Alex Wheatle a young man who grew up in the UK brought up as an orphan with no love or family. Growing up in an orphanage in Surrey and experiencing severe racism and institutional racism at the hand of his carers and the police and community at the time. The interview with Alex covers his life story which was used as one part of Director Steve McQueens’s five-part series ‘Small Axe’. In this interview, Alex explores the key themes of personal identity and community, following his experiences in society, his love of sound system culture, education, and mentorship that lead to the inspirations of his novels to date.
Morgan, T. Challenging Times Series. Available on: https://artslondon.padlet.org/timmorgan/challengingtimes(Accessed 15th May)
I have been considering mentoring a lot over the past few years in my personal life and practice and have realised the importance of communication and learning through lived experiences of others within spaces that I wish to navigate. Often the journey through life, education, and career experiences can feel ominous and intimidating. To be totally honest, these are also feelings I have had on this journey through teaching practice and studying for my PGCert, as well as my career. Having graduated in 2011, which is a decade ago (time flies, can’t believe how long it has actually been!), re-entering education has presented its challenges and insecurities. A lack of confidence and perhaps elements of intimidation fuelled by thoughts of not being able to articulate my responses to readings as well as my cohorts. Or the assumption that my cohorts have all had years of teaching experience, which was not the case for all. I share this to say that it was very helpful to voice some of these concerns to my tutor and gain directions and reassurance in a similar way that Alex Wheatle did from Solemon. Solemon was Alex’s cellmate, following his time in prison, who through getting to know Alex expressed the importance of education and guided him in his learning and unlearning, forging a sense of clarity and direction.
In my case my communication and relationship with my tutor helped guide and navigate me through this journey and somewhat lessened my concerns. This made me reflect and relate to the experiences of my students all of which come from different backgrounds, cultures, abilities and may have different life experiences and their own insecurities and challenges entering higher education. How can I best support them on their journeys as Alex and myself had been?
In the interview, Alex touched on ‘empathy’ as being a key theme for him in his work. This is a theme he uses in his work to build relationships with his readers providing representation through his portrayal of youth culture, black characters and their experience. This brought me to think about Bell Hooks – ‘All about love’.
https://moodle.arts.ac.uk/pluginfile.php/1049061/mod_resource/content/4/All%20About%20Love.pdf
In this Hooks explores learning from lived experiences and understanding setbacks to guide your path going forward. Leading with love and empathy ‘Redeemed and restored, love returns us to the promise of everlasting life. When we love we can let our hearts speak.’. Relating this to education with love and empathy we can gain an understanding of students and colleagues. We are able to gain better communication and insight into one another. We are able to inspire our students igniting their passions for the moment and direction for the future. This can be done most effectively through crit sessions and formative feedback or feedback forward in summative assessments. These are methods that could also be used to create a community in HE.
McQueen. S, (2020) ‘Small Axe- Alex Wheatle’ Available on: https://www.bbc.co.uk/programmes/m000q6rf (Accessed on 08.05.21)