Author: Nina Cottam-Highway

Karen Tracey Blackett OBE was raised in Reading and attended the University of Portsmouth as the daughter of first-generation Barbadian immigrants

Dame Sharon Michele White DBE is a British businesswoman. She is the current Chair of the John Lewis Partnership and previously held a variety of roles in the Civil Service.

William Manuel Morris, Baron Morris of Handsworth, OJ, DL, widely known as Bill Morris. Is the first black leader of a major British trade union.

Mary Jane Seacole was born in 1805 in Kingston, Jamaica, to James Grant (a Scottish Lieutenant in the British Army and a member of Jamaica’s Free Black Community) and Mrs Grant (a healer who used traditional Caribbean and African herbal medicines).

Sir Steve Rodney McQueen KBE is a British filmmaker and video artist.

Stuart Henry McPhail Hall was born in Kingston, Jamaica in 1932 to parents who were of mixed African, Indian, and British ancestry.

Steel pulse are a British reggae roots band from Handsworth, Birmingham

Bassey is widely regarded as one of the most popular female vocalists in Britain.

Kadeena Cox, MBE, is a British parasport athlete and TV personality.

Phyllis Akua Opoku-Gyimah, also known as ‘Lady Phyll’, is a British political activist and the co-founder of the UK Black Pride.

Rachel Elizabeth “Betty” Campbell MBE was Wales’ first black headteacher and a well-known community activist.

Michaela Ewuraba Boakye-Collinson is an actress, screenwriter, director, producer, and singer from East London.

Idrissa “Idris” Akuna Elba OBE is an actor, director, producer, and musician from Britain.

Olive Morris – Graduate, activist, founder and published writer.

Michael Ebenezer Kwadjo Omari Owuo Jr., professionally known as ‘Stormzy’, is a British rapper from Croydon, London

David Thomas Pitt, Baron Pitt of Hampstead, was a British Labour Party politician and political activist. He was the longest-serving Black MP in the House of Commons.

“Sustainability is a political choice, not a technical one. It’s not a question of whether we can be sustainable, but whether we choose to be”

– Gary Lawrence

One of England’s most esteemed and well respected footballers, Raheem Sterling, is a superb athlete with astounding personal resilience.

Too often, activism is just ignored by those in power. Quiet activism could be exactly what we need to change this.

For decades Operation Black Vote and Lord Woolley have helped to enfranchise thousands in Britain, now they are defending thousands more from disenfrachisement.

Naomi Campbell has been labelled many things in her career, often without justification. She is however a pioneer in the fashion industry and someone who has always fought for the disadvantaged.

Karl Zelik is helping to further the value of wearable supportive equipment, while also becoming a vital black role model in the world of science.