Featuring photographs, poetry and essays, it is a visual poem reflecting on the complexity, strength and resilience of Black Britain. In their journey around the UK, the writers uncover hidden stories of black people living in the unlikeliest of places, from rundown seaside resorts to rural beach locations. Come and hear these tales, which echo across centuries of the black experience, transforming and illuminating the history of Britain.

Co-produced by Speaking Volumes, Sprung Sultan and Coastal Carolina University

Mohammed Ali is an educator and curator and driven by a shared commitment to transform society. Art meets faith, identity and social change in his work, which adorns walls and public spaces and continues to change the visual landscapes of the cities we live in. His art has inspired and informed a new generation across the globe to boldly express their identity and ideals. He isa pioneer in the street-art movement, fusing street art with Islamic script and patterns, delivering powerful and moving messages. Ali’s ethos of ‘taking art to the people’ also combines street art with live performances, installations, digital projections and moving soundscapes. From street canvases in New York, Amsterdam, London and Melbourne to intimate performances in the Vatican, Ali uses his art and collaborations with critically acclaimed musicians and poets to produce unique immersive experiences. In 2008 he established Soul City Arts, a global arts movement bringing together artists, activists and communities. He has been commissioned by international NGOs, corporations and charities.Mohamed’s videography illustrates Rafeef’s poem on the Not Quite Right for Us digital tour.

Instgram: aliaerosol / Twitter: @AliAerosol

David Blight studied theatre design at Wimbledon College of Art and over the decades has designed various plays, musicals, operas and ballets for The National Theatre, English National Opera (ENO) and the Royal Opera House, as well as for smaller and regional theatres in the UK and abroad. David has designed twelve world premieres of new operas; two of his costumes for the opera Greek (staged at the ENO/shown on BBC 1) are on display at the V&A as part of their theatre exhibition. In 2007 he was nominated for a BAFTA for his design work on the eighteenth-century drama A Harlot’s Progress based on Hogarth’s prints, which was produced by Channel 4. David’s artwork illustrates Helen Mort’s poem and Shagufta Sharmeen Tania’s story in the Not Quite Right for Us digital tour.

http://www.instagram.com/the_blighter64

Becky Bryson has been a practising artist for the last twenty years. She has worked across the UK, from Dunblane to Devon, and internationally in Hong Kong, Norway, Australia, Ireland and Portugal. Becky specialises in large-scale makes for outdoor events. She is an associate artist with world-renowned companies such as The Lantern Company and Walk the Plank, and has been commissioned on projects for Tate Liverpool, Netflix and Chester Zoo, to name but a few. Her illustration work has been used many times to illustrate conferences, events and marketing for organisations, includingthe NHS, the Environment Agency and the Ministry of Defence. Becky’s artwork illustrates Ashleigh Nugent’s poem on the Not Quite Right for Us digital tour.

http://www.beckybryson.com

Ria Dastidar, aka Uberpup, works as an illustrator & designer in London. Her commercial work ranges across animation, print and product design for clients such as British Airways, WH Smith and the BBC. Her illustration is characterised by a playful sense of humour, use of bold colour, collage and patterns— all underpinned by digital experimentation. Ria’s artwork illustrates Rishi Dastidar’s poem on the Not Quite Right for Us digital tour.

http://www.uberpup.net

London based illustrator Karl Frankson has been working digitally using Adobe Photoshop for over eight years, practicing portraiture, landscapes and stylised illustrations. He uses a Wacom Intuos tablet to digitally paint a broad range of subjects, incorporating innovative techniques using programs such as Cinema 4D. Karl’s traditional practice with ink, pencils and acrylics have fed into these processes, while his inspiration often draws on spiritual and esoteric themes. His affinity for the natural world and experience of the human figure enable him to visualise and create a seamless fusion between people and landscapes, to create an atmosphere and form unintended narratives. Karl’s artwork illustrates Leone Ross’ story on the Not Quite Right for Us digital tour.

