Woman's Hour - The art of pottering, Sexual assault allegation against the Minister of Tolerance, Black women and poetry

Episode Date: October 27, 2020

Pottering - what exactly is it? And why should you make time for it? To discuss this most British of pastimes, Jane is joined by self-confessed potterer – life coach Sarah Longfield and Anna McGovern, author of Pottering: A Cure for Modern Life, who defines pottering as keeping herself busy but without a plan or a purpose. Caitlin McNamara, a former Hay Festival curator, claims she was attacked in February of this year whilst working on the inaugural Middle East festival, by Sheikh Nahyan, the Minister of Tolerance in the United Arab Emirates cabinet and a member of Abu Dhabi’s ruling family. Now taking legal action in the UK, she joins Jane to explain why she has decided to make public the alleged assault. Baroness Helena Kennedy discusses the importance of this case.October is Black History Month. Reporter Olivia Cope spoke to two black female performance artists about their work and the influence this past year has had on their craft. Sophia Thakur has been holding free workshops over Zoom during lockdown, where hundreds of people from around the world have been in touch to work out how to express their feelings towards current events. Vilma Jackson's work explores the challenges she faces as a deaf, black woman in a hearing world. Ali Gordon is Vilma’s interpreter.Presenter: Jane Garvey Producer: Dianne McGregor

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BBC Sounds. Music, radio, podcasts. Hi, this is Jane Garvey. Welcome to the Woman's Hour podcast. It's Tuesday, the 27th of October, 2020. Hi, good morning to you. Today we mark Black History Month in the company of the performance artists Sophia Tucker and Vilma Jackson. We'll discuss pottering. Is it an art form? If it is, it's the only art form I'm any

good at. So we'll talk about that a little bit later in the programme. First, though, Caitlin McNamara is the British woman who alleges that she was sexually assaulted by a senior member of the Emirati royal family in February of this year. Caitlin was in Abu Dhabi working on the Hay Literary Festival's first event in the Middle East. Sheikh Nayyad, the Minister of Tolerance in the United Arab Emirates, is the man she says attacked her. His lawyers say he is surprised and saddened by the allegation, which he denies. Kate Lynn is now trying to take legal action in this country and went to the police here in July. She told me about the work

she'd been doing in the UAE. I had been working hard to try and use Hay Festival's platform and access to very prominent and influential people in the UAE to campaign on some of the issues that Hay stands for and that I stand for, including freedom of expression. I thought it was a bit rich for us to be there celebrating freedom of expression and flying in writers from around the world to talk openly on stage whilst there were writers and poets and artists locked up on the basis of freedom of expression. So prior to this evening, I had been campaigning quite hard for an Emirati poet and human rights activist called Ahmed Mansour, and I'd been working with Amnesty and Human Rights Watch on that. I'd had some quite direct conversations with quite senior people about it

and I had been told by our PR agency, Brunswick Arts, that I might have overstepped the mark a little bit. Right, so with that being the background, you weren't that surprised to be invited to meet the minister? No, no, it really didn't. It didn't come out of the blue at all. It had been off the back of lots of conversations that day about this issue. So when I had a call from the minister, I assumed that I would be invited to an evening where they would demonstrate their tolerance to me

so that I would drop my campaigning efforts. And what did happen? I was taken out of town to a villa. I had put on a tracker on WhatsApp. Not very sophisticated, but it was dark and we were driving away from where I'd had meetings with anyone connected to the ministry before, which was either at the palace or the ministry. You were entirely on your own? I was entirely on my own. My bag was taken off me at the door, which had my phone in.

Again, this is all completely usual protocol. You know, that's not unusual out there and I was led into a room which was just full of very impressive stuff. Photos of Sheikh Nayyad, this minister with the Pope and the Rolling Stones and different world leaders and royals which is quite an intimidating environment to be in which just highlighted how important and influential this man was he eventually arrived and it was clear within about 10-15 minutes that my efforts to move the conversation on to Ahmed Mansour or the festival or campaigning wasn't welcome. And instead, I was in the villa for four hours. It started off with him touching my arm and leg and telling me to take my shoes off, which I said no. And at that point, I was still thinking, you know, it obviously clicked and I felt like a complete idiot.

