‘BAME Creative Showcase’ to be held at York in light of Race Equality Week

A “BAME Creative Showcase” will be held at the University of York on Sunday 12th February to celebrate the creative talents of York’s Black, Asian and minority ethnic students.

The event will be held in Central hall and comes at the end of this year’s race equality week, which is an annual campaign to unify organisations and individuals in addressing the obstacles to race equality in public spaces.

This is the first creative showcase held at York for BAME students specifically, and is the biggest event that the BAME Network has organised. It will start at 7:30pm in Central Hall and tickets, which cost only £1, be found here.

Image via @yusu_bame

The Showcase will hosted by Rohan Ashar, the University of York’s Activities Officer and avid supporter of the BAME Network, and has been organised by the BAME Network’s Event Officer, Anna. There will be a variety of performances throughout the event, with attendees being able to enjoy listening to individuals singing in their ethnic language, or performing traditional bollywood dances.

There will also be an instrumental performance and a commentary on the liberatory potential of expression and music, since this showcase also aims to educate as well as celebrate. Through bringing awareness to art produced by BAME individuals, the Network hope to play a part in putting an end to the exclusion from the creative industry that those of ethnic minorities constantly experience.

As BAME Officer, Emilia Chambers has said how through the event “the BAME Network want to highlight the talents of our diverse student body and encourage higher levels of participation by BAME students within creative societies”. Emilia, along with other committee members, have all agreed that they would love for this to be annual event organised by the Network where the talent of the University of York’s BAME students can be brought to light.

Image via @york.marrow

Also present at the event will be York Marrow, a student-led group which aims to get people to join the stem cell register so that people with blood cancer might receive a life saving stem cell transplant. The showcase has given them an opportunity to increase the number of ethnic minorities on the stem cell register.

This is incredibly significant as people from ethnic minority backgrounds are more likely to have a rarer tissue type, so it is harder to find a matching donor. For those willing to sign up, volunteers from York Marrow will ask individuals to take cheek swabs and to fill in an application form to find eligible donors who can be added to the register to be called to donate stem cells if a match is found.

There is so much talent which goes unrecognised due to racial inequalities and students have the chance to help put an end to this and provoke progressive and positive change by visiting the showcase and increasing awareness of the fantastic creative abilities of BAME individuals.

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