There has been praise from Nottingham’s first Afro Caribbean Centre about the vital role that black people in politics have played in the city. Members of the Afro Caribbean National Artistic Centre (ACNA) in St Ann’s have spoken out about how they hope to be open more to the community soon too.
At 31 Hungerhill Road in St Ann’s, you will find the ACNA Centre. Throughout the years, the ACNA Centre has been home to many parties, celebrations, wellbeing events, lunches and more for the community.
The ACNA Centre has been described as “small but tallawah.” In Jamaican Patois, this means small but mighty.
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Throughout the years, ACNA has worked closely with NJF. Nottingham Jamaican Friendship Society, a registered charity.
Their latest celebration in honour of Jamaica's 60th year of Independence will be a thanksgiving service and a reception. On Sunday August 7, at St Mary’s Church there will be a ecumenical civic service and then a 3pm starting reception at the ACNA Centre on Hungerhill Road.
The civic service is a celebration of those who have made contributions to Nottingham who are now deceased such as Eric Irons, the first black magistrates in Nottingham, and George Powell from the Caribbean community. There will also be a celebration and attendance of current councillors too.
At the reception, the celebrations will continue at the ACNA Centre celebrating Jamaica and Jamaican people's contributions to Nottingham. When coming over from Jamaica to Nottingham, many men worked on buses, in the mining industries and John Players plus many men and women worked for the NHS.
Speaking more about the role of the ACNA Centre is Enid Lee- Brown, 69.
Enid is the secretary for the centre and she wanted to make one thing clear, she said: “We don’t just provide things for black people, here, we’re inclusive, we want people to learn about Jamaica, meet people and learn things.
“Hopefully, when we put on these kinds of events, people will be curious and ask questions. This event is open for anyone, it’s a free event with the only thing that you need to pay for is food.”
Those who may not be able to afford food, Enid said, are guaranteed a free meal. The ACNA centre which has been running for over 40 years currently runs a Bingo and Dominos night on a Monday and is “packed” on a Sunday too.
Over lockdown, the community centre played an important role in looking after people in the area.
Enid continued and said: “Over lockdown, we provided two meals a week to vulnerable people in the community, free of charge and we handed out over 1,300 meals.”
There was a dedicated team of volunteers that would deliver dishes of Caribbean food to people. Enid continued and said: “Out of [the food project] we realised just how many people were vulnerable in the community.
“People looked forward to it and we’d ring people, keeping in touch and making sure that they were okay.”
Enid admitted that years ago, St Ann’s did have a bad reputation. Enid said: “We used to work closely with the police and have all the youths in here, ACNA is still as instrumental now even though it may be quiet.”
Jeremy Stapleton has been attending the ACNA centre for many years. He told Nottinghamshire Live: “Milton Croster and George Lee were instrumental in getting a place like this [the ACNA centre] for people to meet. This place is where people can come for things like wellbeing and education.”
Jeremy continued and said: “Every time people come here, they leave better from when they came through the door. There’s a bounce to this place, you leave uplifted, people are linked together from different ethnic groups.”
“When we look back at the history of councillors, there’s George Powell, Tony Robinson and Desmond Wilson, these people of Caribbean or Jamaican descent had a vital role in civic office.”
Speaking about the civic event service at 1pm, St Mary’s Church, Jeremey said: “Celebrating the fact that people of colour are still progressing and young people seeing them in their community moving up is important.”
Councillors that have been invited to the civic ecumenical service include Corall Jenkins Labour Councillor representing the St Ann’s Ward, Councillor Audrey Dinnall, Labour Councillor representing the Leen Valley Ward and more.
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