But I also, my mind was just in a complete panic trying to think, OK, I'm on an island at night without my bag in this concrete villa through checkpoints with a very powerful man who I don't want to upset I rely on him for my visa my flight my salary the festival all the people that are flying out We should say that your colleagues at the Hay Festival knew you were there. Yes, yeah. Peter Florence, the director of Hay Festival at the time, knew I was there because I was on the tracker with him. As the evening went on and I, you know, I was still at this point was trying to get out of it without offending,

which in hindsight seems ridiculous, but that's what unfortunately you often have to do in these situations. I was able to get my phone at one point. I'd gone outside to try and get away, and then I was able to get my phone and text him saying, you know, I don't want to mess up your festival but I need to get out of here and unfortunately it just continued to get worse after after that. I don't really want to make you relive what actually happened but suffice to say that you allege that you were the victim of a very serious sexual assault during the course of the evening.

How did you get away? So, I mean, the first time that I thought we were leaving was there was a point when I was able to go and text Peter. And at this point, he had just been, I don't want to say all, because it was horrible, but he had been grabbing me and kissing me and touching me and you know making these sort of big claims about us flying around the world together and I you know I had been very clear verbally and non-verbally that it was unwelcome and had

asked to leave and at one point he agreed that I could go because I even if I'd run away there was I would have had to swim to a road and look for a taxi there was no way of leaving without his driver that had taken me there and um I thought we were leaving but we ended up going on this big tour of a villa which which ended really when he pushed me down to a bed and sexually assaulted me. And at that point, I think something clicked in my mind while I was lying down with his weight on top of me. And I realised that it wasn't just what he was doing to me that was scary,

it was also the unknown of what would happen next. It was the sort of fear surrounding the environment I was in, not knowing how it would end and at that point I went into a different mode of I know that I can't get out of this situation without not offending him. And I pushed him off and was able to convince him somehow to take me down to the main entrance where another man was there. And I had to rely on his driver to take me back to my hotel. Even then I wasn't sure where I was going, but I was me back to my hotel. Even then I wasn't sure where I was going but I was taken back to my hotel. I immediately called Peter Florence, a friend in Dubai, a friend in London, my mum and I thought that would be it but the following morning I received 14 calls from him and the text continued for weeks and that might not sound like much but when someone that influential

who has control over me getting on a flight and being able to leave or when you're not answering his calls there's a whole nother level of I knew that if he started to feel rejected or you know if I had hurt his ego or if he wanted to cover up what he had done he had such an immense power over not just me but also this thing that I'd poured my heart and soul into for six months to create. So what happened when you contacted the British authorities? Because you did do that. Yeah, I immediately drove to Dubai to get some distance from Abu Dhabi. And the consul general in Dubai came to the hotel that I was checked into under another name.

He came and took my statement. I was then invited into the British Embassy in Dubai. And they connected me to a counselling organisation in Glasgow. And they offered me assistance in making sure I got onto a plane safely. The festival went ahead, didn't it? Mm-hm. What did you think about that? At the time, it was very difficult.

I had left the country and it was really kind of soul-destroying to watch this man who had assaulted me watch the Minister for Tolerance get on stage on a hay festival platform and be applauded and celebrated for this thing that I had built was very, very difficult. And to have the writers and my colleagues and the audience, you know, unwittingly be complicit in that scenario

felt so wrong on so many levels. However, you know, with hindsight, I can understand why it went ahead and, you know, I would have hated for the whims of this man, which have had such enormous consequences on me, to have also destroyed all of that work, all of the volunteers that were engaged in it, all of the incredible education and outreach work that I had set up.

I'd hate for him to have ruined all of that. You have also reported your allegations to the police, to the Met. What's likely to happen there? So when I got back to London, the Foreign Office and many other people advised that I didn't report it to the police in the UAE for my own safety. It's been proven in a UN report last year that the leaders of the UAE are above their actually quite progressive sexual assault and sexual

violence laws in place and that was part of the reason why I wanted to speak out about this because I know that if it had if this had been I don't know, say, the kind Filipino man that cleaned my hotel room every day, or the South Indian construction worker who we did creative writing workshops with as part of the festival, that the outcome would be very different. You know, no one should be above those laws. And how are you now? I'm OK. I've been diagnosed with post-traumatic stress disorder

