Black leaders awareness day: Alexis Keir

As a Lutonian I was honoured to be asked by BLMK Health and Care Partnership to share my thoughts on leadership for Black Leaders Awareness Day. My ties to the NHS in Bedfordshire are deep and intimate – for most of her 30 years as a nurse my mother Lenore worked at the L&D Hospital. I now work for NHS England as a Public Participation Manager. My team supports the NHS in its duty and mission to work with and involve people and communities in the planning and delivery of health services so that those services produce the best outcomes possible for the people who need them.

I thought hard about what to share in this blog because  I don’t currently lead a team, department or organisation. Before I joined  NHSE I would have absolutely identified myself as a leader because I was Director of a voluntary sector organisation in North London. I wasn’t the only person providing leadership there though: the best teams – work, sporting, creative or otherwise – have ‘leaders all around the pitch’ and in my time as Director I was blessed with the wisdom and initiative of colleagues in roles throughout the charity.

To help me smile in times of stress in that wonderful organisation I used to look at a note on my noticeboard my then 6-year-old son Tom had written to say what my job description was: he thought it was to ‘tell people what to do’ and ‘to sack people’. I’d like to think that I was a bit more creative, empowering and expansive in my approach than that or they wouldn’t have kept me for 14 years!

Now though how do I think I ‘lead’? I’m will focus on something which long predates knowing what I would do for a living: my love of writing. I think that to ‘lead’ must encompass setting an example or empowering others to take a new path. Recently I went to the funeral of my old Challney High school English teacher  Doreen Thakoordin at the Vale in Stopsley. ‘Mrs. ‘T’  refused to expect anything but the best for the thousands of Black, Brown and White boys she taught over three decades and she also refused to let us expect anything less than that for ourselves. She instilled that love of writing in me, always encouraging me to daydream and make up stories. She showed me a way to express myself  and although it took a while – nearly 50 years from the time she first taught me – after her funeral I was able to walk down to Stopsley Library and see on the shelves the book she had set me on the path to writing.

I lead by shouting out about the things that I think are important and much of that is tied to writing and how voices like mine as a Black writer and those from other ‘seldom heard’ backgrounds can be supported to have a platform. At a recent talk hosted by the NHS Midlands BAME staff network I spoke about the supports that had been pivotal for me. Prominent amongst those was being selected for the London Writers Awards scheme in 2019 – run by the writer development organisation Spread The Word, the London Writers Awards aim to increase the number of writers from underrepresented communities being taken up by agents and publishers. Those backgrounds and communities focused on included emerging writers who were Disabled, LGBTQIA+, Working Class and from the Black, Asian and Global Majority. Our workshops at Spread The Word did not just focus on our writing practice although all the classes and peer feedback were insightful and rich. Instead it was made absolutely clear that they already thought we were brilliant writers – it was so affirming to be made to feel that way. The course leaders explained that their job and the primary purpose of the scheme was to help us learn about, navigate and penetrate an opaque and confusing industry. The publishing business is characterised by a reliance on established connections, stereotypical assumptions about what will sell and has a significantly un-diverse workface making the decisions about who to offer contracts to. Those factors and assumptions raise huge barriers to hearing new voices, linking with the stories of diverse communities or finding unrecognised talent.

The fact that the programme focused on trying to find and open doorways for writers with specific lived experience or ethnicity did not mean we were cut any slack or that any quality bars were lowered for us. During my year as a participant I was blessed to be in the rooms and discussions where some of the most compelling voices in British contemporary writing began their journeys. And we worked so hard – far harder a friend reminded me, than the participants on another writer development scheme we were both on where although it was open to ‘anyone’ she and I were the only participants who hadn’t gone to Oxbridge or a public school. We worked hard because we didn’t have privilege, we didn’t have connections and we wanted so intensely to develop and share our writing.

Leadership is showing what is possible. In my case by finding – or re-finding my voice even though the rediscovery took a while. I hope that I set some kind of example when I explore what fuels my creative flame. When I carry  on even in the face of experiences that threaten to blow out that flame. I hope I set an example by never ceasing to be interested in the stories that people haven’t yet been able to tell.

I spent last week preparing a presentation for a writing commission I deeply wanted to secure. I came close but wasn’t successful. It knocked me back but it didn’t knock me over. After my interview I came across staff from the Covid-19 Inquiry running an ‘Every Story Matters’ stand in The Mall and helped them with the contacts to connect with diverse communities in BLMK through the ICB. Every story does matter and as I said in my talk for the Midlands staff network I believe every story has a home. So let me end with this one.

I began my presentation for the writing commission by showing a photo I love of my mum and my dad Winston lying in an embrace on the grass on Dunstable Downs sometime in the late 60s or early 70s – I also shared it for Windrush Day last month. I ended with another photo – the one below of the view looking up towards Dallow Downs which I pointed out to Tom their grandson, now grown-up of course, as we came out of Kenilworth Road after watching Luton play Bournemouth earlier this year [what’s that? What was the score? 2-1 to The Hatters as you’re asking]. I told him about how I explored and played ‘up the Downs’ as a child and that the first house his grandparents owned was just down the road in Kingsway, where my parents could grow vegetables and sink their fingers into the soil just like they had been able to ‘back home’ in Saint Vincent.

A thread connects how I was helped on merit to become a published author, the photo of my mum and dad up on the Downs, me sharing Sunday lunch with their friends and listening to their memories of arriving in this country in the 60s, the voices from inclusion health groups telling the NHS the most effective ways to engage with them or Black, Asian, LGBTQIA+ or disabled staff speaking up about the blocks on their progression. It isn’t just about those who hold the levers of recruitment, research, funding or commissioning deciding ‘we’re going to ask those people what they think.’ It’s about acknowledging there are unheard stories in the first place and allowing people to tell their stories the way they want them to be told. Because as the title to my presentation went – We Were Here Before You Ever Saw Us.

Alexis Keir
NHS England

UK- SVG: HURRICANE BERYL WE SHALL RISE FUND – https://gofund.me/cdff7f41

The SVG Friendship Foundation (UK), a registered charity in the UK is part of disaster relief efforts across the UK to raise funds for nationals of Saint Vincent and the Grenadines who have been directly impacted by the passage of Hurricane Beryl on Monday 1^st July.