uk.linkedin.com/in/karl-frankson-5543b598

Adelaide Ivánova was born in Recife in Brazil and is a journalist and political activist working with poetry, photography, performance, translation and publishing. Her poems have been translated into German, Galician, English, Spanish, Greek and Italian. Her texts and photographic work were printed in publications such as The Huffington Post (USA), Marie Claire (BR) and Modern Poetry in Translation (UK) among others. Her photo reportage is part of the collection of Kunst Museum Dieselkraftwerk (Germany), L’arthotèque –Museum of Fine Arts (France) and Galeria Murilo Castro (Brazil). In 2018 her poetry book o martelo won the Rio Literature Award. She edits the anti-capitalist poetry zine MAIS NORDESTE, PVFR! with leftist poets from the north-east of Brazil. Adelaide lives in Berlin, where she tries to earn a living as babysitter, life model, waitress and other alienating jobs. Adelaide’s photographs illustrate Joshua Idehen’s poem on the Not Quite Right for Us digital tour.

https://adelaideivanova.com/

Photo by Pedro Pinho

Born and brought up in Trinidad, Dominique Le Gendre trained as a classical guitarist in Paris, France while studying Musicology at the Sorbonne. London-based for over thirty years, she has composed extensively for theatre, dance, television and award-winning indie films and radio drama for BBC Radio 3 and 4. A former Associate Artist of the Royal Opera House, her chamber works and operas have been commissioned and performed by numerous UK and international ensembles, including Royal Opera House soloists, the Philharmonia Orchestra, Manning Camerata, the Ibis Ensemble, Metamorphosis Dance and Calabash Foundation for the Arts. Dominique is the Artistic Director of the arts charity, StrongBack Productions. Dominique’s new piece of music was specially commissioned for the Not Quite Right for Us digital tour.

http://www.dominiquelegendre.com / http://www.strongbackproductions.com

Danny Nutt is an actor who trained at Rose Bruford drama school. His TV work includes: Call The Midwife, Doctors, The Bill, Casualty, The Infinite Worlds Of HG Wells, I’m Alan Partridge, Family Affairs, Holby City, Eastenders, Keen Eddie, Footballer’s Wives and London’s Burning. His film work includes: Captain Phillips, The Trench and Velvet Goldmine.Theatre includes: Philistines (NT), Whatever Happened To Baby Jane? (Citizen’s Glasgow), Still Life (The Drum), The Lion, The Witch and The Wardrobe, To Kill A Mockingbird and Master Harold and The Boys (Leicester Haymarket), Bad Blood (No. 1 tour), Romeo and Juliet (Creation), The Rivals (Compass), Equus (Salisbury Playhouse), Body Language, Knights In Plastic Armour and House & Garden (Stephen Joseph, Scarborough) and Lord of The Flies (Pilot Theatre). Danny reads the part of Mr Jones, the Surgeon, in Gabriel Gbadamosi’s play extract on the Not Quite Right for Us digital tour.

http://www.hobsons-international.com/voices/danny-nutt

Rex Obano was born in London and trained at the Webber Douglas Academy of Dramatic Art where he was awarded the 1995 Laurence Olivier Bursary. His theatre work includes: Festen, To Kill A Mockingbird (Theatre Clwyd); The Emperor Jones (National Theatre); Hamlet, Cymbeline, The Spanish Tragedy, More Words (Royal Shakespeare Company); Our Country’s Good (Watermill Theatre, Newbury); African Snow (York Theatre Royal, Trafalgar Studios and tour); The Tempest (New Wolsey, Ipswich); The Wizard of Oz, To Kill a Mockingbird (Leicester Haymarket); The Beggars Opera, Flyin’ West (Orange Tree Theatre); Hamlet, Twelfth Night (Merlin International Theatre, Budapest); Macbeth (Ludlow Festival). His television and film include: Moses Jones, Jack Brown and the Curse of the Crown, On the 8-Ball, Tales of The Underground, The Bill, Whacked! and Angell’s Hell; and opera includes Down by the Greenwoodside (Three Mills Island). Rex reads the part of Mr Palmer, the Bosun, in Gabriel Gbadamosi’s play extract on the Not Quite Right for Us digital tour.

http://www.rexobano.com

Efea Rutlin is a dreamer. She has designed and illustrated for the Joint Council for the Welfare of Immigrants’ ‘Work it Out’ Campaign and the Black Gold Arts 2020 festival, and is a regular contributor No Borders Manchester. Efea completed an undergraduate degree in politics before realising that an MA in Art Gallery and Museum Studies might be more up her street. She’s hoping this will allow her to combine ideas about identity, representation and community with a holistic and creative embodiment of those values. She always wants to learn more, past, present, future and who we are throughout it. Efea’s artwork illustrates Cheryl Martin’s poem in the Not Quite Right for Us digital tour.

