Cremé Project Podcast Cremé Podcast

Professor Gus John is the former Director of Education for Hackney and a veteran campaigner, who has been in the struggle for race equality for over 50 years. In this special episode for Black History Month Professor John reflects on his life of activism and takes the long view of the history of race relations in Britain, the state of the education system and relations with the police, bringing us to the present day with the cases of Chris Kaba and Child Q.

Yvette Williams has lived in North Kensington for over 30 years, previously having worked with the Mangrove Community Association and has served as a Trustee for the Tabernacle Community Centre. Both Yvette and her daughter witnessed the fire at Grenfell Tower, after being alerted by a family friend who was evacuated from one of the walkways. After that tragic day in 2017, she became one of the founders of Justice4Grenfell (J4G) a community-led organisation, focused on obtaining justice for the bereaved families, and survivors.
In this episode we discuss the history of race relations in West London and the wider socio-economic conditions that led up to the Grenfell fire.

Qureshi is the CEO of the Migrants’ Rights Network – a charity that works alongside migrants in their fight for rights and justice.  

In this interview, as well as the work of MRN we discuss attempts to separate race from migration, Priti Patel and her Rwanda Plan and how the Ukrainian refugee crisis has exposed the double standards of the UK immigration policy.

The education system has long being a battle-front in the fight for racial equality and Lavinya Stennett is right on the frontlines.
Lavinya is founder and CEO of The Black Curriculum - an organisation that believe that by delivering Black history programmes, providing teacher training and campaigning through mobilising young people, they can facilitate social change.
Lavinya is the youngest of my guests on the podcast so far, and her organisation was only formed three years ago whilst she was still at university. But in that short time she has made major inroads into changing our education system to better reflect the diversity of the UK’s population.
In this interview we discuss her own troubled path through the UK education system, her recent interactions with government, and getting endorsement from Vogue magazine and fashion designer Virgil Abloh.

No podcast series discussing racism would be complete if it did not touch on anti-Semitism.
This episode's guest is Dr Edie Friedman - Executive Director of the Jewish Council for Racial Equality (JCORE).  
Edie was born in Chicago. A student in the 1960s, she was heavily influenced by the civil rights and peace movements.
She came in to England to study in Leeds and subsequently worked for Oxfam and the Community Relations Council in Ealing, west London.
She founded the Jewish Council for Racial Equality in 1976.
In this episode we discuss her lifetime of activism, anti-Jewish conspiracy theories, anti-Semitism in the Labour Party and the controversial comments about the Holocaust from Whoopi Goldberg.

In this episode I speak to Tebussum Rashid the Deputy Chief Executive at the Black Training Enterprise Group (aka BTEG).

Tebs has over 25 years' experience of working in the charity and voluntary sector, helping create and develop new organisations and projects. But it was a tough climb to get to where she is today, being the eldest daughter in a Muslim family, having to overcome, not just the low expectations of her teachers, but also of her family and community.

Tebs successfully negotiated her way around those barriers, and today, as well as being the Deputy Chief Exec at BTEG, she also runs her own training company – Sukoon Ltd - through which she delivers a diverse range of courses and facilitates strategic planning away days.

In this episode we discuss her life of intersectionality fighting sexism, racism and islamophobia and her lifetime struggling as a Muslim woman to define her own destiny.