and it's been a very difficult eight months. But I feel fortunate to have been able to come back home to London and have the support of family and friends, to have had medical help through the NHS, to have access to the Met Police who put panic alarms in my home. Was it actually harder when nobody knew about these allegations? We're led to believe that silence will save us, but it won't. I've had a huge amount of support over the last week and I've been told that I'm brave for speaking out,

but I really believe that real bravery is the women who have to stay silent about these things. A huge weight has been lifted since I've been able to speak out about it. And there were so many people, well meaning who are encouraging me not to because of the fear that it would ruin my reputation for future work, or, you know, and I would love to do anything I can to encourage anyone who experiences anything similar to speak up about it without shame. Caitlin McNamara, who has waived her right to anonymity, of course. We should say the Minister for Tolerance, Sheikh Nayyan, denies the allegation against him.

And we have a statement too from the Foreign Office. They say we take any reports of sexual assault abroad extremely seriously. Our staff in the UK and the UAE have been in contact with the British woman involved and we'll continue to do everything we can to support her. Well, Baroness Helena Kennedy QC is somebody else who's doing her bit to try to support Caitlin McN support her. Well, Baroness Helena Kennedy QC is somebody else who's doing her bit to try to support Caitlin McNamara. Helena, good morning to you. Good morning, Jane. That Foreign Office statement appears to be somewhat at odds

with the advice they gave Caitlin, which was not to report what she alleges has happened in the UAE. What do you say about that? Well, of course, you know, first of all, the Foreign Office's position is that they worry about giving legal advice to anybody in situ. But I would have thought that they would have immediately, once they knew that she was safe and got home,

would have gone to see this ministry and made formal complaints to the rulers of the UEA and said he has to be dismissed. But apparently none of that seems to have happened so far. And while the Foreign Office certainly provided, when I asked them to provide the statement that Caitlin had made when she went to the consulate, they've certainly made available and helped in securing that, as you would expect. But I would have thought a bit more proactivity would have been the case, especially when the Foreign Office is saying that they are very committed to ending sexual violence

and taking a lead in the world in ending violence towards women. So, you know, I hope to see more of that commitment. OK, what could Caitlin do to pursue the case? Well, Caitlin was first put in contact with me in May and I immediately brought in some other legal advisors too with an international lawyer who knows that region well. And I also encouraged her to make the report to the Metropolitan Police and have the case put into the hands of the Crime Prosecution Service.

Because the problem about this is that we're in these places where there's impunity. Here's this man, he's so senior, they own the law. You know, yes, they'll prosecute waiters and taxi drivers, but it doesn't apply to them. And they are the law. And that kind of impunity has saved our country. And one of the ways of doing it, you see,

would be to invoke universal jurisdiction. It's very rare to prosecute something here for something that's happened somewhere else. And it has to be very grievous crime. This was, in the definition that we use for rape nowadays, this was a rape that took place on Caitlin. And it was over a protracted period of time. She was isolated in fear for her life. I mean, even when she was put into the car with the driver, she didn't know whether there might not have been instructions to dump her in the desert, you know. So the terror of that is serious. So the question is, can there be a prosecution here of this man?

He owns properties here. He's got huge assets here. He comes here all the time to spend his money. And so I would like to see, as invoking universal jurisdiction, under the heading of, it's very limited, you see. You can't do it for every crime. And it's available for torture. Yeah, can you tell us when it is available for torture? Yeah, well, tell us when it is used. Give us an example of when universal jurisdiction has been used.

It's used, of course, for, you know, crimes against humanity and major mass crimes, war crimes and so on. But it's also used for torture. And that can be torture against an individual by agents of a state. And that essentially is what happened here. She was subjected to cruel and inhumane treatment over a period of time and put in fear of her life as well as raped. And you see, all of this law, as I've always maintained, is that law on the whole has not been made with women in mind. And so nobody thinks a rape constituting and a protracted sexual abuse and so on,

constituting a grievous crime under the heading of torture, cruel and inhumane treatment. Well, it should do. But it would be it would be a step that would be unusual for our crime prosecution service to take. But I'm urging them to do it. It would create a precedent, but it would stop people like this man doing this to women and then knowing that he just can shrug his shoulders and there's no justice for her is available in his region. And so we have to say, can't justice be offered here? So I'm hoping the Crown Prosecution Service will do that. Get a warrant out.

