(1965 on) – Creative Entrepreneur and Literature Activist

Joy Francis is co-founder and executive director of Words of Colour, co-founder of Digital Women UK and co-founder of the award-winning Synergi Collaborative Centre. She is longstanding activist for racial equality and cultural inclusion in the media, publishing and creative industries. She collaborated with the Media Diversity Institute to launch the UK’s first Diversity and the Media MA at the University of Westminster in 2012. She was the inaugural project manager for the Jerwood Compton Poetry Fellowships (2016-18) and was appointed as the media liaison lead for the Hillsborough Inquests by leading civil rights law firm Birnberg Peirce. In 2019, Joy was selected for the UK’s first Museum of Colour’s People of Letters Digital Gallery as a literature influencer and was a Judge for the British Book Awards 2022. 

Meeting Joy Francis over a decade ago was a revelation. This firecracker of a PR expert has a long history of fighting for the empowerment of black and brown people within the media and publishing industries. She’s done this through her own creative entrepreneurship and by passing on her knowledge to others – which Speaking Volumes has also been a beneficiary of. More power to her.

Sharmilla Beezmohun

Read more: https://wordsofcolour.co.uk/team/

https://rsliterature.org/fellow/joy-francis/

Photograph Adrianne McKenzie