Black Town & Gown: The historical legacy of Black presence in the city of Cambridge

We sat down with Dr Kenny Monrose FRSA, a Fellow at Wolfson College and Researcher in the Department of Sociology to discuss their project exploring the historical legacy of Black presence in Cambridge. 

What is the project and why have you decided to do it? 

In 2022, I led the organisation of the successful Post-Windrush generation: Black British Voices of Resistance conference at the University of Cambridge. One of the many positive comments drawn from the occasion was that it was the first time the University had hosted an event that members of Cambridge’s black community could attend in order to engage with academics and scholars within the institution walls.  

Shortly after I shared a lightbulb moment with Seetha, who like me is concerned with community engagement. We thought would be a good idea to compile a historical account of black presence, not just in the university, but more broadly in this amazing city - and to examine how this meshes with the established notion of - ‘Town and Gown’. 

Can you give us a brief overview of the history of black people in Cambridge, without giving too much away? 

The film has two distinct parts. The first looks at the Gown and the legacy of the black presence at the University of Cambridge. In this, we focus on black alumni as well as delving into the annals and collections within the African studies library, and highlight the prolonged struggle to safeguard black archival material. We spoke to black students to provide an insight on the current racialised and classed dynamics related to space and positionality within the university.  

The second part of the film is concerned with the Town, which for me is where the original contribution to knowledge of the production lies, in that it captures intergenerational voices, experiences, and perspectives of the black people who live in Cambridge. 

This is a film without actors - these are real people, and their voices are authentically presented from start to finish. It is tinged with sadness in places as it highlights the heightened level of invisibility in both the city and the university, which has led some who have spent their entire lives in the city of Cambridge to consider it as a zone of exclusion. 

These zone(s) of exclusion are really important to the film. We wanted to think carefully about the allocation and division of space both within the university and between the university and town. I think the film reflects on how invisibilisation is often a product of these spatial configurations, and it cinematically and thematically attempts to destabilise this neat divide and break down some of the walls between the town and gown. 

In doing so, we hope the film does more than simply document the divisions but, by foregrounding the work already happening within the community, also points to potential ways forward.