Safiya Mckenzie used to take day journeys to London as a toddler, however when she handed Somerset Home she did not see it as a spot reflecting her background. “The very last thing that got here to my thoughts was my very own heritage,” she recollects. “Bodily house itself echoes British Imperial energy.”

Mckenzie is a designer at Comuzi, a London-based design and know-how studio that works with manufacturers and organizations to make them match for the long run in a quickly altering world. As a part of his residency at Somerset Home Studios, Comuzi simply accomplished a challenge with six of the group’s rising creatives from the Future Producers program – Jahnavi Inniss, Okocha Obasi, RhyanRhyan, Zak Agnew, Nkechinyere Nwobani-Akanwo and Kayleigh De Sousa – responding to methods of exploring heritage within the context of Somerset Home.

The primary conversations between Comuzi and the long run producers revealed that Mckenzie was not alone in his encounters with cultural and creative establishments. “We have all had very comparable experiences,” she says. “We talked about how necessary it’s to protect the black heritage within the UK, and likewise to critically query the lens by way of which historical past is introduced to us. Who’s the precedence for tales? Who’re thrown out? How would possibly we have fun the tradition, traditions and worldviews of individuals in our communities?

“Naturally, conversations started to emerge about how historical past, artwork and identification are deeply linked to one another. Whether or not deliberately or not, artists proceed to play an enormous function in “reflecting time” by way of their work, as said by Nina Simone. “We explored how it’s by discovering our tradition, the tales of our ancestors, that we’re invited to confidently defend our black identification.”