Wandsworth’s Black History Month Opens Inside the Building Where Britain’s First Black Mayor Governed
Walk into Battersea Arts Centre this month and you can see an exhibition about John Archer in the exact building where he served as mayor in 1913, the first Black man elected to lead a London borough. That coincidence of place is not an accident. It is the whole logic behind Wandsworth’s Black History 365 programme, which treats October not as a one-month slot but as the loudest part of a commitment the council says runs all year.
First Among Equals, the exhibition marking Archer’s mayoralty, runs at Battersea Arts Centre from 8 to 11 October. Archer won his seat by a single vote, 40 to 39 among fellow councillors, and used his acceptance speech to say the result would “go forth to the coloured nations of the world” as proof that Battersea recognised “a man for the work he has done.” News of his election reached the United States within months, reported in The Crisis, the NAACP’s own journal, in January 1914. Few London events this October carry that kind of direct, physical link between a historical moment and the room it is being marked in.
The rest of the programme spreads across the borough in more everyday registers. On 24 October, a three-hour walking tour called Flavours of Heritage takes groups around Tooting’s African and Caribbean food businesses, led by local historian Geoff Simmons of Planet Tooting alongside Chantelle Bent of Chantelle’s Community Kitchen. Stops include Kimmie’s Jerk Joint, Elsa’s Kitchen, Sunyani and Mixed Blessings Bakery, among others, with tastings built into the route rather than offered as an afterthought.
Bramlands Square in Clapham Junction hosts a Black History Month market on 17 October, bringing African-Caribbean-owned borough businesses together for a day of art, food, gifts and drumming workshops. Further out in Roehampton, Carnival Roots on 27 October is free to attend and built around the borough’s own connection to Notting Hill Carnival, with a live set from Pan Nation, this year’s UK Small Band Panorama winners, a mini jou’vert, and a dance workshop, running from 1pm to 4pm at Focus Hall.
Smaller, recurring events fill in the gaps. At the Gwynneth Morgan Day Centre on East Hill, the weekly Irie Rhythms Caribbean dance sessions, usually a seated or standing class for residents aged 60 and over, take on a Black History Month framing on 8 October as part of the wider 365 programme. The Katherine Low Settlement in Battersea is running Pan Wandsworth, a series of steel pan workshops tracing the instrument’s roots in Caribbean resistance to colonial restrictions on drumming and gathering. St Nicholas Church hosts Legacy and Hope, a concert on 9 October, and Wandsworth Black Heritage Voices, a storytelling and oral history project, runs across multiple venues from 14 October to 11 November. A Royal Academy of Dance celebration follows on 20 November, later in the autumn, with free performances and workshops.
Wandsworth launched Black History 365 in 2022, a deliberate break from treating Black history as something confined to a single month. Deputy Council Leader Kemi Akinola has framed October as the moment the year-round commitment gets its sharpest focus, even as the borough’s own designation as London Borough of Culture formally ended in March. This October’s programme, arriving seven months after that title year closed, is itself a test of whether the civic appetite built up over twelve months of funded culture survives once the funding and the spotlight move on.
Wandsworth libraries are running a parallel programme under the theme Leadership and Pride, including author talks, workshops, exhibitions and community events, details of which sit on the library service’s own events page rather than the council’s main listing.
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