Instagram: @wip_efea

Carielyn Tunion is a multimedia artist, content producer and cultural worker, working from a decolonial perspective to promote the social & holistic well being of marginalised peoples and communities. Drawing on her background in video and screen production, Carielyn uses video poetry to explore the impacts of colonialism, intergenerational trauma and recovery. She also dabbles in writing, illustration, pin-making and works as a professional arts model. Carielyn occupies space as an immigrant-settler woman of colour in the matrix of coloniality – and identifies as a Tagalog daughter of the archipelago beyond the gender binary. She currently lives on unceded Darkinjung country. Carielyn’s videography illustrates Michelle Cahill’s poem on the Not Quite Right for Us digital tour.

http://www.aliencry.com / http://www.instagram.com/carielyn.btl

Sarah Ushurhe is an artist, illustrator and writer. In 2018, her graphic novel-in-progress was shortlisted for both the Laydeez Do Comics Prize and Myriad First Graphic Novel Competition. In 2019, she was commissioned as part of the first round of BBC Arts, New Creatives for her art history moving image and narrative, which highlights the life of Fanny Eaton, a Pre-Raphaelite muse of mixed heritage. Fanny Eaton: The Forgotten Pre-Raphaelite Model aired in 2020 on BBC Four as part of the programme Get Animated! BBC Introducing Arts and also online as part of BBC Arts New Creatives series. Sarah’s artwork illustrates Maame Blue’s story on the Not Quite Right for Us digital tour.

http://www.sarahushurhe.co.uk/

Amina Atiq is a Yemeni- Scouse writer, a performance artist, facilitator and activist, awarded the Liverpool John Moore’s University Citizenship for her community engagement work. A Young Associate for Curious Minds and BBC Words First Finalist 2019, she has been featured on various artistic platforms including BBC 4 Radio, Arab News, The Independent, British Muslim TV @thewarehouse, Writing on the Wall. Since the war in Yemen began, Amina has been campaigning with Campaign Against the Arms Trade and Oxfam. Over the last six years she has connected artists and writers directly with Yemeni youth creatives to build a global community. Current work includes being a remote writer in resident with Metal Southend on a new project ‘Yemeni Women on the Frontline’. 

Twitter: @AminaAtiqPoetry

Sharmilla Beezmohun has worked in publishing since 1994, training at Virago and at Heinemann (African and Caribbean Writers Series). For eleven years she was Deputy Editor of Wasafiri, the Magazine of International Contemporary Writing. In 2010 She co-founded Speaking Volumes Live Literature Productions with Sarah Sanders; they were joined by Nick Chapman in 2011. In 2010 Sharmilla’s first novel, Echoes of a Green Land, was published in translation in Spain as Ecos de la tierra verde. She edited Continental Shifts, Shifts in Perception: Black Cultures and Identities in Europe (2016) and, with Sarah White and Roxy Harris, co-edited A Meeting of the Continents: The International Book Fair of Radical Black and Third World Books (2005). Sharmilla is a Trustee of Carcanet Publishers, Modern Poetry in Translation magazine and the George Padmore Institute, an archive housing unique collections of material from pioneering Black British political and cultural organisations of the last 70 years. She is also on the international organising committee of AfroEurope@s, a cross-continent academic and cultural network.

Maame Blue is a Ghanaian writer splitting her time between Melbourne and London. Her work has appeared in various places including Black Ballad, The Independent, AFREADA, Storm Cellar Quarterly (USA), Memoir Mag (USA), Litro Magazine and The Good Journal.Her short story ‘Howl’ appears in the New Australian Fiction 2020 anthology, and her debut novel Bad Love, published by Jacaranda Books, was longlisted for the Not The Booker Prize 2020.