Send the police to interview him in the UEA. Let's hear what he's got to say. We should say again, the Sheikh, Sheikh Nayyar denies the allegations against him. Why might there be some resistance to pursuing this case on the part of the British authorities? Well, listen, we all want to, you know, our prosecutorial system is separate from government,

except that when it comes to the use of universal jurisdiction, there has to be consent from the law officers, from the Attorney General and so on. So I'm sure there are discussions taking place across government about what the implications of this might be in relation to our great trading partnership with the United Arab Emirates. They are the own huge assets here in London. They are big players when it comes to money. And so there's going to be, I suspect, a bit of hesitation. But I hope that it doesn't apply to the Crown Prosecution Service.

And I hope that the police will be allowed to go there and seek to investigate this. I suspect that they won't be given an opportunity to do so because they won't do this with him. They might slowly kind of take him out of that ministry and put him somewhere else, but he'll continue to be a person with huge power because this is a royal family. So we really have to find ways of confronting this kind of impunity where people can get away with crime and serious crime because of their power. And I do hope that because this is an influential trading partner, and particularly at a time when we're rooting around the world looking for people to trade with, that we don't let that interfere with justice

because justice has to be our priority. Do you think that's a risk then? Well, let's hope that such a thought will not occur to anybody, that trade comes before what's been suffered by women. And just think about it. Is this going to say that all of the businesses, I'm hoping that people will be saying in the businesses that do business there, are we not able to send women out there to do business? I mean, Caitlin was there running a big festival. Caitlin was the curator of this whole event. She's an experienced person who's indeed worked for other cultural organisations. She's worked for the BBC.

This is a woman who's got serious experience and he exploited that. And we cannot allow men like this to have impunity. Thank you very much. The thoughts of Baroness Helena Kennedy QC, Sheikh Nayyan, of course, denies the allegations against him. And thank you to you for the tweets coming in, in support of Caitlin McNamara. You can keep your views coming, of course, at BBC Women's Hour on social media, or you can email the programme via our website. This time yesterday, we were right in the middle of that conversation about the climate and about the Women's Hour power list and the

environment. And the subject of wet wipes came up and the possibility, too, of banning wet wipes. And I just wanted to acknowledge that a fair few of you have contacted us just to make this point. I'm just going to do one of the quite a few emails we had on this topic. I was gobsmacked yesterday Jane about your comment about the possibility of banning wet wipes. I have ME, it's a little bit like long Covid and I just couldn't survive without wet wipes as I can't wash in conventional ways more than once a week. Please make it clear that a lot of disabled people rely heavily on single-use plastics. Can we be part of these conversations? So just an important nod to that very real problem and situation out there. Sorry

if we offended anybody yesterday but loads of you I know are so passionate about the topic of the environment and the Woman's Hour Power List will be revealed this year. The subject is our planet and it's November the 16th this year. I think we're going to be at Kew Gardens. I'm really looking forward to that. That's going to be really nice just to get out. I think we can all agree that would be nice. Now, tomorrow, I'm delighted to say that Woman's Hour is going to be presented by our friend Paulette Edwards, the Radio Sheffield presenter. You might well recall that she did a programme with me a couple of years ago on the menopause.

She's absolutely brilliant. And tomorrow she's going to be here talking about young care leavers. What needs to be done to help them as they move into adulthood and start their own independent lives. And Call You and Yours is today, of course, around about a quarter past 12. Today, Winifred is asking, how are we going to do Christmas? It's a big question. 03 700 100 444. Lines open at 11 o'clock.

Pottering is something I absolutely love to do. It's good for you, or so we're told. And some of us really are experts at it. Self-confessed potterer is life coach Sarah Longfield. Sarah, good morning to you. Good morning, Jane. Anna McGovern is the author of Pottering, a Cure for Modern Life. And boy, do we need a cure right now, Anna. First of all, let's go to you, Sarah. How much of a potter are you? Every day or just occasionally? Well, I used to be kind of like a once a week potterer

but I think lockdown has enabled quite regular pottering in my life okay and just define pottering for you I think pottering is different for everybody but for me it's about doing the things that I need to get done but doing them a bit slower so it might involve some beadwork it might involve a bit of pottering around the garden. I'm a terrible gardener, but I like to try. A bit of cooking, you know, just doing things like that, but without a deadline. Yeah, okay. I mean, we've got to be a bit, it's not doing nothing, is it? To be precise, your pottering sounds very constructive. It is constructive, but I think, you know, time's so precious. You you know I'm a self-employed single

