Case Study 3

Black Cultural History in Lower Mainland

Case study 3 is a collaboration between BLAC and Andrea Fatona that explores the connection between the histories and patterns of Black settlement in Surrey and Vancouver, BC, with a focus on Black people’s engagement in the labour force. Utilizing the archives at SFU, Emily Carr University, City of Vancouver, City of Surrey, VIVO, and most importantly, family collections; the project seeks to document and commemorate histories of Black participation in Surrey and Vancouver. The project focuses on what is present in the archive and aims to fill some of the existing gaps pertaining to Black livingness (McKittrick,2021). The following questions guide the research activities: (a) How are Black communities formed and sustained in relation to access to the labour force; (b) How is Black people’s engagement in the labour force documented and represented in the official archive; and (c) who collects and describes the materials in the archive. A core activity of the project is the development of “other” means to classify and disseminate cultural and art objects produced by Black Canadian cultural producers with attention paid to the networked relationships that Black Canadian diasporic subjects have to other geographic locations, cultures, and radical traditions (Nelson 2018; Fatona 2011). The case study will also address how historical products “work” in the present to shed light on the conditions of Blackness then and now.