the Month.
Paris is a British journalist, presenter and transgender rights activist. Paris was brought up as a boy, and self-identified as gay in early adulthood. At the age of 18 she committed a robbery, for which she served eight months in prison. While in prison she decided to change: “I just thought, ‘I’m this silly teenage boy in a prison cell who has made a huge mistake and I want to be this happy person’.” She moved to Brighton to study English at university, where she started to identify as female: “In the space of six weeks I went from living in Nottingham as a boy with my grandma still alive, to living in Brighton as a girl”. She was referred to Charing Cross Gender Identity Clinic where she received hormone treatment to begin gender transition.
Paris founded the first British magazine aimed at the trans community, META and was the acting assistant editor of Gay Times. She also has columns in both Gay Times and Diva and was the first trans cover girl for Diva. She has also written for many mainstream newspapers and magazines, as well as for Channel 4 News.
She has presented on both television and radio, being the first trans woman presenter on both BBC Radio 1 and Channel 4. On Radio 1, she produced a documentary entitled “The Hate Debate” which covered the attitudes people have to minority groups and covered issues related to racism, homophobia, transphobia and Islamophobia. The Hate Debate was followed up with a second documentary in the same slot, “My Transgender Punk Rock Story”, interviewing transgender rock star Laura Jane Grace and introducing the teenage audience to trans concepts of identity both within and outside of the binary. She also presented the episode “Trans” of Channel 4’s The Shooting Gallery.
On 25 October 2013 Paris took part as a panelist in the BBC’s 100 Women event and in October 2013 she became the first openly transgender panelist to appear on the BBC’s Question Time programme.
Paris has worked with Trans Media Watch which challenged Channel 4 to remove transphobic material from its broadcasts, and consulted with the channel for its documentary My Transsexual Summer.
She currently works with All About Trans, a project that tries to bring together journalists and other media professionals with transgender people.
In 2013, she topped The Independent on Sunday’s Pink List, naming her as the most influential lesbian, gay, bisexual or transgender figure in the UK; and was awarded the Positive Role Model Award for LGBT in the 2012.
The first EDI Strategy launch was held on 27 January 2016. The event was a huge success attracting nearly 90 participants throughout the day, including colleagues, not only from university faculties and directorates but also from Cambridge University, Goldsmiths and Business in the Community.
We welcomed many speakers who had come to us from Stonewall, King’s College London, Kingston University, the Students Union, and many other from the university. The speakers on the day talked on a wide range of topics including, Stonewall Workplace Equality Index, Athena SWAN, Race Equality Charter, Student Parents, Disability, religion and belief, mental health, BME.
Our participants really enjoyed the day and we thank them for attending and our speakers for taking part.
The university has been ranked as one of the UK’s most gay-friendly workplaces in Stonewall Top 100 Employers, published today.
Greenwich is placed at 80th in this list of the nation’s best-performing employers, drawn from Stonewall’s Workplace Equality Index 2016, an annual audit of workplace culture for lesbian, gay, bi and trans staff. More
Oscars head Cheryl Boone Isaacs is taking action to “alter the make-up” of their membership, after Spike Lee and Jada Pinkett Smith’s refusal to attend because of the mostly white nominees.
Boone Isaacs praised the “wonderful work” of the nominees but said she was “heartbroken” at the lack of diversity. More
Rimla Akhtar is the first Muslim woman – and one of only six women in total – to sit on the 121-strong FA Council. She is chair of the Muslim Women’s Sports Foundation and worked with Olympic organisers to advise them on female representation at London 2012.
Rimla is a Liverpool fan and both coaches and plays football. She captained the British Muslim Women’s football team in 2005 and played cricket for her county as a teenager. Rimla has been involved in a number of campaigns to make football more inclusive, including a successful campaign to get FIFA to accept that women should be allowed to play football wearing hijabs.
As chair of the UK’s Muslim Women’s Sport Foundation (MWSF), her mission is both simple, and daunting: to promote diversity in British sports, an arena overwhelmingly dominated by white men.
She is also the co-founder of The Listening Service, which provides mental health awareness and support for women, with a particular focus on those from ethnic minorities.
Rimla’s achievements were marked when she was awarded an MBE in the Queen’s Birthday Honours list for services to equality and diversity in sport.
On 4 December it is International Day of Persons with Disabilities and with this in mind we have chosen Yinka Shonibare as our Inspirational Diversity Champion of the Month.
