[text] Shades of Noir Phase Three 
presents: Sophie Neal & Shruti Iyer -
President & VP of KCL Intersectional 
Feminist Society
[Text] Tell us about your event and 
how it came about?
- [SN] Well it's a big poster campaign and
conference, at the moment
it's titled BAME Women, White Uni.
And what we're doing is, we're 
interviewing or have interviewed, in fact,
a number of BAME students and staff at KCL
and we've kind of collected
their experiences and written up 
transcripts
of those interviews and taken photographs
of them.
Then we're putting those photographs and
quotes from those interviews
around campus to make those a
bit more transparent.
And then we're holding a conference at 
the end of the month
that's a culmination of that poster 
campaign and is designed to kind of
round it off with conversations 
about BAME women in academia.
- [SI] Yeah, it had a really interesting 
genesis actually.
So, it started a year ago, this time last 
year, so we were thinking of ways
to apply for funding and get money 
out of our SU for Black History Month.
So Black History Month, they allow you
to put in a funding application,
ask for money to run certain events, and
one of our committee members
Natalie, she was like, it's ridiculous 
how when you walk outside the Strand--
so the Strand campus, but also the 
Virginia Woolf building,
the Franklin Wilkins building, most Kings
buildings, they have pictures of alumni,
famous alumni on the front-- and none
of them were, you know, BAME women,
none of them were women of colour.
And it's like, well, there's really no 
representation of us on campus,
at least, nothing that's very visible.
So you had people of colour but they
were predominantly men
and overwhelmingly women were just not
being represented
in proportion to how many of us 
actually go to this University.
So we decided at first to just put up 
these posters of famous alumni,
and then we ran into all this kind of
red tape last year.
So we couldn't get access to the
archives.
The archives told us that they didn't
categorise stuff on the basis of race.
We spoke to the alumni office and
they were like, "Yeah, we don't classify
alumni on the basis of race either, 
or ethnicity, or country of origin."
So it was this huge mess, and then we
decided we would just interview
the people that we knew; our friends,
staff members, the people that
we chatted with on a daily basis like the
security guards
and the cleaning ladies, you know,
all of those people.
So we decided to make it more local just 
because of the kinds of obstacles
that we were having in doing what
we wanted to do.
And then in the meanwhile, so while 
this was all happening, we realised
that what we'd taken on was a huge 
project. Like, we'd applied for funding
for it but then we didn't have the money
or the resources to really interview
these people with the time that we
needed.
Me and Suriya who's--who worked with 
Sophie on publicity last year--would
have to take these huge amounts of time
out of our schedules to go
to other campuses, find people to
interview and that kind of thing.
So it just became this huge project 
that we'd had to keep doing
in terms of logistics and design
and that kind of thing.
And then we applied for funding 
with the Kings' Community Fund.
That was this huge alumni thing where
it's like, they have a lot of money,
I think you can apply for up to five 
thousand pounds,
and you could do whatever you wanted 
with it.
So we pitched a conference on the basis
of the work that we've been doing
because through the course of these 
interviews,
we realised how
necessary it was.
Like, a lot of the BAME staff members 
didn't feel represented by the University,
were experiencing 
professional trouble
and I think it was
scary as young students
that like-- I want to be an academic, 
you know, so seeing that in your mentors
and people that you see on an every day 
basis
was actually quite inspiring as well
as shocking.
So we wanted to run a conference 
on that basis.
And then, a week later, there was this
huge thing unveiled on the Strand campus
called Meet The Professors, and it was 
this initiative by
the Kings Equalities Department to kind of
show the fact that there are women
teaching at University, so it was about
this... meet the female professors,
basically, it was all of these women and 
little bios about them.
But all of the women were white.
There wasn't a single woman of colour
on that wall.
- [SN] There was one woman who possibly 
identified as a woman of colour but it's..
- [SI] But, we don't know. I mean... 
yeah, there was at least no
Black women for sure, or South Asian 
women.
I think one might have been Greek, 
but that was about it--no wait,
there is actually one woman of colour, 
Maleiha Malik,
but her picture was tiny and it was
at the bottom.
So all the big ones were white, and there
were smaller ones at the bottom.
Maleiha Malik is of Pakistani origin I 
think, but yeah, so that was it.
And we were in shock because it had 
just been a week
since we'd applied for funding for 
precisely this.
- [SN] And we'd just been having all 
these conversations and then suddenly
there was this huge campaign and 
initiative that was almost the opposite
of what we had been thinking of 
as a society.
