How does a company flex it’s anti racist muscle?
Never bold enough to suggest we know it all….CO Kids is a company that loves to learn!!
Seeking out opportunities to meet with others in the industry, to listen and to gain new knowledge and skills is something we are genuinely excited about and here for!
So previously Sally and I went to this years Nursery World Show to meet with Liz Pemberton @theblacknurserymanager as she delivered her talk on “Equality and Diversity; A Child’s Right to Joy”.
Here she is ….! And here we are meeting before the event for a chat.
What we learnt;
As we photograph and engage with each child we have the opportunity to feed into a child’s sense of self. How we go about photographing on the day gives us opportunity to invite joy into the life of children we meet. The more inclusive we are, the more respectful of backgrounds, more culturally sensitive we are, we know the better our rapport with children will be and the more awesome our photographs for families will be.
Liz played us a video showing a video entitled “Black Joy”. We like this article that explains more on what Black Joy is here https://www.vogue.co.uk/arts-and-lifestyle/article/what-is-black-joy/amp
The video showed black babies and older children one after the other, sometimes with a family member in shot sometimes not, smiling, giggling and laughing.
The audience was asked how did that make you feel?
As a group we concluded that seeing authentic moments of happiness was great to see, that we wanted to see more of it and we wanted to celebrate it. It was heartwarming and made us feel emotional as a group to see the massive smiles and hear the laughter that can come from authentic happy times.
It ignited in me a renewed passion to deliver such happiness in the photography we produce for our parents at nursery. We can help create and allow a child’s joy …even better we can take a photo of it so families of all racialised groups feel great.
CO Kids is up for flexing our anti racist muscle. It’s the right thing to do.
Attending a course is one thing but we also want to… as Liz described “do the work”.
What 3 immediate things are we are going to do following our session with Liz?
1. Revisit our commitment to equality and diversity as written in our HR handbook and make changes to reaffirm our commitment.
2. Read more, and read often. My Skin Your Skin by Laura Henry-Allain was an excellent read, as was The Good Ally by Nova Reid.
3. Not be afraid to ask ourselves uncomfortable questions about race, we and the children that we photograph become stronger for it. As we say in the entrepreneurial world often …growth never came from comfort zones and we are here for it.
To find more on Liz’s work visit https://www.theblacknurserymanager.com
Written by Carrie Wilkes.
