(1946 on) – Singer–Songwriter

Dolly Parton was born the fourth of twelve children to a very poor family in Tennessee. She began performing as a child and moved to Nashville straight after she graduated from school in 1964. She started as a songwriter before joining The Porter Wagoner show in 1967 where she became known as a singer. She has since had huge international success over many decades. Her philanthropy includes the Imagination Library, which has donated over 100 million books to children; donations to cancer hospitals and to medical centres; wildlife preservation through the American Eagle sanctuary at the Dollywood Foundation and much more. 

What is there to say about Dolly Parton that hasn’t been said already? My family have been fans of hers since the 1970s when we listened to a lot of country music, but it’s only as an adult that I became aware of Dolly’s long list of achievements outside music and acting – from her literacy schemes to donating money to help develop the coronavirus vaccine. She’s also declined honours such as the Presidential Medal of Freedom and having statues erected of her. 

Sharmilla Beezmohun

Photograph Kristopher Harris

Read more: https://www.nytimes.com/2020/11/30/t-magazine/dolly-parton.html

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Dolly_Parton

(1913-2000) – choreographer, dancer, impresario

A leading light of the arts and theatre in Trinidad and Tobago, she studied dance under Martha Graham in New York in the early 1940s and counted Paul Robeson among her friends, to the extent that he came to Trinidad in 1948 to lay the cornerstone of her Little Carib Theatre. Beryl’s dynamism and crusading work inspired Rex Nettleford to establish the Jamaica National Dance Theatre Company.

Beryl McBurnie was a huge inspiration to me as a teenager in Trinidad. A phenomenal force in the arts In Trinidad and Tobago, she single-handedly raised funds to build her theatre in Port of Spain. The Little Carib Theatre became the home of new and original work by the leading poets, playwrights and choreographers of Caribbean arts in the 1970s as our culture emerged in the early heady years of independence to find its own expression.

Dominique Le Gendre

Read more: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Beryl_McBurnie

https://www.caribbeanmemoryproject.com/mc-burnie-beryl.html

(1917-1996) – Jazz Singer

From her humble beginnings in Newport Virginia, USA, Fitzgerald would go on to become the most recorded female vocalist in history. Dubbed ‘The First Lady of Song’, she won thirteen Grammy awards and sold over forty million albums. She was widely loved and admired and earned the respect of the biggest names in jazz. She collaborated with Louis Armstrong, Count Basie and Frank Sinatra among many others. She was in a class of her own. 

‘Everybody wants to know about my style and how it came about. It’s no big secret. It’s the way I feel.’

Lucy Hannah

Read more: https://www.biography.com/musician/ella-fitzgerald

(1934-1994) – singer–songwriter, actor and activist

Toto Bissainthe was a Haitian actress and singer known for her innovative blend of traditional Vodou and rural themes and music with contemporary lyricism and arrangements. Born in Cap-Haïtien in 1934, she left Haiti at an early age to pursue her acting studies abroad. Toto trained as an actor in France and co-founded Les Griots in 1956, the first black theatre company in France. 

I worked with Toto when she was cast in a film directed by Haitian filmmaker, artist and journalist Elsie Haas in Paris in the early 1980s and was always struck by the combination of a unique voice, her effortless and truthful portrayal of characters with poise, grace and elegance.

Dominique Le Gendre

Read more: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Toto_Bissainthe

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=gGoLiAWJGsk

(1941-2022) – Fashion Designer

Dame Vivienne Isabel Westwood DBE RDI was an English fashion designer and businesswoman, largely responsible for bringing modern punk and new wave fashions into the mainstream. She was born in Cheshire in 1941 and her family moved to Harrow in west London in 1958. Vivienne first came to public notice when she made clothes for the boutique that she and Malcolm McLaren ran on King’s Road in London which became known as SEX. Their ability to synthesise clothing and music shaped the 1970s UK punk scene, which was dominated by McLaren’s band, the Sex Pistols. She viewed punk as a way of ‘seeing if one could put a spoke in the system’. She opened four shops in London and eventually expanded throughout the UK and the world, selling an increasingly varied range of merchandise, some of which promoted her many political causes such as the Campaign for Nuclear Disarmament, climate change and civil rights groups. 

Vivienne Westwood has always been my favourite designer. I spent most of the 1980s wearing a Vivienne Westwood corset, so her clothes are a part of my history. 

