Making the Invisible Visible: Black Women 365 Days of The Year

Six Months On — Archives, Memory and the Politics of Recognition

Six months into Making the Invisible Visible: Black Women 365 Days a Year, the project continues to operate as both a cultural intervention and an archival act.  Conceived as a year-long commitment to recognising Black women every day of the year, the initiative responds to the longstanding marginalisation of Black women within dominant historical, cultural and institutional narratives.

At its core, the project asks a critical question: what happens when Black women are no longer positioned at the margins of history, but recognised as central to the making of culture, community and public life?

The project emerges from an understanding that visibility matters.  As Toni Morrison famously stated, “If there’s a book that you want to read, but it hasn’t been written yet, then you must write it.”  Morrison’s words speak directly to the necessity of creating spaces where Black women’s stories are documented, centred and preserved rather than waiting for dominant institutions to legitimise them.

Historically, Black women have often occupied a contradictory position within British and Diasporic histories, visible through labour, migration and struggle, yet invisible within archives, education systems, public monuments and mainstream cultural memory.  The absence is not accidental; it reflects wider systems of racialised and gendered exclusion that have shaped whose histories are preserved and whose are allowed to disappear.

Making the Invisible Visible seeks to interrupt that process.

Importantly, the initiative intentionally includes both living and posthumous women.  This distinction is significant. Too often, Black women receive recognition only after death, once their work can no longer challenge institutional structures or unsettle dominant narratives.  Recognising living women allows communities to celebrate brilliance, leadership and creativity in the present tense.

At the same time, recognising posthumous women acknowledges the generations whose labour and resistance created pathways for those who followed.

This creates an important intergenerational dialogue between memory and contemporary practice, heritage and future-making.

Across the first six months, the project has recognised women whose work spans activism, literature, broadcasting, politics, migration histories, performance and community leadership, including:

• Claudia Jones
• Evelyn Dove
• Jean “Binta” Breeze
• Paulette Wilson
• Sojourner Truth
• Marielle Franco
• Marsha P Johnson

Collectively, these women reveal the complexity and breadth of Black Diasporic experiences while challenging narrow understandings of Black womanhood.

Central to the project is the idea of the archive.

Historically, archives have functioned as sites of power, determining whose lives are preserved and whose histories are forgotten.  For Black communities, many stories have survived not through formal institutions, but through oral histories, performance traditions, family collections, activism and community memory.

As bell hooks argued, “To be in the margin is to be part of the whole but outside the main body.”  Black women have long existed within this tension, shaping nations and cultures while remaining insufficiently recognised within official histories.

The project therefore embraces an expanded understanding of archives that includes:

• oral histories
• spoken word and performance
• photography
• community memory
• family collections
• digital storytelling
• activist records
• embodied cultural practices

This understanding is particularly important within Black British and Diasporic contexts, where memory has often been carried through communities rather than institutions.

The project itself therefore becomes a living archive.

Its daily structure is also politically significant.  The commitment to “365 days a year” deliberately resists the tendency to contain Black histories within designated commemorative moments such as Black History Month. While such moments remain important, there is always a danger that Black histories become temporarily acknowledged before returning to invisibility within mainstream public discourse.

Making the Invisible Visible instead insists upon continuity.

It argues that Black women’s histories are not supplementary additions to British history, but fundamental to understanding Britain itself.

The initiative also reflects the growing importance of digital platforms as contemporary archival spaces. Through accessible scripts, storytelling and online dissemination, the project extends beyond traditional academic and heritage environments, creating opportunities for intergenerational engagement and public learning.

At Serendipity Institute for Black Arts and Heritage, these concerns remain central through the Living Archive, exhibitions, publications and oral history work that seek to preserve and activate Black cultural memory.

As the project reaches its halfway point, it continues to remind us that visibility is not simply about being seen.

It is about recognition.

• Preservation
• Documentation
• Historical legitimacy

And ultimately, it is about ensuring that future generations inherit histories expansive enough to recognise themselves within them.

References

Beloved Morrison, T. (1987) Beloved. London: Chatto & Windus.

Yearning: Race, Gender and Cultural Politics hooks, b. (1990) Yearning: Race, Gender and Cultural Politics. Boston: South End Press.

Black British Feminism Mirza, H.S. (ed.) (1997) Black British Feminism. London: Routledge.

Heart of the Race Bryan, B., Dadzie, S. and Scafe, S. (1985) The Heart of the Race: Black Women’s Lives in Britain. London: Virago.

Ain’t I a Woman? hooks, b. (1981) Ain’t I a Woman: Black Women and Feminism. Boston: South End Press.