Michelle Cahill is an Australian writer of Indian origin. Born in Kenya, she has lived in the UK and Australia. Her short stories Letter to Pessoa won the New South Wales Premier’s Literary Award for New Writing and was shortlisted in the Steele Rudd Queensland Literary Awards. Her honours include the Hilary Mantel International Short Story Prize and ABR Elizabeth Jolley Short Story Prize shortlist. She was a Fellow at Kingston Writing School, a Visiting Scholar in Creative Writing at UNC, Charlotte, USA, and a Fellow at Hawthornden Castle. Her poetry collection Vishvarupa has been released as a second edition with UWAP. Her essays have appeared in the Sydney Review of Books, Southerly, Westerly and The Weekend Australian. She edits Mascara Literary Review.

afshan d’souza-lodhi was born in Dubai and bred in Manchester. She is a writer of plays and poetry, and was recently commissioned to write and direct a short film for Channel 4 (An Act of Terror) and a radio play for BBC Sounds (Chop Chop). afshan has edited many anthologies and has an essay featured in Picador’s collection by Muslim women called It’s Not About The Burqa. Her debut poetry collection re: desire (Burning Eye Books) seeks to investigate the yearning to love, be loved and belong from desi (South Asian) perspectives.   

As well as her own writing, afshan is keen to develop other younger and emerging artists and sits on the boards of Manchester Literature Festival and Pie Radio. afshan also sits on the steering committee for Northern Police Monitoring Project, an independent campaigning and advocacy organisation that challenges police harassment and violence.

Aminatta Forna is a novelist, memoirist and essayist. Her novels are The Hired Man, The Memory of Love, Ancestor Stones and Happiness. In 2002 she published a memoir of her dissident father and Sierra Leone, The Devil that Danced on the Water. A forthcoming book of essays, The Window Seat, is published by Grove Press in 2021. 

She is the winner of a Windham Campbell Award from Yale University and the Commonwealth Writers’ Prize, and has been a finalist for the Neustadt Prize, the Orange Prize, the Samuel Johnson Prize and the IMPAC Award. Aminatta was made an OBE in the Queen’s 2017 New Year’s Honours list. She is Professor of Creative Writing at Bath Spa University and Director of the Lannan Center at Georgetown University.

Photo by Daniel Mordzinski

Richard Georges is a writer of essays, fiction, and three collections of poetry. His most recent book, Epiphaneia (2019), won the 2020 OCM Bocas Prize for Caribbean Literature, and his first book, Make Us All Islands (2017), was shortlisted for the Forward Prize for Best First Collection. He is a recipient of a Fellowship from the Stellenbosch Institute of Advanced Study and has been listed or nominated for several other prizes, including the Hollick Arvon Caribbean Writers Prize, the Wasafiri New Writing Prize, and a Pushcart Prize. 

Richard works in higher education and lives in the British Virgin Islands, where he has just become that nation’s first Poet Laureate.

Xiaolu Guo is a Chinese British novelist, essayist and filmmaker. Her novels include A Concise Chinese-English Dictionary for Lovers and I Am China. Her memoir Once Upon A Time In The East won the National Book Critics Circle Award 2017 and was shortlisted for the Royal Society of Literature Ondaatje Award and Costa Award. Her most recent novel is A Lover’s Discourse, shortlisted for the Goldsmiths Prize 2020. She was named as a Granta Best of Young British Novelist in 2013. Guo also directed several features and documentaries, including How Is Your Fish Today (Sundance) and UFO In Her Eyes (TIFF). Her feature She, A Chinese received the Golden Leopard Award at the 2009 Locarno Film Festival. She had her film retrospective at London’s Whitechapel Gallery in 2019 and is currently a visiting professor at Baruch College in New York.

John Hegley, born 1953, north London, Anglo-French parentage. Schooled Luton and Bristol, graduated Bradford University in the History of Ideas. Honorary Doctorate in Literature, University of Bedfordshire. John Peel sessions with Popticians,1983/4. Perrier Comedy Award nominee, 1989. Presenter Word of Mouth poetry series, Border TV, 1989. Guardian Review resident poet,1990-1995. Pyjama Game musical ‘time study man’ principal 1999, Birmingham, Toronto, London. BBC Online poet in residence 2000. Keats House, poet in residence, 2012. Three series, Hearing with Hegley, BBC Radio 4. Book titles include New and Selected Potatoes (Bloodaxe) and Glad to wear Glasses (Carlton). 

Daughter, Isabella. Partner, Mel. Dwelling, London Borough of Hackney. Football team, Luton.

Joshua Idehen is a poet, teacher and musician. A British-born Nigerian, his poetry has been published alongside Linton Kwesi Johnson and Anthony Joseph and he has performed at festivals and respected venues across the UK and Europe. 

