On Thursday 22nd April, BAME activist, author and journalist Ore Ogunbiyi gave the first Speaker Programme talk of the Summer Term.

As this week’s speaker, Ore discussed her lived experiences of being a black woman in predominantly white and male dominated institutions. Her talk covered her diverse career, as an undergraduate Politics and International Relations student at Cambridge University, to co-author of Taking Up Space: The Black Girl’s Manifesto for Change, and most recently her new post as a full-time journalist at The Economist. She also touched upon pertinent issues of current affairs, such as systemic racism and the urgent need for more diversity in education. The talk was finished by a lively Q&A session in which Year 12 asked a myriad of questions about performance activism, quotas, the Benin Bronzes repatriation campaign (which Ore herself was very instrumental in) and the implications of the government’s recent Commission on Race and Ethnic Disparities. Her incredible passion, enthusiasm and charisma inspired many of our Sixth Formers to – as her book details – ‘take up space’.

A recording of Ore’s talk can be viewed below.