Burning Work

Rethinking Community Development

Burning Work is a process of rethinking the rootedness of people from former British Colonies and their descendants through an intergenerational project between Windrush Defenders Legal C.I.C, Channels Research Group and multiple collaborators within and in relation to African Caribbean communities. This work involves techniques of archiving, investigation, design and the construction of alternative public forums, as spaces to interpret and contest the post-colonial architecture of UK immigration law enforcement, the racialised enclosure of the UK Criminal Justice System, and disparities recursively evidenced in the data infrastructure of socio-economic formations.

The Archive Component to the Burning Work project anticipates the assertion in Wendy Williams’ Windrush Lessons Learned Review (WLLR) of a “lack of institutional memory” within state departments regarding the impact of UK colonial and post-colonial governing frameworks on the lived experience of the Windrush Generation. What is the relation between the absence of institutional memory, and the presence of “serious harm” documented in testimonies within the WLLR, and heritage collections such as the Ahmed Iqbal Ullah Race Relations Resource Centre at Manchester University, the Black Cultural Archives and the Huntley Archives at London Metropolitan Archives?