- [SI] Yeah and it was really shocking, 
I mean...because these are conversations
that the Equalities department should 
have been having.
And it kind of blew up, I think a lot of 
people took offence.
And it wasn't just people who are 
normally interested in feminism and race.
I had friends who are like... 
traditionally, who don't really have
these conversations and they think I'm
making a big deal
when I'm talking about race or feminism.
They were coming up to me going like,
"This is ridiculous! There's not a single
Indian woman on that wall, there's not a 
single Chinese woman on that wall,
there's not a single Black woman on 
that wall," so....
Then I guess our campaign 
started to build momentum,
we got given the full funding that we 
asked for which was great.
- [SN] Yeah, it was very exciting.
- [SI] And then here we are a year later 
trying to put this stuff together.
[Text] Do you feel the institution's 
poster campaign proves
the need for your conference?
- [SI] Absolutely! I mean, 
it was shocking, but
I think I did feel a bit vindicated, I was
like, "Yes! I'm not making this shit up!"
- [SN] Yeah, and we felt like we were 
doing something that clearly was important
and clearly was necessary for the Kings
community, because there clearly
was something that is so vital and such
a problem that was being completely
ignored and passed over by a department
that should be starting initiatives
that focus upon this exactly, about women
of colour who are being passed over.
- [SI] The thing is, it is an issue 
of intersectionality, so it started off
about wanting women represented, but
then
women of colour fell off the back 
end of that.
I think it's interesting, because I think 
there was evidence at some point
that they had tried to contact BAME 
women, but BAME women
weren't very forthcoming with wanting
to be featured in that poster campaign.
But they were quite forthcoming when we
asked them, so...
I think there's this disconnect--
- [SN] It was something to do with 
it coming from an institution
and something
being sort of grassroots
and coming from the ground up, definitely
it seemed to cause a different
response in people for some reason, 
I can't tell you why, but it did, yeah.
- [SI] We've had some really interesting--
I mean, even conversations that
we were having around that time before
the official campaign was released
by Kings, I think it did point to this 
huge institutional gap in
the kinds of resources and support that 
are
provided to women of colour at the 
University.
One woman that I spoke to told me about
how she was really intelligent,
and she's always known she was very 
intelligent, but she's seen
white male colleagues get ahead because
they're given
certain kinds of opportunities and 
mentoring.
They're pushed towards certain kinds
of things, like, "Oh, here's a grant,
I think you should apply for that," small 
networking things, there's huge lacunas
in the system that aren't really 
being filled up.
So I think we've happened upon this 
huge body of information,
so we have recordings, we have photos, 
we've got transcribed interviews...
- [SN] So much evidence of these women 
feeling marginalised or feeling like
there is something lacking in the Kings 
community that needs to be flagged up.
- [SI] But I mean, it's interesting, 
because at least for me, it did point out
limitations that you have when you're 
doing this kind of work.
When you put out a call saying you want
women of colour to talk about
their experiences, there's only a certain
kind of woman
that's going to come forward, does that 
make sense?
Women of colour who don't really see
race or avoid bringing their race up
in professional institutional settings, 
who are uncomfortable being seen
in this way, aren't going to put 
themselves forward.
You know, so I think there's, 
I think, a bit of a gap in that way.
- [SN] Yeah, I mean, definitely when I've
been organising this conference
and I've been speaking to different women
who I'm trying to get involved,
there have been some women who 
had-- I carefully worded the email
that I put out to the whole committee
and we all decided on how
I was going to phrase things when I sent
the email out
because obviously it's a very sensitive 
issue for some women.
There were lots of women who took issue
with some of the phrases that I'd used,
one phrase in particular was 'BAME women
and their struggles in academia.'
And I think a lot of women were saying, 
well, "By that phrase are you trying
to imply that BAME women can't get 
ahead?" and I was like, "Of course not!".
But what I'm trying to talk about is the
fact that some women do
feel marginalised because of their race
and gender together and a lot
of women felt that was something that 
they felt really sensitive
about and didn't want to
talk about on a public platform.
But at the same time said that they'd
like to come along to the conference
to hear other womens' experiences and
hear if they match their own, too.
So clearly it struck a chord with some 
people.
- [SI] Yeah, I think these conversations are
proliferated just outside
of our small circle; we started this a 
year ago, but since, I've been
to conferences where you've had Black
women academics,
present academic papers obviously
negotiating
racial economies in the workplace.