He collaborated with Mercury nominated artists The Comet Is Coming and Sons of Kemet and with dance pop band Benin City on ‘Last Night’, released in June 2018 by Moshi Moshi Music. He is working on his debut collection and several musical projects.

Catherine Johnson lives in Hastings, she has written over twenty books for young readers, her most recent are To Liberty, published by Bloomsbury and Queen of Freedom, published by Pushkin. Other books include Freedom which won the Little Rebels Prize 2019 and was selected as the IBBY Book of the Year in 2020; Sawbones, which won the Young Quills prize for Historical fiction; and The Curious Tale of the Lady Caraboo, which was nominated for the YA Prize. She also writes for film and television; her work includes Bullet Boy and an adaptation of Miranda Kaufman’s The Black Tudors for Silverprint Pictures.

Born in 1966 and educated in Gaya, a small town in Bihar, India, Tabish Khair is the author of critically-acclaimed books, including the novels Filming: A Love Story, The Thing About Thugs, How to Fight Islamist Terror from the Missionary Position, Just Another Jihadi Jane, and the poetry collections Where Parallel Lines Meet and Man of Glass. His studies include The Gothic, Postcolonialism and Otherness and The New Xenophobia. Winner of the All India Poetry Prize, his novels have been shortlisted for more than a dozen major prizes, including the Man Asian, the DSC Prize, the Sahitya Academy Award and the Encore. 

An associate professor at Aarhus University, Denmark, he has been a Leverhulme Guest Professor at Leeds University, UK, and has held fellowships, among others, at Delhi University, Hong Kong City University and Cambridge University.

Laniyuk is a writer and performer of poetry, short memoir and speculative fiction. She contributed to the book Colouring the Rainbow: Blak, Queer and Trans Perspectives in 2015, has been published online in Djed Press and the Lifted Brow, as well as in print poetry collections such as UQP’s 2019 Solid Air and 2020 Fire Front. She received Canberra’s Noted Writers Festival’s 2017 Indigenous Writers Residency, Overland’s 2018 Writers Residency and was shortlisted for Overland’s 2018 Nakata-Brophy poetry prize. 

She runs poetry workshops for festivals, moderates panel discussions, and has given guest lectures at ANU and The University of Melbourne. She is currently completing her first collection of work to be published through Magabala Books.

Cheryl Martin, co-Artistic Director of Manchester’s Black Gold Arts Festival, has worked as a poet, playwright and director. She was a former Associate Director at Contact Theatre and Director-in-Residence at Edinburgh’s Traverse. A Manchester Evening News Theatre Award winner as both writer (for the musical Heart and Soul, Oldham Coliseum Theatre) and director (of Iron by Rona Munro, Contact), Cheryl also co-produced and directed an Edinburgh Fringe First winner for the Traverse, entitled The World Is Too Much. Cheryl’s first solo stage show Alaska featured at 2016’s A Nation’s Theatre, and 2019’s Summerhall Edinburgh Fringe and Wellcome Festival of Minds and Bodies in London. Her new solo show One Woman won an Unlimited Wellcome Collection Partnership Award; it will premiere in 2021 at Manchester’s HOME, going on to a national tour including the Unlimited Festival at the Southbank Centre. Cheryl was part of the 2019-2020 British Council Australia INTERSECT programme. 

www.cherylmartin.net

E. Ethelbert Miller is a writer and literary activist. He is the author of two memoirs and several books of poetry including The Collected Poems of E. Ethelbert Miller, a comprehensive collection that represents over forty years of his work. He is host of the weekly WPFW morning radio show On the Margin with E. Ethelbert Miller and host and producer of The Scholars on UDC-TV. In recent years, Miller has been inducted into the 2015 Washington DC Hall of Fame and awarded the 2016 AWP George Garrett Award for Outstanding Community Service in Literature and the 2016 DC Mayor’s Arts Award for Distinguished Honour. In 2018, he was appointed as an ambassador for the Authors Guild. Miller’s most recent book If God Invented Baseball (City Point Press) was awarded the 2019 Literary Award for poetry by the Black Caucus of the American Library Association.

https://searcharchives.library.gwu.edu/repositories/2/resources/367

Raman Mundair is an Indian-born writer, artist, playwright and filmmaker. She identifies as a Queer, disabled, working-class British Asian intersectional feminist and is an activist based in Shetland and Glasgow. She is the award-winning author of Lovers, Liars, Conjurers and Thieves, A Choreographer’s Cartography and The Algebra of Freedom and is the editor of Incoming: Some Shetland Voices. Her short film Trowie Buckie was shortlisted for Sharp Shorts 2020. 