Yinka is an artist whose work explores issues of colonialism alongside those of race and class, through a range of media which include painting, sculpture, photography, installation art, and, more recently, film and performance. He examines, in particular, the construction of identity and tangled interrelationship between Africa and Europe and their respective economic and political histories. A hallmark of his art is the brightly coloured fabric he uses
At the age of 18 Yinka contracted transverse myelitis, an inflammation across the spinal cord, which resulted in a long term physical disability where one side of his body is paralysed. As a result of this he uses assistants to make works under his direction.
Yinka studied Fine Art first at Byam Shaw School of Art (now Central Saint Martins College of Art and Design) and then at Goldsmiths, where he received his MFA, graduating as part of the Young British Artists generation.
Following his studies, he worked as an arts development officer for Shape Arts, an organisation which makes arts accessible to disabled people.
In 2004, he was shortlisted for the Turner Prize for his Double Dutch exhibition at the Museum Boijmans van Beuningen in Rotterdam and for his solo show at the Stephen Friedman Gallery, London.
One of Yinka’s most seen works was ‘Nelson’s Ship in a Bottle’ which became was the first public art commission on the Fourth Plinth in Trafalgar Square.
Yinka became an Honorary Fellow of Goldsmiths’ College in 2003, received an Honorary Doctorate (Fine Artist) from the Royal College of Art in 2010, was elected Royal Academician by the Royal Academy of Arts in 2013 and in 2004 Yinka was awarded an MBE.
To find out more about Yinka and his work see his website at http://www.yinkashonibarembe.com/ .
Transgender Awareness Week, starts on 14 November leading up to Transgender Day of Remembrance on 20 November, when transgender advocates raise awareness of the transgender community through education and advocacy activities. With this in mind we have chosen April Ashley as our Inspirational Diversity Champion of the Month.
April is a model and restaurant hostess and one of the first British people to undergo gender reassignment surgery.
April was born George Jamieson and joined the Merchant Navy in 1951. Following two suicide attempts which resulted in being discharged from the Merchant Navy and being sent to a mental institution, April moved to London from Liverpool. Having started cross-dressing, she moved to Paris in the late 1950s, began using the name Toni April and joined the famous French entertainer Coccinelle in the cast of the drag cabaret at the Carousel Theatre.
In May 1960 April had pioneering seven-hour-long sex reassignment surgery. Following which all her hair fell out and she endured significant pain, but the operation was successful.
After her surgery April became a sought-after model who was photographed by David Bailey and featured in the pages of Vogue magazine. But the joy at her successful transition was not to last. Later in 1961 she was betrayed by a friend who sold her story to the Sunday People for £5. She never worked as model again in Britain and she would continue to suffer prejudice and discrimination in the decades that followed.
In 2005, after the passage of the Gender Recognition Act 2004, April was finally legally recognised as a female and issued with a new birth certificate.
In December 2012 April was recognised for her tireless work on behalf of the transgender community, being awarded an MBE for her services to transgender equality. She was also awarded a Lifetime Achievement honour at the European Diversity Awards 2014
A major exhibition ‘April Ashley: portrait of a lady’ was held at the Museum of Liverpool from 27 September 2013 to 1 March 2015. There is also a film being produced about April’s life.
To find out more about April and her work see her website at http://www.april-ashley.com/
October is Black History Month and with that in mind we have chosen Moira Stuart as our Inspirational Diversity Champion of the month.
Moira Stuart’s career in radio and television spans more than two decades. She started her BBC career as a production assistant in Radio’s Talks and Documentaries department in the 1970s , before moving on to become a BBC Radio 4 announcer and a newsreader and programme presenter. Moira moved to television news in 1981 to become the first female African-Caribbean newsreader, presenting every type of BBC News bulletin before leaving in 2007.
Moira has presented many programmes on radio and television including Best of Jazz on Radio 2, BBC1’s The Holiday Programme, Have I Got News For You! in 2007, and her documentary Moira Stuart in Search of Wilberforce. BBC One’s successful documentary series Who Do You Think You Are? featured Moira in 2004, and she made a memorable appearance as herself in Extras in 2006 . At the moment Moira can be heard reading the news on The Chris Evans Breakfast Show, weekdays, 6:30-9:30.
She has won numerous awards including the TV and Radio Industries Club Best Newscaster awards and the Women of Achievement Television Personality award, she was awarded an OBE in 2001, and she received an Honorary Doctorate from the University of Edinburgh in 2006.
Moira has served on various boards and judging panels including Amnesty International, The Royal Television Society, BAFTA, United Nations Association, the London Fair Play Consortium, the Human Genetics Advisory Commission, the Orange Prize for Literature, the BUPA Communications Panel, the IVCA and the Queen’s Anniversary Prize, and the Grierson Trust.
