The work of making racial justice a reality must be rooted in community – in our individual and collective experiences, hopes and contributions. Create Not Destroy’s design was created in response to dialogue and workshops with local communities.

My immediate intention for the globe design was to create an image that was stark and bold with questions for the viewer to ponder and consider about the ramification of the Transatlantic Trade in Enslaved Africans and its damning legacy. 

I wanted to reference the graphic nature of poster art and protest art, so in my piece I have painted a protest. On the placards the protesters hold I added information and comments about the Transatlantic Trade in Enslaved Africans. I also wanted to relate the historical struggle for abolition to our struggles today for equality and justice. 

As I engaged with the community in Birmingham in preparing this work, I wanted to represent their feeling of loss but also of unity.

Based in London and the West Midlands with history steeped in early London graffiti art culture and graphic design. Create Not Destroy specialises in Videography, Photography, Mural Art and Design.

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Jay's design responds to the theme ‘Mother Africa’, which explores the richness and reality of Africa before the Transatlantic Trade in Enslaved Africans; the impact of the Transatlantic Trade in Enslaved Africans and European colonialism on Africa; and considers and celebrates Africa’s present and future.

For this commission, I have been deeply inspired by my time in the London Lucumi Choir, where we sang songs to the Orisha (Yoruba gods and goddesses) alongside my own spiritual interests in the concept of ‘The Divine Feminine’, an archetypal deity that appears throughout all world cultures. I bring this back to the Mother Africa theme, by relating it to the three most famous Orisha of the Pantheon: Yemaya, Osun and Oya.

Yemaya (Mother of Oceans) represents the older Mother. She is gentle and nurturing, and like many Divine Feminine figures is also full of power, exerting her rage when necessary. She represents the ‘new world’, where African diasporic women have had to learn to be both nurturer and protector.

Osun represents the young Mother, full of energy, naivete, sweetness and softness. She represents the old world, before many of our ancestors were taken. Sweet innocence and true connection with nature.

Oya bridges the two, representing the middle passage. Oya is a Warrior Goddess. Our ancestors had to be strong in the middle passage – Maroons, renegades, warriors.

All three energies represent Mother Africa. African diasporic women such as I have had to tap into these energies throughout our lives to survive in this world.

Finally, Ghanaian Adinkra symbols, beautiful in gold, represent the qualities we have found amongst our communities as women, to keep moving forward through adversity:

• Sankofa: learning from the past
• Asese ye duru: divine mother earth, sustaining life,
• Bese Saka: abundance, plenty, togetherness
• Akoben: battle cry
• Aya: hardy fern, grows despite difficulty
• Akoma: patience, tolerance
• Wawa aba: toughness and perseverance
• Nkonsonkonson: a reminder of strength in community.

For Jay, art is a primal practice that connects us to Ancestral Strength, Sacred Healing and the Divine Cosmos. Growing up in East London, Jay was surrounded by a multicultural environment, and a close proximity to Epping Forest. 

From her time spent in forests and taking trips to the beaches of her ancestral home Antigua, Jay possesses a long-lasting love for divine nature. This theme is present throughout her artwork, where she makes romantic references to water and flora. An Obeah woman and Spiritworker, Afro-Caribbean cosmologies lie at the forefront of Jay Percy’s psyche and art. 

Themes include African diasporic loss of indigenous spirituality, in addition to reminders of the strength we can all find by reconnecting with the animist practices respective to ancestral homelands, prior to colonisation.

 Jay works with acrylics and hand sews cowries and crystals directly onto canvas. She combines her love of highly saturated colours and royal golds with African Orisha worship, psychedelic print, and a fundamental belief in the right to explore one’s own consciousness.

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Donna's design responds to the theme ‘The Reality of Being Enslaved’, which makes real the experience of those people who were enslaved, from their capture, captivity and voyage to lives and deaths enslaved in different contexts, places and generations.

This design responds to the theme The Reality of Being Enslaved and in particular the story of Voyage. Whilst researching my design, I came upon the poem Slavery written by Hannah More, one of the most prominent female writers championing the abolitionist cause in eighteenth century Britain. I was particularly drawn to the lines of the poem which referred to light and darkness. 

I was reminded of the slave ships, or ‘Guineamen’ as they were known, and the horrific realities of the tortured human cargo crammed into their dark hulls. My design references the great maritime art of the eighteenth century and presents a subverted view of the golden age of sail. The glorious ships with their billowing white sails bathed in sunlight stand in stark contrast to what lies beneath. 

