The theme of this year’s UK Black History Month is ‘Time for Change: Actions Not Words’. As with every Black History Month (BHM), and throughout the rest of the year, it’s important for us to acknowledge that there’s still so much more we can do to make our profession, our organisation, and our world a better place for Black people and other racialised groups. We’ll continue to echo this statement, but not just talk about it, we’ll act on it.
To mark this month, we'll be changing the ‘O’ in our RCOT logo (when we’re back on Monday morning) for this month to show solidarity with our Black members, colleagues and people everywhere. Using a design celebrating the colours Red, Green, Gold and Black – colours with significant meaning, used widely to denote BHM. The ‘O’ in our logo represents our identity as an organisation as well as ‘occupation’, and we wouldn’t be here without Black people, now and before.
We’ll be promoting historical, important and impactful Black people in occupational therapy, including Elizabeth Yates, the first Black UK speaker at the Elizabeth Casson Memorial Lecture, in 1996. You’ll be hearing from Simone Welch about her most recent EDB Insights session and the importance of BHM to her, and Kwaku Agyemang from BAMEOT UK about his journey to becoming an OT and creating his ‘OT and Chill’ podcast. We’ll also be sharing news about our internal Ethnos Colleague Network, influenced by BAMEOT UK.
And don’t forget to keep a lookout for an upcoming feature article in October’s OT News, where we cover what took place at the incredible BAMEOT UK Inaugural Symposium. We want to let you know that we’re very proud of our Black members and colleagues and that we think you’re wonderful!
Links to helpful and educational external resources:
This is not to say that we’ve made up for past mistakes and we realise the hurt that people still feel, and the discrimination people still face. But we’re working on being an active ally organisation and want to change.