#SYPConf20: A spotlight on Colour[Full]

Posted on November 10, 2020 in London

Hi, I’m Sian and I’m one of the co-chairs of Colour[Full]. I started co-chairing over 2 years ago and have seen the group grow and change hugely in this time.

We were the first network set up at PRH in 2018, with the talented trailblazer Gift Ajimokun founding it and being the chair for the first year, I was a co-chair at her side. The idea was to create a room of Black and PoC faces where we could be ourselves, stop code switching, and see people who looked like us and had similar experiences. It gets tiring being the only person of colour in a very white team/publishing house, and we wanted to create a community where we could talk freely about what worried us and know it was a safe space. It’s made a big impact since starting; it’s paved the way for the LGBTQ+, Disability, International and Parents networks, of which many of those have only started this year. It’s been really vital to have strength in numbers and be able to stand up for what needs to change, as well as feel comforted knowing we aren’t alone in going through micro and macro aggressions as we navigate this industry.

COVID really affected us as we were in a place at the beginning of the year to regroup and re-find our new purpose as we had been established for 18 months. Myself and my co-chair Asmaa wanted to organise more events, more socials, and introduce a volunteering element, but then lockdown happened and since then we’ve been more of a support group where we get together on Zoom every other Friday and either chat about how we’re all feeling or talk about what is affecting us in our work at the moment.

Saying that, we’ve recently just pulled of a Black History Month joint event with HarperCollins’ Elevate and Hachette’s THRIVE which was to host a ‘Black Publishing Minds Matter’ therapy talk from 2 Black therapists and a representative of Black Minds Matter. It was a really insightful and important event that gave tailored mental health advice to Black colleagues from Publishing, and myself and Asmaa really enjoyed teaming up with the other BAME networks to pull it off. THRIVE were a huge inspiration for us when we started and their committee have been great at giving us guidance when we needed it, and a BAMEinPublishing BLM event connected me with Ammara from Elevate earlier this year and we got chatting from there.

Lockdown elevated Black Lives Matter’s platform to new heights, which was a very traumatic time for a lot of Black colleagues, with graphic and triggering content all over the internet. We did feel a lot more backup from white colleagues who really showed up as allies and used their spaces to continue important conversations, but there were also some performative actions and a lot of direct and difficult conversations about what needed to change. Through this, a new diversity initiative was spearheaded called ‘Show Your Workings’, which came from an analogy I made in a meeting:

“You wouldn’t solve a complex maths problem without showing your workings and being able to unpick your mistakes by stepping back a few steps. Racism is even more complex, so why are we trying to become perfect without writing anything down? We can’t hope to see where we’ve come from if we have no checkpoints along the way.”

This came about because there wasn’t enough transparency about diversity initiatives or deadlines on projects, so it often felt like there was silence or no accountability. I’m glad to see that this has changed since we spoke up about it, and now lots of plans have been put in place and communicated across PRH.

It’s been a really tiring year and I don’t know how I could’ve done it without the support of our members and my committee. But it’s been an immense privilege to be co-chair during such a difficult time, and I can only hope that we have been listened to and that things will improve. Until then, we’re as important a group as ever.

You can reach us at WeAreColourFull@penguinrandomhouse.co.uk