Raman has been invited to participate in the BBC Writersroom – Drama Writers’ Programme 2020.

Johny Pitts is the curator of the ENAR (European Network Against Racism) award-winning online journal Afropean.com and the author of Afropean: Notes From Black Europe (Penguin Random House). Translated into French, German, Italian and Spanish, it won the 2020 Jhalak Prize, the 2020 Bread & Roses Award for Radical Publishing, and is the recipient of the 2021 Leipzig Book Award for European Understanding. He has presented on MTV, BBC and ITV1, and his broadcasting includes a BBC Radio 4 documentary exploring black identity through the music of his father, who was a member of the Northern Soul group The Fantastics. He currently presents Open Book for BBC Radio 4 and a forthcoming Afropean podcast funded by a grant from the National Geographic Society. Johny has contributed words and images for the Guardian, The New Statesman, The New York Times and Condé Nast Traveller. His debut photographic exhibition Afropean: Travels in Black Europe was at Foam in Amsterdam in 2020.

Photo by Jamie Stoker

Olive Senior is the prize-winning author of eighteen books of fiction, non-fiction, poetry and children’s literature. Her many awards include an honorary doctorate from the University of the West Indies, the Gold Medal of the Institute of Jamaica, Canada’s Writers Trust Matt Cohen Award for Lifetime Achievement, the OCM Bocas Prize for Caribbean Literature and the Commonwealth Writers Prize. Her work has been widely anthologized and translated and is taught internationally. Her poetry book Gardening in the Tropics was on the CAPE syllabus for Caribbean schools and has been translated into several languages, most recently Arabic. She lives in Toronto but returns frequently to her Jamaican birthplace, which remains central to her work. Her book of Pandemic Poems which she has been sharing on social media during ‘the summer of Covid 19’ will be published shortly.

Jethro Soutar is a writer and a translator. He translates Portuguese and Spanish and has a particular focus on African literature. His translations include novels from Cape Verde, Guinea Bissau and Equatorial Guinea, among them By Night the Mountain Burns by Juan Tomás Ávila Laurel, shortlisted for the 2015 Independent Foreign Fiction Prize, and short stories from Angola and Mozambique. 

He is also a founder of Ragpicker Press and an editor at Dedalus Africa. Originally from Sheffield, he now lives in Lisbon.

Jamie Thrasivoulou is an award-winning writer, poet and educator from Derby. His debut collection The Best Of A Bad Situation was published via Silhouette Press in 2017. His second collection Our Man was published by Burning Eye Books in 2019. He was a winner of the Culture Matters: Bread & Roses Award in 2018, and a 2019 Saboteur Award for Best Spoken Word Performer In The UK. 

He’s the writer-in-residence at HMP Foston Hall and the official poet for Derby County Football Club. The BBC, National Poetry Day and ITV have commissioned his work amongst others.

Byron Vincent is a writer, performer, broadcaster and activist. He has a diagnosis of PTSD and bipolar disorder. He performed for many years as a spoken word artist at music and literary festivals and was picked as one of the BBC poetry season’s new talent choices. In more recent years he has turned to theatre, radio and filmmaking, working as a writer, director and performer for the RSC, BAC, BBC and other notable acronyms. Vincent is a passionate social activist with lived experience of issues around poverty and mental health. He has written and presented several documentaries for BBC Radio 4 on the social problems arising out of inequality, ghettoization and mental ill-health. He is currently working on filmmaking and writing a memoir. 

Rafeef Ziadah is a Palestinian spoken word artist, academic and human rights activist based in London, UK. Her performance of poems like ‘We Teach Life, Sir’ and ‘Shades of Anger’ went viral within days of release. Her live readings offer a moving blend of poetry and music. Since releasing her first album, Rafeef has headlined many performance venues across several countries with powerful readings on war, exile, gender and racism. Rafeef’s latest album Three Generations offers a moving and powerful remembrance of Palestine, Al-Nakba, exile, defiance and survival. It is a beautiful testament to the human spirit, to ‘love and joy against skies of steel’.