Lucy Davies

Read more: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Vivienne_Westwood

(1892 –1962) – Sculptor

Born Augusta Fells near Jacksonville in Florida, Augusta Savage is an American sculptor remembered for her association with the Harlem Renaissance and her role as a trailblazer for women artists of colour. In 1939 she was the first African American woman to open her own art gallery. She used it to champion the work of black artists and throughout her life worked for equal rights for African Americans in the arts. As a teacher, her studio provided a space to cultivate the work of aspiring young artists who would go on to international success. 

‘I have created nothing really beautiful, really lasting, but if I can inspire one of these youngsters to develop the talent, I know they possess, then my monument will be in their work.’

Lucy Hannah

Read more: https://www.theguardian.com/artanddesign/2019/may/08/augusta-savage-black-artist-new-york

(1953 on) – Artist and Photographer

Born in Georgetown, Guyana, Ingrid Pollard moved to London when she was small. She is an artist and photographer whose work uses portraiture photography and traditional landscape imagery to explore social constructs such as Britishness or racial difference. A Turner Prize nominee, she is associated with Autograph, the Association of Black Photographers. In the 1980s, she produced a series of photographs of black people in rural landscapes entitled Pastoral Interludes which challenged the way that English culture places black people in cities. From 2005-2007, she curated Tradewinds2007, an international residency exhibition project with an exhibition at the Museum of London Docklands. She has participated in group exhibitions at the Hayward Gallery and the Victoria & Albert Museum and has worked as an artist in residence at a number of organisations. She has also held numerous teaching positions. In 2016 she was awarded an Honorary Fellowship of the Royal Photographic Society. 

Ingrid’s work as a photographer has explored among her wide subject matter, the presence of Black people in Britain in subtle subversive ways bringing to the fore questions of belonging for the Caribbean diaspora. Ingrid and I have collaborated on her art installations and my own projects for over two decades.

Dominique Le Gendre

Rehttp://www.ingridpollard.com/

https://www.theguardian.com/artanddesign/2022/may/03/ingrid-pollard-the-turner-nominee-uncovering-britains-secret-shame-review

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ingrid_Pollard

(1957 on) – Visual Artist

Shirin Neshat is an Iranian visual artist who lives in New York City, known primarily for her work in film, video and photography. Her artwork centres on the contrasts between Islam and the West, femininity and masculinity, public life and private life, antiquity and modernity, and bridging the spaces between these subjects. She has said that she ‘gravitated toward making art that is concerned with tyranny, dictatorship, oppression and political injustice. Although I don’t consider myself an activist, I believe my art – regardless of its nature – is an expression of protest, a cry for humanity.’ Neshat won the International Award of the XLVIII Venice Biennale in 1999 and the Silver Lion as the best director at the 66th Venice Film Festival in 2009.  

Shirin’s artwork has always resonated with me over most other women artists.  It is beautiful, meditative work with real depth of meaning especially pertaining to feminism and human rights.

Lucy Davies

Read more: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Shirin_Neshat

(1949 on) – Artist

Rita Keegan is an American-born artist, lecturer and archivist, based in England since the late 1970s. She is a multimedia artist whose work uses video and digital technologies. Keegan is best known for her involvement with in the UK’s Black Arts Movement in the 1980s and her work documenting artists of colour in Britain.

Rita is one of the wisest women I know and one who has been largely overlooked and yet has contributed so much to the arts and for minoritized artists as founder of The Women’s Slide Library, AAVAA and Brixton Art Gallery.

Lucy Davies

Read more: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Rita_Keegan

(1971 on)

Barby Asante is a London-based artist, curator, educator and occasional DJ. Her work is concerned with the politics of place, space memory and the histories and legacies of colonialism. Asante’s work is collaborative, performative and dialogic, often working with groups of people as contributors, collaborators or co-researchers. Her artistic practice explores the archival, makes propositions, collects and maps stories and contributions of people of colour using storytelling, collective actions and ritual, to excavate, unearth and interrogate given narratives. Her projects include The South London Black Archive (Peckham Platform/ Tate Modern, 2012), an archive project mapping black music and memories in south London, through an invitation to audiences and local people to create the archive of black music memory collaboratively. Her current artistic research is focused on her long-term project, As Always a Painful Declaration of Independence: For Ama. For Aba. For Charlotte and Adjoa.  Asante has taught on Fine Art and Critical Studies programmes in London, Berlin, Gothenburg and Rotterdam and is a PhD Candidate in CREAM, Westminster University, London. 

Lucy Davies

Read more: https://www.barbyasante.com/