mum I'm I'm constantly feeling like I should be achieving everything in the time that I've got but when you actually focus on pottering you can slow down a bit and still get that stuff done but just do it a bit in a bit more of a gentle way Anna I'm surprised you've written a book about pottering I mean honestly how did you get round to it? Well that's a very good question it's quite short I mean it is actually a bit of a struggle to write 18,000 words about doing not very much but I really tried to pin it down and and think I thinkah's already said a lot of the really important things that it's it's slow it's gentle it's you're going at your own pace you're doing things that you really you like to do yeah the phone is the real 21st century curse here isn't it you can't potter with a flaming phone in your hand can you anna no no no I mean I try and keep away from my phone and I

kind of consciously put it to one side. I personally think you need to take away the reasons for checking your phone because I find that once I'm on it I'm sort of stuck on it and so I sort of made a list of all of the the analog things that you can do to keep yourself away from the phone. So, you know, make a list with a pen and a paper instead of writing a note on your phone. Or the one I really like is is getting a watch so that you check your time, you check the time the traditional way rather than your phone. And, you know, write things down on a on a calendar so you're kind of minimizing your interactions with your phone I'm not saying that it's not important to have one it's just that just take a break from it I'm interested in the fact that you on your pottering

day you started to find a community didn't you you? Well, your community, in fact. Yes. I mean, because I was out and about in my local area, you know, it was great because, you know, for one thing, I saw my friends and my neighbours more. You know, we had cups of tea. I waved a hello. But as I was wandering down to the shops, you know, every time I sort of regularly saw people.

So I always said hello to the lady in the supermarket, got chatting to the guy in the deli, caught up with a butcher on the high road. And, you know, you're you're the more that you you do have these kind of interactions, you know, the more you get to know people. And, you know, I love passing the time of day with anybody that I come across um you know you're not in the car you're you're going slower so you're walking or you're taking public transport and it's just a really kind of gentle way to drift through your day listening to you I'm really conscious that when I go out now and I do love I'm always going to the shops even if it is literally for a lettuce and a sprout, maybe more than one sprout. I've got my flipping ear buds, I've got my ear buds in. And that's because I'm podcast mad as well as radio mad.

That's probably not helpful, is it really? Well, you know, I have to say, I think listening to the radio and having that kind of verbal in the background is absolutely a pottering activity um i do like to to not have a headset on when i'm um having a walk um i think you're taking the the sounds of your local environment and you're a bit more alert to the things that are going on around you you're not absorbed in sort of listening to a podcast in the same way um but i think the thing is that actually there are no prescriptive ways of doing pottering if that's the way you choose to do it then you be you yes i can't believe i mentioned sprouts i don't think i've bought sprouts in living memory so why i reference them i've no idea um sarah there is there is a domestic chore that you do that i've

certainly done um the is it the cutlery, getting that stuff out of the cutlery draw? Yeah, well, it's just, you know, picking one draw. It could be, you know, I've got several draws that would be potentially described as a man draw. A man draw? Now, hang on, this is Woman's Hour. What do you mean by sweeping generalisation alert? Yeah, a little bit there. But, you know, the draw with the keys and the batteries

and the elastic bands and things like that, you know, just taking that time to just pick one draw. Don't give yourself the challenge of, right, I need to overhaul all of that stuff. You just go, right, I'm just going to sort out this one quite slowly. Oh, yeah, life's all about... Actually, you do get satisfaction. We may laugh, but there's nothing like settling,

sorting out your drawers. I love sorting out my drawers. Slightly wish I hadn't said that now. Thank you both very much. That was life coach Sarah Longfield and Anna McGovern, the author of Pottering, A Cure for Modern Life. October, of course, is Black History Month, and with the resurgence of Black Lives Matter,

this year does feel particularly significant to a lot of people. Olivia Cope has been speaking to two leading black performance artists about their work and the impact this incredible year has had. Sophia Tucker is a poet who's done TED Talks and works with young people exploring mental health in schools. Vilma Jackson is a performance artist who uses British Sign Language. Vilma's deaf and works alongside her interpreter, Ali Gordon, whose voice you'll hear.