The base of the globe has been inspired by the 1791 Brookes slave ship diagram – one of the most recognisable images from the campaign to abolish the Transatlantic Trade in Enslaved Africans in Britain – which provided the public with a clear visual representation of conditions on board slave ships for the first time. From a distance the base appears as a pattern but on closer inspection the figures of the enslaved are revealed. 

Extracts of the poem wrap around my globe design, delivering a visual metaphor for the abundant wealth and pleasure that the sweat of the dead has procured for others.

Donna Newman is the Artist behind Eden-Designs Murals.

A freelance artist based in the Midlands, she has been working as a professional muralist and painter for over 15 years. Donna responds to clients with creativity and flair producing original, playful designs in a wide variety of subjects. Working predominantly as a commissioned artist within school settings, she seeks to inspire young people by transforming their learning environments with her vibrant artwork. 

Her unique and innovative designs always seek to educate through their creative interpretation of the curriculum and she often works directly with school groups to create bespoke artwork through collaborative children’s art workshops. A self-proclaimed addict of public art trails, Donna has worked closely with Wild in Art on over 50 sculpture commissions.

http://www.eden-designs.co.uk

Kassessa’s design responds to the theme ‘Stolen Legacy: The Rebirth of a Nation’, which brings to life how Britain was transformed and enriched as a result of the Transatlantic Trade in Enslaved Africans and the free labour of the enslaved. It explores the legacy of the Transatlantic Trade in Enslaved Africans in building the financial and trading power of Britain; strengthening the Church and the might of universities; and establishing dynastic influence and power.

Part 2 of a series AFROPINK.

My globe concept is based on the legacy stolen from African people. With my work I suggest that we still feel the scars from the inhumane treatment of humans during this time which I believe has led to a loss of self-love for Africans.

In this painting I feature boats that crossed the Atlantic and I show people in the water, thrown overboard. I want to draw attention to the loss of life and the insurance policies that were used to protect the slave owners and transporters, not the enslaved people. Despite the fact that the enslaved people were humans, and therefore priceless, they were treated as cargo.

I wish that the world will start looking at Africans with fresh minds and love this great continent - its people and cultures. 

My colour palate has different shades of pink as the dominant colour tone and I thought about the idea of Afro Pink which speaks to the love I want to send to Africa, to Africans, to everyone.

Kassessa is a visual self-taught artist from Angola. From an early age, he was interested in art and developed a great passion for creating plays, toys and art crafts. He creates different concepts and translates them into different artistic expressions through live events – stages and exhibitions – or through printed, digital, sculpture and painted mediums.

He enjoys working with different materials and he expresses himself through his art, highlighting and bringing awareness to different societal issues and the people they affect.

Tamika's design responds to the theme ‘Abolition & Emancipation’, which shares the story of the campaign for abolition, its key events, heroes and allies. It also lays bare the full, messy motivations and process of abolition, which were not as pure as often represented.

The Transatlantic Trade in Enslaved Africans is an abstract concept for most of the world. Macro concepts such as “Africa” and “the West” are frequently used loosely in conversation.

The British, having established a system for slaver compensation prior to emancipation, kept painstakingly detailed records of the enslaved who were displaced to their colonial dependencies. For those of us in post-colonial Caribbean countries, the registers of the enslaved make the experience much more micro; individual details of the enslaved in our respective countries is quantifiable, even if only for a short space of time. 

This globe design superimposes a snapshot of the register of enslaved people from Golden Grove plantation in Cat Island in the Bahamas from 1822, alongside some of the earliest photographs of the colonial Bahamas by J.F.Coonley (1889) and William Henry Jackson (1905) from the National Art Gallery of The Bahamas’ National Collection. 

It contains the names of Charlotte: an enslaved woman who, based upon archival records, played a large part in the uprising of enslaved people at Golden Grove in 1831 – and who made several attempts on the lives of her slavers – as well as her children, William and Guy. 

The advent of photography on the heels of the end of apprenticeship in British colonies contributed to a purposely skewed and romanticised representation of people and place. But the registers of the enslaved take us closer to truths surrounding the conditions of their existence – one of the most glaring is that slavers truly regarded them simply as chattel.

Tamika is a documentarian and multimedia visual artist. A Bahamian native, Tamika’s work examines the complexities of living in a place shrouded in tourism’s ideal during the age of climate concerns. 

