Interview with Lambeth Councillor Sonia Winifred, Cabinet Member for Culture and Equality
Make It: You are Lambeth Council’s Cabinet Member for Culture and Equality, can you give us a brief overview of what that means? What is your remit, and what projects are you responsible for?
Cllr Winifred: As the Cabinet Member with the Equalities and Culture portfolio, this means I have Cabinet responsibility for Libraries and Archives, Parks and Open Spaces, Cemeteries and Crematoriums, Arts and Heritage including Theatres, Black Cultural Archives, and the Vulnerable Person’s Resettlement Scheme.
Make It: How are the global Black Lives Matter protests affecting what you are able to achieve?
Cllr Winifred: The Black Lives Matter protests have had a huge impact on the community and the world. Certainly the killing of George Floyd on social media for all to see has generated the protests and the genuine sense of disbelief anger – rage even – and the need to stand up and say enough is enough! How it has impacted on what I am able to achieve is yet to be seen.
By this I mean that I have been leading on the Council’s Equalities Commission which was set up in 2016 to identify the barriers standing in the way of equality for many in Lambeth. We gathered the views of the community and its residents, we published the report and recommendation in 2017. The commission found clear evidence of poverty in the borough: one in three children in Lambeth is born into poverty, 1/3 of Black Caribbean children are eligible for free school meals, 19% of employees living in Lambeth are paid below the recommended London Living Wage. Black residents are four times more likely to be unemployed than white residents, black people are at least six times as likely to be stopped and searched compared with white people, black men and women are also more likely to receive custodial sentences than white men and women.
The recommendations of the commission are being implemented, and an equalities diversity and inclusion programme has been set up to support staff with performance and self-development. A number of focus groups have also been set up providing staff with opportunities to speak and share their concerns. The concerns of the Black Lives Matter Movement are those which has been with us for far too long: inequality, poor education, poor health, poor housing, unemployment. These are issues I have been tackling through the equalities agenda, and continue to support the community and the staff to actually make a difference to people’s lives. To encourage positive change with an economic structure which will secure sustainability and develop opportunities for young people in our community.
Make It: How does Brixton’s place in the Windrush story fit?
Cllr Winifred: To many of the Windrush generation Brixton is the Windrush Story! The pioneers who arrived on the Windrush in 1948, who came with an abundance of hopes, dreams and aspirations and made a home for themselves. They kept their promises of “I will send for you as soon as I am settled”, and sent for members of their families, mostly their young children who they had left in the care of grandparents. Brixton became home for many of the Windrush generation who settled here, and by the early 1960’s two streets – in particular Geneva Road and Somerleyton had the highest level of West Indian home ownership in London. The public square in Brixton was named Windrush Square on the 50th Anniversary of the Windrush. The story of the Windrush generation continues.
Make It: It feels like with everything happening, this is your moment! Can you tell us about your ambition for Brixton
Cllr Winifred: To encourage positive change with an economic structure which will secure sustainability, and develop opportunities for young people in our community. My ambition for Brixton must include all ethnicities and the equality of opportunity for everyone. I recognise the inequalities within our communities, and I am determined to make a difference.
Make It: At Make It in Brixton we know that culture is a key catalyst for community resilience – and that is more important than ever in a post-COVID-19 world – especially given the impact on business-as-usual economics. How do you see Lambeth and the community working together now?
Cllr Winifred: With COVID-19 we are all confronted with an epidemic unlike anything we have experienced before, one whose impact on our health and mortality, our social and economic lives is quite beyond our grasp and previous experience. We all carry our own personal burdens and losses from this epidemic, there are profound and frightening inequalities emerging in the way that different communities and ethnicities in Lambeth and the UK as a whole are experiencing this crisis. If we are to learn anything from this crisis, it is that we must work with the community to build a more equal society. Lambeth Council must listen and hear from those lived experiences within our communities in order to build, support and deliver services which are sustainable and actually makes positive changes to people’s lives.
Make It:… and if it was all up to you, how would you reimagine Brixton for the better?
Cllr Winifred: If it was all up to me I would want a Brixton which is flexible and accommodating, a community which works together for the benefit of all. Where all voices are heard and the services are culturally modified acknowledging the wonderful diversity within our borough.
