Aim

To raise awareness of the Windrush Generation by exhibiting portraits of project participants with the dignity and reverence they deserve.

Exhibition 'Here To Stay': documenting the impact of nurses from the Windrush Generation in light of 70 years since the birth of the NHS.

Instagram: #HereToStay70

Twitter: #HereToStay70

We're raising money to support the cost of exhibitions in Birmingham and hopefully tour back to London/ across the UK. We need money to print photographs, install exhibitions and offline as well as online marketing.

Urgent

We're receiving an influx of requests for this exhibition to tour to other parts of Birmingham and the UK but am lacking the funding to do so! I have had to account for all of my own travel costs in transporting the exhibition so far and am no longer able to continue to do so.

The story so far:

London:

I'm proud to say the soft-launch of this project #HereToStay70, an exhibition of a work in progress specially curated to compliment the space provided, was visited by hundreds of people from across the world over 8 days, thanks to sponsorship from Sports Banger who kindly supported the hire of the East-Central London exhibition venue on Brick Lane which received phenomenal footfall, as well as cross-marketing and providing printed posters and flyers. 

Birmingham:

Although extremely well received, the exhibition at Birmingham's Medicine Gallery wasn't visited by as many people as anticipated as we were unable to raise money to print posters and flyers, as well as exhibit posters outside the venue on an A-board. This was really disheartening and it's become difficult to keep momentum as high as the praise this exhibition is receiving, when such small costs are having such a detrimental impact on the marketing reach of this exhibition.

Sandwell: 

The portraits are currently being exhibited at Sandwell Hospital's Education Centre. To increase accessibility, an app called 'MyConnect' is displaying portraits from the series accompanied by quotes from each participants. The app is free to download and will be seen by approx 7,000 NHS staff via their internal networks.

The commissioning team

(Garry Stewart: Recognize Black Heritage & Culture. L-R: Beverley Maynard and sisters Donna and Lorraine Mighty)

The Future

Myself and the commissioning team would love to extend the tour more widely and I welcome requests from across the UK to tour this exhibition. I'm open to working in partnership with likeminded organisations an continuing the portrait series beyond the original commission in the Midlands, but do need financial support to do so.

For now though, we need to recoup the cost of transporting the exhibition to London which, although unanticipated, was very successful and incredibly necessary.

This project successfully funded on 7th November 2018