Vilma makes YouTube videos using British Sign Language to translate songs and news to the deaf community. Vilma's latest work is a poem called Triple Oppression. It explores her experiences as a black disabled woman in the UK. The voiceover is done, of course, by Ali. Here's a clip. You see, I'm a woman, black and deaf. Discrimination has probably been

the most painful social experience in my life. I'd always wanted to be an actress. I'd watch more black people on TV and other professions. I started to regain my confidence. I always felt something was missing. What about deaf professionals? Could they be successful? I didn't have anyone to look up to. There was no deaf people in my family.

I doubted that deaf people could be successful. Let alone black deaf people. In the media industry, being a black deaf actress isn't an easy journey. Women talk to me about discrimination for being women. I feel them. People talk to me about their race. I feel them. Many talk to me about barriers disabled people encounter. I feel them. I feel their pain, anger and frustration. I do feel empathy for them. I've been experiencing these three emotions all my life.

This is triple oppression for me. Today, I'm proud of being a woman, black and deaf. Well, Vilma told Olivia why she wrote Triple Oppression. I created it almost as a piece of celebration because the themes within it are issues that I've been dealing with right through my life. And I've developed, I guess, I don't mean wisdom, but I've developed a kind of streetwise way of working on those kinds of themes and so on. So, yeah, there were challenges, but you work with it. You know, also working as a director, also working as a writer. In a lot of scenarios, you're essentially the person in charge

you are the boss but do you think sometimes people almost treat you like you need an extra hand when you're absolutely fine oh gosh yeah many times many many many times I've had to deal with that uh patronism I think is the word you're looking for but yes in lots of ways I create the work because I want to be able to show people what I can do I can write I can direct I can perform and I think sometimes people do expect less of me and I want to show people yeah I'm a skilled writer yeah I'm a skilled director I've managed the editing and everything, everything myself. The only thing I can't do is I can't hear. You also do British Sign Language for a lot of videos that go viral, a lot of videos around the Black Lives Matter movement most recently.

Why is that important to you? Well, the Black Lives Matter movement is important to me because obviously I'm as a sign language user I wanted to be able to bring that information that communication about this movement moment to black deaf people who may not have access to it as a community so it seemed very important to me to be able to if I'm in a position to be able to share that with people to actually be able to do it because there's a the other thing is many people within the deaf community are experiencing oppression as well i've been also translating a lot of songs and one was i want to live and it was a one that went very viral very very powerful song a lot of i put a lot of kind of emotion into it and people commented that they'd really enjoyed it and how accessible

it was and so on. Sophia you're also a performance artist and a performance poet and a lot of your work focuses on injustice and inequality what motivates you to do what you do? I think why I love poetry is because it forces both the reader and the creator to pause to find out why they've arrived at this opinion or this feeling to work out what contributed to that house or the belief that they now live in. So I think poetry to me especially now is important because it forces that introversion, it forces us to pause and actually think for ourselves. And what impact has the last year had on your work? Before 2020, I was mostly on stage, I was performance poet. And when you're on stage,

you have the license to be quite energetic and almost chaotic on stage. And then suddenly during lockdown, all I could do was sit down and write. So I became a lot more delicate a lot more quiet a lot more demure I guess in how I wrote and then George Floyd occurred and I was angry and I think I had so much pelt up energy from just being sat down for so many months and not touring that it my my work became so much more raw so much more honest when the two ends of the spectrum became life and death so taking into account the case of George Floyd suddenly being scared to offend certain groups of people it didn't really mean as much when families are burying broken black bodies and their life like their whole life suddenly becomes a protest and a child's life becomes a protest I kind of lost my desire to

attend or to facilitate white fragility or fragile white privilege so there was a lot of shifts in how I would communicate especially when I was working with quite corporate clients I used to say things like BAME or people of colour because black just came across as almost like a swear word I'm not angry with the clients I work with I'm not angry with my white followers I'm not angry with them I'm angry at'm not angry with them. I'm angry at a system and those who choose to be intentionally complicit in the oppression of black people. That's where I'm at. That's where my anger is. Sophia, you've been holding a number of workshops during lockdown over Zoom where people can just come together and share and express how they feel, you know,

in the midst of all this chaos. What's that been like? Given that we're all kind of at home on our phones, this over-accessibility meant that for some people, for the first time ever, they were seeing how heinous and how visual and how physical racism is. It's not just a microaggression in the office. It's, as I said, it's life and death in a lot of cases. We're not talking about someone's work we're not