And how they've been institutionally
punished when they talked about race,
so they'd be put into offices with no 
windows and that kind of thing.
So, I mean, these conversations are 
happening on a huge scale now,
in a way at least that I didn't really
see them happening a year ago,
so I think that's progress as it is, 
really.
But I mean, there's also, I think, 
several class issues that come
into this; I think academics might feel
more comfortable or at least
less threatened by their employers 
when they talk about these things.
I think we interviewed an anonymous
food lady at the Waterloo campus
and she-- one of the lunch ladies? 
And she refused to go on the record
with her name and she... and even then,
there's very much this sense that
you can't really speak out against your 
employer on that contract basis,
she refused to be photographed, that 
kind of thing.
So... their interaction with students is
much more controlled,
they have targets that they have to 
meet and that kind of thing,
feedback reports that they have to get.
So it's very very difficult, I think, to 
really really obtain any kind of true,
authentic picture of what's happening 
and I think
we're very aware of those kinds of 
limitations in our work.
- [Text] Can you tell us more about the 
conference?
- [SN] So the posters are going up on the 
twelfth of October and then
the conference itself is taking place on
Saturday the thirty first of October,
which I appreciate is Halloween, but it 
was
the only day we could get the room 
we wanted!
- [SI] This is more important!
- [SN] Yeah, hopefully that's what
people are going to think.
But we've got four really amazing panels,
we've got
a general introductory panel about
BAME women in academia.
We've got a BAME Women in the Arts panel, 
BAME Women in Tech panel
and a panel entitled BAME Women: The 
Body and Institutions.
And so all the panels are going to be 
about how women of colour
navigate those arenas and their own--
the women on the panels'
own experiences and... I've tried to 
kind of get women with
a breadth of experience in the field, 
so for example on the Arts Panel
we have Aisha Richards who obviously
directs
the Shades of Noir campaign--sorry,
organisation.
We've also got a composer, Dr Shirley 
Thompson, who works at Westminster,
and a film director, Cecile Emeke, is 
coming as well.
So we've got women who work in different
fields of the arts to come forward
and talk about their own experiences and
their own experiences in
their separate fields, and what being 
diverse and being of colour
brings to to those things as well.
- [SI] We're doing workshops on the side, 
so we're doing one
on Why is my 
Curriculum White,
and we're doing one 
which is like zine-making I think?
- [SN] Yeah, so it's a craftivism 
workshop, so we're having some members
of the Union come in to help people 
make tangible pieces of art
that allow people to produce something
through activism.
So it's not all just speech and people
speaking about experiences,
people actually creating something out
of their own experiences
and we're hoping, if we get a chance, to
display that somewhere
in the Student Union after the conference
as well.
- [SI] Yeah I think for me, a big issue 
with panel discussions is often
how tiring they can be, because you're 
doing
five panels a day, you get exhausted by
the end.
I get really restless halfway, so we're
trying to put some other things
in there for people to go off into 
or just move
if they feel like going away for half 
an hour.
Because I feel that the more breaks 
that you get from it,
the more you probably absorbed from
the actual talks later.
- [SN] Yeah, and we've tried to make it as
varied as possible,
we had a focus group back in... I think
it was maybe February?
- [SI] God yeah, 
it was so long ago.
- [SN] Yeah, it was a long time ago, and
so we sort of brought together
different groups of people who had been
involved in feminism and...
issues of race and stuff at Kings, and 
everyone sat down and spoke about
what they felt was really important.
And tech actually came up as one of 
the really, really big things.
So, at the moment we've got a couple 
of women who either work in tech
or teach in digital technologies, and 
things like that, coming to speak
about their experiences as BAME women
working in those fields,
so that's quite exciting.
- [SI] Yeah, what was interesting, 
at least, when we started this,
is that we were largely Humanities and 
Social Sciences students
doing this work but a lot of the BAME 
women that we were finding were
actually based in things like Psychology 
and that kind of thing, or in health,
so trying to actually broaden our own
horizons is definitely...
- [SN] Yeah, lots of women at the IOPPM,
which is the Psychiatry Institute at
Kings, a lot of women of 
colour work in there as well.
- [SI] Or like, at least the ones that 
were forthcoming and responded,
that call was put out about a year 
ago now.
- [SN] Yeah, a long time ago, so things
might have even shifted since then.
[Text] Shades of Noir WeSaluteYou
Thanks to Sophie Neal and Shruti Iyer,
