Editions Media has learnt that the Windrush Foundationis the recipient of a major award to lead a variety of WINDRUSH 75 programmes in 2023, thanks to the National Lottery Heritage Fund. The substantial award of over £180,000 will go some way to funding a national project called ‘Celebrating Windrush Pioneers’ which will celebrate the lives of passengers who arrived on MV Empire Windrush at Tilbury Docks on 22 June 1948.
The educational project, which begins this month, will focus on the late Samuel Beaver King MBE who arrived on the Empire Windrush ship in 1948 and began commemorating the 22nd June some decades later, having maintained contact with many of his fellow passengers. Today Windrush Day is celebrated nationally and is known as National Windrush Day. The planned programmes will deliver educational resources at Key Stages 1 to 4 about his life and contributions to society. There will be a Virtual Windrush Exhibition available free online featuring 75 Windrush Pioneers. Also, an educational video documentary will show the life and contributions of Windrush passenger John Richards, now age 97. The project will publish a new Book / eBook titled ‘75 Windrush Pioneers’ and launch the Sam King Windrush Award – an Essay Writing Competition for children up to the age of 14.
The late Sam King through the years
Over the next 18 months, there will be 15-minute BEN TV heritage broadcasts that will reach tens of thousands of viewers in the UK and overseas. Free monthly heritage presentations and workshops (actual and virtual) will celebrate the lives and contributions of some members of the Windrush generations.
Welcoming the award, King’s granddaughter, Dione McDonald, a Director of Windrush Foundation, said: “We are very pleased about it. Our organisation was the first to have led Windrush commemorations from 1996, celebrating the pioneers who contributed to the rebuilding and prosperity of Britain after WWII. They laid the foundation for us today and we are expected also to work to make society a better place in which to live. My granddad, the late Sam King MBE, who was among the pioneers, also would have been happy with the award and the project.”
Anyone interested in volunteering, or becoming a member of the project staff should write to: info@windrushfoundation.com
From left to right John Hazel, Harold Wilmot, John Richards. Credit Windrush Foundation“Big John”. John Richards today 97 years old is one of two remaining passengers who arrived on the Empire Windrush in June 1948 – photo credit: Mervyn Weir
Joy Sigaud is a writer and co-author of Jamaicans in Britain: A Legacy of Leadership. She is the publisher of Windrush Legacy Publications.
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