talking about something separate from a person we're talking about what sits on me and what sits on you and that's it's always going to trigger quite an emotive response so what I wanted to do was create a forum for people to explore those feelings and empower them to communicate their feelings thereafter so I created I've just put out a post online and I just said I'm gonna host a bunch of free workshops over the weekend for anyone who wants to express anyone who wants to perhaps learn more but mostly just express and navigate the complicated feelings they're feeling and I got hundreds and hundreds of emails from across the world so the whole weekend I was speaking to people from India, Abu Dhabi, Lagos, London, up north, all around the world, the Caribbean,

everyone that was just so derailed and rattled by what was going on, but they didn't know how to express or externalise that. So we worked through this workshop where we spoke about feelings, we spoke about why we felt the way we felt, we spoke about the root of our feelings. And for some people, they were so upset because they didn't realise how complicit they had been in the very act of privilege. For some people, they were so upset because they didn't realise how complicit they had been in the very act of privilege. For some people, they were so upset because they weren't aware of how deep it was. And people had different root causes of their anger. And I think just walking people through. So yeah, so I decided to take that workshop concept away from just online and I got a lot of clients based off that

and I realised that in a protest there are so many roles. There are people that are meant to lobby politicians, there are people that are meant to be humanitarians and there are some people that were just meant to empower and I realised that one of my roles is organisational care. Vilma, generally speaking, how do you think movements like Black Lives Matter and like feminism could become more accessible to disabled women? These issues have been campaigned upon for years and years. We've been campaigning, say, for instance, for deaf rights, etc etc for a very long time and there's a large part of for instance the deaf community or the deaf and disabled community that feels as if it's been forgotten and as if nobody wants to talk about the issues that are affecting us um so we have as uh black people people of color who are deaf and disabled those issues often aren't talked about from our

perspective and i guess part of my work was also about saying, look, we are also here, we are also black, we are also women. The work can be very tiring to kind of keep reminding people that we are here. But that's also part of my work as well is to open up those doors and to create that accessibility, I guess. Before we go, Sophia, I just want everyone to hear a bit of your work. And the piece that I want to play out on is called Little Black Girls. Can you tell me or tell us a bit more about what this piece is about and why you wrote it? I go into schools and I work a lot with young boys and young women and as a young woman we weren't really ever told or taught to be empowered or super confident we were just kind of taught to be and then life taught us to be demure and that was very much the same for my parents generation and thereafter so when I went into schools I had this expectation that because on

my timeline and in my circles there's so so much female empowerment, there's so much body positivity, that that was spiralling down into schools. But what I forgot is that social media is an echo chamber. And just because everyone around me might be talking about that, it doesn't mean that that is impacting a single person in a school. And I tried to tell myself in the poem what I would have needed to hear at that age and that is celebrate everything about you celebrate the versatility of your hair and beyond that your worth isn't just physical your worth goes beyond that um so I think I wrote the piece to remind my younger self and also remind the young girls who might be listening that your worth is invaluable it's priceless and you have every reason to be confident,

borderline obnoxious if you really want to be, but you have every reason to be confident. So that's why I wrote Little Black Girls. Little black girl, my heart lives inside your halo. So the moment you stop considering yourself as a lunchbox of stars, my ribs bury themselves in my back and I fall flat against this London concrete that was built for you to fly from. May the souls of your kickers and the flats of your dolly shoes act as an atlas to navigate through this wilderness,

run your fingers through your afro, that tree that this whole culture breathes from, blue magic drops like diamonds glistening adorning your skull, liquid gold dances down your neck. Because our mum said that we must always over-oil, because this British weather isn't made for us. Yet this Britain was paved by us, leave-out seeping through the pavements, yet waiting to be straightened by those who hold frustrations and assimilations

instead of celebrating integration. Leave your leave out baby girl, we're making space for that. Leave your hair print on every single seat back. Paint your braid pattern because you are art and they see that. Your tones to them are on a pallet near a tanning bed. And your lips they're paying grants for on your back. Don't let him shame you for that. The millennium will is just a shadow of your afro because your melanin is absorbing all of the light. You will shine bigger and greater than the shard because your blood runs ten times deeper than the Thames. No wonder they are trying to steal your magic. But baby girl, you are a lunchbox of stars by force, so every morning I'll remind you that this world is yours. Baby girl, you're

a lunchbox of stars by force. Every morning I'll remind you that this world is yours. Baby girl, you're a lunchbox of stars by force. Every morning I'll remind you that the world is still yours. Little Black Girls by Sophia Takur. And you also heard in that feature from Vilma Jackson. And I should say there is a written version of that feature available to read now on the Woman's Hour website, bbc.co.uk forward slash Woman's Hour. Eamon says, absolutely blown away by the poetry of Vilma Jackson this morning.

