To celebrate Black History Month, City Lit, London’s largest adult education centre, is set to launch Black by Popular Demand, a one-off variety show.  Actors, musicians, poets and dancers will take to the stage, offering their services for free, to help raise the profile of this important campaign, including some of the cast from West End smash hit Dancing in the Street. 

Vivienne Rochester, Head of Drama at City Lit and Director of Black by Popular Demand, which takes place on the 5th November, said: “This show is unprecedented. We have attracted black performers from all over London including the fabulous Siam Hurlock and talented James Bellamy who are currently playing Diana Ross and Stevie Wonder in the West End musical Dancing in the Street. 

Also performing is Junior Laniyan, from the soap Family Affairs; Kay Adshead, the award winning playwright, with an extract from her latest play Bones currently at The Bush Theatre; Marianne Willows of Sky TV’s Dream Team and a host of other new up-and-coming performers. We welcome the opportunity at City Lit to showcase and celebrate the rich talents of our students from London’s diverse communities and hopefully this will help to attract an even greater diversity of students to City Lit.”

City Lit is also offering a range of other events to celebrate the campaign, including a storytelling workshop. One City Lit student, David Monteith 38, has his own unique story to tell which will form part of a film in the New Year to celebrate the 200th anniversary of the end of slavery.   Of the Channel 4 film, David commented, “My great, great, great grandfather was one of the last ever black slaves, before the abolition of transatlantic slavery in 1807. Archibold Monteith, as he became known, was kidnapped at the age of 10 from Nigeria, to be taken to Jamaica as a slave to a Scottish man.” This year, David, 38, who has been involved in City Lit’s Theatre Rep Company since 2000, travelled to Nigeria and Jamaica with the production company October Films to re-trace his ancestor’s steps, “we’re all fascinated with where we came from… but this experience was both fascinating and scary”. 
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• Black by Popular Demand takes place at 7.30pm, at Keeley Street in Covent Garden, tickets cost £7 and are available in advance and on the door.  To reserve your tickets call the Drama, Dance and Speech department on 020 7492 2542/3.

• City Lit events to help Londoners find out more about black history include:
Black thinkers in the Caribbean 1860’s-1960s
Storytelling workshop celebrating Black History Month
Black Visual Arts in the UK
Africa Today