Emphasising the importance of Bahamian cultural identity for cultural preservation, Tamika documents aspects of Bahamian life not curated for tourist consumption to intervene in the historical archive. This work counters the widely held paradisiacal view of the Caribbean, the origins of which arose post-emancipation through a controlled, systematic visual framing and commodification of the tropics.

https://www.tamikagalanis.com

Gayani's design responds to the theme ‘A Complex Triangle’, which explores the complexity of Britain’s relationship with Africa, the Americas and the Caribbean across generations, and the legacy of the Transatlantic Trade in Enslaved Africans on the UK’s role and reputation in the world.

Much ancient knowledge about the healthgiving and healing power of plants comes from Africa. This knowledge was passed on from generation to generation, from continent to continent, to enable people to heal, survive and even connect with the sacred. The history of these plants that are now known and grown throughout the world is entwined with the Transatlantic Trade in Enslaved Africans.

If the enslaved became ill in the horrendous conditions on the ships that transported them from Africa to the Americas, they would not receive medical treatment and risked being abandoned to the sea – thrown overboard – even before they died. Knowing this, the enslaved learned to look after their health by hiding medicinal leaves and seeds in their clothes or hair, to which that they could add to water or chew on to get better on the voyage.

My globe shows many of these plants and flowers. Coca from the kola nut – which acted as a sedative; cannabis sticks and leaves which were bitten or chewed when ill, and the aloe vera leaf which could be bitten to satiate feelings of hunger when there was no food. 

Ocra and bitter melon all come from Africa and are still today used as herbal medicines worldwide. The eggplant – also originally from Africa – has medicinal properties and is now grown all over the world in hybrid species. The peacock flower is actually very tiny, but its impact in the Caribbean is very large – it is still drunk regularly to maintain and improve health – so it is shown much enlarged on my globe. Pods from the cotton bushes, one of the most profitable crops produced by enslaved labour in America, are also included - raw cotton was exported to be processed in Britain and then sold all over the world. 

The background of the globe is sugar cane; not native to  Africa but grown in the Caribbean with enslaved labour and this is symbolised by the chains amongst the plants. 

In modern societies, our access to medicine is often restricted by corporate monopolies – we have lost touch with these natural and ancient healing powers. The image of Justicea in the centre of the globe holding a very unbalanced scale and without a sword – her power has been taken away – represents this.

The gold paint on top of the globe represents the natural resources of Africa’s gold and botanical treasures before it was plundered.

I have painted this globe in a naïve, childlike style as a tribute to my parents, both of whom I lost very recently: my mother was a primary school teacher and I often drew artwork for her classes, and my father was an established artists and sculptor.

Gayani lives in Birmingham and is an artist, vegan chef and ethical floral designer originally from Sri Lanka who has lived in the UK for 27 years. Her work is based on nature, especially plants and flowers. She has been a Wild in Art artist since 2017. She has been glass painting for 26 years and is preparing to have an exhibition to celebrate 4,000 pieces of glass art that are from her collection. She uses art as therapy to help others (and herself) to overcome grief and improve mental health.

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Gabriel's design responds to the theme ‘Echoes in the Present’, which focuses on how the Transatlantic Trade in Enslaved Africans and its related history has present day negative consequences: systemic inequalities and injustice; entrenched racism and prejudices; and the generational echoes which have traumatic physical, behavioural, psychological and material impact.

In this painting I reference the Brookes diagram which showed how enslaved Africans were positioned on ships from West Africa to the Americas and Caribbean.

People were positioned in a cramped order, way over safe capacities, and head to head. I decided to depict two children who are head to head and holding hands. They are trying to comfort each other in this frightening experience of transatlantic travel.  

I'm interested in how this relates to the African diaspora in Britain today. I imagine Echoes in the Present to be the divisive nature of colonial borders which continue to be promoted amongst Black people.

However, in resistance, we are united – like the two children in my piece. We can choose to hold onto each other and be one others' support as we move towards racial justice together.

Gabriel’s artwork combines the twin disciplines of printmaking and painting, primarily in oil on paper. Through his singular technique, Choto seeks new pathways into the painted image by taking cues from the surface quality produced by the printmaking process.

His evolving, experimental practice involves layering painted areas of naturalism over the delicate compositional architecture of etching, resulting in paintings where physical presence and absence imply a metaphoric liminal state. 

Sensitive and intimate, these images include close family members, depicting quiet moments of contemplation or affectionate domestic scenes taken from old photographs, progressing into self portraits where through constructed situations the artist examines his own identity.

Choto’s intimate paintings draw on themes of home, pride, identity and diaspora.