Baroness Lola Young Eight Weeks: Looking Back, Moving Forwards, Defying the Odds

About

This talk is based on a deeply moving and inspiring memoir that tells the remarkable life story of Baroness Young of Hornsey, from her childhood in foster care, to becoming one of the first black women in the House of Lords.

Lola Young has been an actress, an academic, an activist and campaigner for social justice, and a crossbench peer. But from the age of eight weeks to eighteen years, she was moved between foster care placements and children's homes in North London. It would take many decades before she was able to begin the search for answers to the long-standing questions that would help her make sense of her childhood.In this talk, through her care records, fragments of memory, and her imagination where parts of her story are missing, Lola assembles the pieces of her past into a portrait of a childhood in a system that often made her feel invisible and unwanted. Alongside glimpses into her life as a peer, activist, and campaigner it tells the powerful story of her determination to defy the odds.

In particular she looks at: how you can weave the scattered part of yourself into a narrative from memories, anecdotes and care notes; the workings of the UK care system and its blind spots, the backdrop of casual racism in the 1950s and 60s and race issues in today’s Britain.
This talk is a spirited, eye-opening account of being a child in care and a black child in a white family, and is a vital part of contemporary Black British history.

Baroness Lola Young of Hornsey became one of the first black Women members of the House of Lords in 2004. Raised in foster care in north London, she studied at the New College of Speech and Drama, then worked as an actress, before becoming Professor of Cultural Studies at Middlesex University. Later, she worked in arts administration before receiving an OBE in 2001 and becoming an independent crossbench member of the House of Lords. She is an active campaigner against modern slavery and unethical fashion. In 2017 she was on the Man Booker Prize judging panel, and she is also Chancellor of the University of Nottingham.

A Q&A Session will follow.