Recollections from Brighton's Black and Ethnic minority communities

By John Cheves

This book is the result of ten weeks of reminiscence sessions based on childhood experiences with a group of people, all over 50, who attend the Black and Minority Ethnic (BME) group at a community lounge in Brighton, and who wanted to share their histories and memories of Crossing Continents with each other and us. The group were facilitated by WRVS Heritage Plus volunteers, Imogen Lycett Green and Gemma Crowther and the project was kindly supported by the Black and  Minority Ethnic Community Partnership  (BMECP) and by Brighton Black History group.

The full, rich lives we have included here are just touching on the histories of those who came regularly to the sessions with the BME group, and it's been hard to know what to leave out, as well as what to put in. WRVS Heritage Plus worked in partnership with Brighton Pavilion Museum who kindly let us loose in the museum and gave us an inspiring talk at it's History Centre about the Royal Pavilion's time as a hospital for wounded Indian soldiers and Ghurkhas during the First World War.

This will hopefully be a resource that will enable others to remember more of their history, and teach those reading it about the growing up in other countries and the multi-cultural country that we live in today. We hope it is also an insight into some of the wonderful, creative, warm people whose memories helped to create this book.

To download a full pdf copy of the book please click on the link at the bottom of the page (size 10mb).