Black History Month is about community, and Elaine Grant, founder of The Arts & Culture Group, shares what this year’s theme means to her, where her own story starts in Peckham, and the community leaders, teachers and families who open doors to theatre across the UK.
Join The Arts & Culture GroupBlack History Month is about Community, and this October that feels truer than ever. I’m Elaine Grant, an arts and culture consultant based in London and the founder of The Arts & Culture Group, my national network of over 2,500 members who love theatre, exhibitions and live arts. I want to use this month to talk about this year’s theme, where my own story starts, and the community leaders, teachers and families who open doors to theatre for so many people.
The 2026 theme is Honouring Our Communities. Black History Month runs through October here in the UK, and it was first celebrated in London back in 1987. This year the theme asks us to recognise the people whose everyday contributions strengthen Black communities, including the ones whose work rarely gets public recognition.
When I read that, I thought, well, that’s the people I work with every single day!
I’m a working-class black woman, and I grew up in Peckham, South East London. I went to a comprehensive girls’ school and absolutely fell in love with drama there, and that love took me to a performing arts centre, where I threw myself into ballet, jazz dance and jazz vocals, and then on to a BA Honours Degree in Performance Arts at Middlesex University.
I spent twelve incredible years working as an actor and singer, and I adored it. But what really started to light me up was the other side of the arts; giving people access and opening doors for the people who don’t always feel that theatre is for them. So I retrained as an arts administrator and project manager, and I have been doing community engagement work in the arts, in one form or another, for over 40 years.
Community work runs on trust, and that trust lives with community leaders, teachers, faith leaders and group organisers. These are people doing 101 other things. They haven’t got the time to sift through what’s on, so they book through me because they trust me to bring their group a show worth their evening.
Janett Walker, CEO and co-founder of Anti Racist Cumbria, is one of them. Because of the trips we’ve set up together, Black and Brown young people in Cumbria are getting to enjoy all kinds of theatre, especially Black theatre, which is brilliant.
Fola Bello, CEO of Foluke Legacy, is another. The vulnerable young people and community Foluke Legacy supports love the shows, and Fola has called me ‘the catalyst’ for her love of Arts and Culture.
And Mia Morris OBE, a community champion with a considerable network of her own, took out a membership with The Arts & Culture Group and promised to spread the word widely and has even recommended my services and referred the A&C Group to West End theatre producers.
These are exactly the people this year’s theme is talking about.
One of the projects I’m proudest of was at Harewood House in Leeds. They were redesigning their website and wanted more Black voices and more culturally diverse images on it, so they commissioned me to reach out to the African Caribbean community in Leeds for their focus groups. I found parents with children, parents without children, community leaders and students, and we talked about everything, including the house’s relationship with the transatlantic slave trade.
Then they asked me back to record voices from the community. I brought in elders, students and community leaders, a mother with her own connection to the house through its links with Barbados, and the son of one of the original Windrush passengers. I even organised a Caribbean afternoon tea with a local supplier as I felt it was important for the participants to feel comfortable in the space and to bring some of their culture into the house.
I travelled up to Leeds to meet and connect with the participants, because nothing beats being face to face, looking somebody in the eye and really listening to them.
I’ve worked with families from the Black community who absolutely love Opera. There was an aunt who would always find an opera to take her niece to, and her niece grew to love it as well. On paper, you wouldn’t predict it, and that’s the magic of audiences.
So, I always keep an open mind about who will love what. When I talk about diversity, I mean diverse in the widest sense, and I never put an audience into a box.
Black History Month is about Community, and so is everything I do with The Arts & Culture Group. Every month my members receive a variety of discounted tickets, and sometimes complimentary ones too, to wonderful theatre, exhibitions and live arts across the UK, and both membership levels get the same offers at the same time.
If you’d like to be part of The A&C Group, come and join us, or sign up to my free newsletter and see what’s coming up.
And if there’s a community leader, a teacher or a group organiser who has been opening doors for you for years, this October is a lovely time to say Thank You.
The Arts is for EVERYONE – It can, and has, transformed thousands of lives.
