FROM 01 MARCH 2021 BIGISSUE.COM | 23
Lavinya Stennett
Founder, The Black Curriculum
Stennett founded a social enterprise in London,
The Black Curriculum, designed to revamp
England’s education system to ensure all children
are taught about black history. Her aim is to
support teachers to allow young black people a
sense of identity – something Stennett says is hard
to find if people can’t recognise themselves in the
teaching of British history. Through workshops,
The Black Curriculum team show how diversity can
be taught across art, music and politics classes, not
just history lessons.Sophie Gwen Williams
We Exist London
One of the co-founders behind community cafe and
arts hub We Exist, artist Williams is working to ensure
trans people have the opportunity to build community
away from alcohol. The project has already hosted
dozens of trans and gender non-conforming artists
despite the pandemic and, crucially, fundraises to
cover emergency health costs for trans people who
face growing waiting times and extortionate private
healthcare costs. The average wait time for someone
to be seen at a gender identity clinic is 18 months,
according to the LGBT Foundation, and can be as long
as two-and-a-half years.Nadia Whittome
Labour MP for Nottingham East
Elected in 2019, Whittome is Westminster’s youngest MP. The
24-year-old pledged to hold on to £35,000 from her wages, a
little under the equivalent of an average full-time worker’s salary,
and donate the rest to good causes – which she did, giving cash
to charities like Nottingham’s St Ann’s Advice Centre and POW,
an organisation protecting the city’s sex workers. Whittome is
tireless in her efforts to give a platform to those often dismissed
by the establishment, from keeping LGBTQ+ rights on the
agenda and hosting youth climate strikers in Parliament.Ellen Clifford
Author and disability activist
Ten years of austerity, a punitive welfare system and
the Covid-19 crisis continue to have a huge impact on
disabled people. Clifford wrote The War on Disabled
People: Capitalism, Welfare and the Making of a Human
Catastrophe, and for two decades she has campaigned
for policymakers to stop ignoring what life is really like
for disabled people, including their exclusion from a
benefits increase. At the start of lockdown, Universal
Credit claimants received a £20-per-week uplift, and
ministers have not given any indication that they will
extend that to disabled people on legacy benefits.Image: Jonathan Hordle/ShutterstockImage: Linda Nylind / Guardian / eyevine