I will seek out more of her work as a writer and producer. And Elmer says, I've fallen in love. The bad news is Elmer's fallen in love with Woman's Hour this year. What took me so long, eh, she says. The diversity of stories and the heartfelt conversations are wonderful. I'm currently listening to a feature by Olivia Cope with two black female performance artists. Well, Elmer, welcome to Woman's Hour.

You have taken a while because we started in 1946, and don't be cheeky, no, it wasn't me in 1946, although I know it sounds increasingly like it could have been. But it wasn't. But anyway, Elmer's come round to the idea of Women's Hour, which is good. Also on the programme today, we talked about pottering, and David said, I was staying with a fellow theatre designer who, like me,

was very dependent on planning his work schedule to combine different jobs. In his kitchen, he had a planner, and on the following Friday, he had written, Pottering. I've often wished I could do the same sort of planning. From Lorna, would be lovely to potter, but young children don't really allow it. I can't get five minutes into a task without somebody coming and helping themselves to the things I'm trying to sort. Yep, I get that.

Julie says, just listen to your piece on pottering and realised I am definitely a confirmed potterer after hearing Sarah give a description. I'm actually pottering this morning, making soup and flapjacks, a bit of tidying and washing the dog blankets. FYI, my pottering is often done with Radio 4 in the background. I slipped into my Radio 4 voice there. You'll have heard, as I said, the words

Radio 4. Julie Good, I'm glad we keep you company as you potter. But actually, too many of our potterers are doing really good stuff. And whilst they accuse themselves of pottering, I'm not sure that I mean, making soup is I love doing that. And that's that's not pottering. I count that as work. Very definitely. To our first conversation this morning, which was an interview with Caitlin McNamara. Amy says, amazing strength from Caitlin speaking truth to power. I have endless respect for her. I hope she's able to see some justice. This is a very serious anonymous email. I had a similar experience 10 years ago when I was on my own in

Mongolia. I was raped by a Russian oligarch. I have never felt there was any point in reporting it. I had similar experiences of not knowing what might happen to me. Anxiety around being abducted from the airport on departure, which was clearly threatened. Wow, that's incredible, isn't it? From Ian, it should go without saying that we should prioritise the human rights of the individual over making more money in our trading relationships. Unfortunately, governments of every hue prioritise money-making over people and above what is obviously morally right. Very best wishes to Caitlin, and big respect to Baroness Kennedy. This from an anonymous emailer who says, Caitlin's story resonated with me in many ways.

You broadcast my interview about childhood sexual abuse in February, and I was very touched by her bravery in speaking out. I found it so sad that still, even in these more enlightened times, women are often advised to keep quiet. Well done, Caitlin. You will inspire others to come forward. We'll only stop men thinking they can get away with it if we keep telling and showing them that they won't. I think I probably should at this point just emphasise that Sheikh Naiman denies the allegations against him. Thank you very much indeed for listening.

Paula Edwards will be here tomorrow with Woman's Hour, the programme and the podcast. Give her a warm welcome. She'll be on live on the radio, two minutes past ten. Before you go, I'm Miles, the producer of a brand new podcast for Radio 4 called Tricky. This is how it works. Four people from across the UK meet up and without a presenter breathing down their necks, talk about issues they really care

about. Sex work is quite complicated for a lot of people and it's okay to be against it, but not to you know, shame someone because of their profession. Across the series we'll hear anger, shock and even the odd laugh. Another thing that really gets to me is when people say, I know what we need to do, I know what black people... shut up! You don't, like that's the thing, that's not how it works. Nobody knows, if you knew you would have done it. Discover more conversations like this by searching Tricky on BBC Sounds. like warning everybody. Every doula that I know. It was fake. No pregnancy. And the deeper I dig, the more questions I unearth.

How long has she been doing this? What does she have to gain from this? From CBC and the BBC World Service, The Con, Caitlin's Baby. It's a long story, settle in. Available now.