How Team JH celebrated Black History Month 2021
Whether you’re looking for inspiration for your own Black History Month plans for 2022, or just want to learn a bit more about what life is really like at JH – read on to find out how we celebrated Black History Month 2021!
BHM Zoom Background
Like many digital agencies, we tend to spend a lot of time in remote meetings on Zoom. To bring a little BHM fun to our meetings, Junior Digital Designer Joyce created a snazzy Zoom background to help us show our support!
Suggested reading
If there was any time of year to highlight fiction, movies and music from Black creators – this is the month! For those who wanted to, our suggested reading was Queenie by Candice Carty-Williams. The JH team were invited to order their copies of the book using their JH professional development fund!
Black History Month Quiz
Every other Friday at JH we host a quiz remotely for the whole team to join – so this month we created Black History Month themed versions! From Black sportspeople to inventions, civil rights movements, music, films, geography and more – this made both a fun team activity and a learning experience.
Want to host your own quiz? Here are the questions and answers we used to get you started! Download Black History Quiz
A poignant documentary
Many of the most important events in Black History that have key lessons to teach us aren’t so positive – and we felt it was important to include these in our shared experience too. For this month’s all-company Nourish session, we decided to watch a documentary about the Notting Hill riots, a series of racially motivated riots that took place in 1958.
During the documentary, which we all watched remotely in unison, we also shared our thoughts together in Slack. Many of us were shocked and saddened by the details of this part of history, many of which we hadn’t come across before.
If you’d like to learn about these events yourself, you can watch this documentary here.
Sharing traditional recipes to try
Each week during October, Project Manager Ofe and Pod Lead Dwayne shared some amazing traditional recipes with us, from Nigerian and Jamaican culture – many of which they’d grown up with and have fond memories of. It was amazing to have some insight into dishes we’ve never had the joy of experiencing before!
Here’s their top recommendations:
- Nigerian Chicken Pepper Soup
- Ackee & Kalamata Olives – from RG Vegan eBook
- Yam & Egg Sauce
- Red Pea Stew & Spinners – from RG Vegan eBook
- Plantain & Lentil Stew – from RG Vegan eBook
- Suya Chicken
Social media takeover
For the final week of Black History Month, we took over our social media platforms with stories of Black success and achievements – featuring some amazing Black icons from the tech space and beyond!
We were proud to use our platforms to shine a light on the amazing work Black people are doing: championing diversity, building brilliant brands, and changing the face of technology.
Raffle to raise money for Blueprint for All
We wanted our celebration to have a wider impact than just our team – so we decided to host a charity raffle to raise money for a worthy cause.
Project Manager Ofe created some brilliant hampers using products from Black owned businesses, and JH kindly paid for the prizes, meaning all the money raised from the raffle tickets could go straight to Blueprint for All. So far we’ve raised over £200!
Black History Month Party
The highlight of our Black History Month celebrations, of course, was our team party – and we really pulled out all the stops! With TWO different local caterers – resulting in the ultimate battle between Nigerian and Jamaican dishes – BHM themed decorations, homemade rum punch, team games and music, the JH office was made over into a party venue to round out the month. And best of all, we had the biggest in-person gathering of the team since before the pandemic began!
Here’s a snap from our party – we couldn’t think of a better way to finish the month!
