Archiving Purple Drum
Purple Drum is the name of the young women’s project that ran at Imkaan from 2010–2017, created and led by Ikamara Larasi and Lia Latchford. We were joined by Jashmin Patel in 2014. It started off as a one-off, unfunded piece of work, later becoming an integral part of ensuring young women’s voices were present throughout Imkaan’s work. We went on to secure funding from Rosa and Esmée Fairbairn which enabled us to deliver young women’s work as a core part of our work programme.
Our vision was a safe and equal world in which all young people are heard, supported and fulfilled. Our mission was to connect with, strengthen and amplify the voices of young people to improve attitudes and responses towards them.
Logo by Tamara-Jade Kaz.
Why ‘Purple Drum’?
Purple has been used within various equalities movements throughout history. For us, the colour purple represents peace, vibrancy and depth. It is a colour that exists outside of the binary and as such to us signifies difference and resistance. Purple also acknowledges the roots of this project as it is used by Imkaan. We therefore included purple in our name as a colour of unity and possibility.
The drum is symbolic of heartbeat and soul; invoking life. The drum has been used as a way of communicating over large distances and calling to resistance, and connects First People across the globe. In some spaces, the drum is forbidden to women and it is therefore important for us as women to claim the drum as a symbol of defiance and transformation.
Header art by Tamara-Jade Kaz.
Our Work
We developed and led a wide range of projects and campaigns to address young black and minoritised women’s experiences of violence and misrepresentation, including:
Dispelling Myths | Speaking Truths (2010) — a series of focus groups with 44 young black and minoritised women on their experiences of living in the UK, culminating in a multi-agency conference led by young women to highlight our needs to practitioners and policymakers.
Rewind&Reframe (2013) — a partnership project with EVAW and OBJECT! providing a platform for young women to speak out on racism and sexism in music videos. The campaign received widespread media and political interest and achieved major campaign success when the then Prime Minister committed to pilot and implement an age-ratings system for UK music videos following our petition which received over 18,000 signatures.
Collage from Purple Drum art workshops
Purple Drum (2014) — initially a one year project to provide spaces for 27 young black and minoritised women to creatively challenge media misrepresentation through art, poetry, writing and policy influence. We since decided to carry this name forward to cover all of our work.
MsUnderstood (2014–2016) — a partnership with the University of Bedfordshire and Girls Against Gangs project to improve local and national responses to peer-on-peer abuse. Our role in the partnership included managing a rolling internship programme for young women, leading on policy engagement and research development, co-delivery of training, evaluation and organising Our Version of Events — a conference by and for young women celebrating international day of the girl. The learning of the partnership was taken forward by the University of Bedfordshire’s Contextual Safeguarding Network.
Our Version of Events: MsUnderstood Annual Conference 2014
“I’d just like to be free” (2016) — our award winning film created with EVAW is a powerful example of our work with young black and minoritised women to amplify their voices on everyday racialised sexual harassment across London. This has over 18.9K views at the time of writing and has been used as a training resource by a range of other organisations.
“I'd just like to be free" - young women speak out about sexual harassment
“We should be able to be who we want to be” (2017) — which centres the voices of young black and minoritised queer women speaking out about harassment in public, building on the momentum of the previous film. This has over 3.9K views at the time of writing. This was originally released on Facebook, but is now available on YouTube instead.
"We should be able to be who we want to be" - young queer women speak out about sexual harassment
“Might Never Happen” (2017) — a theatre education workshop delivered in schools, created by Doll’s Eye Theatre in partnership with Purple Drum, the Rape and Sexual Abuse Support Centre and inspired by the research of Dr. Fiona Vera-Gray. The theatre piece highlights the impact of street harassment on young women and girls and challenges harmful gender stereotypes affecting young women and men. It is designed to raise the issue of public sexual harassment safely, whilst promoting discussion and awareness.
In addition to these projects, we developed and delivered training and workshops on a broad range of issues including media representation, identity, black feminism and intersectionality, violence against women and girls and peer-on-peer abuse. We also directly engaged with young people through events, discussion spaces, social media and publications. For us it was important to invest in other young black and minoritised women and girls to support their growth, creativity and autonomy. We sought to work alongside other young black and minoritised women wherever possible to create meaningful pieces of work. In keeping with this ethos, our logo and banner was designed by Tamara-Jade Kaz.
Over the life of the project we directly engaged with over 1000 young people, and reached many more through a range of media outlets. The young women who engaged in our programmes and projects have gone on to do brilliant things:
“After attending my first poetry workshop EVER with Purple Drum, I have since been published in magazines, performed at venues like the Southbank Centre, exhibited artwork and joined two amazing collectives doing groundbreaking creative work for communities…I just want to thank you for organising such beautiful events/workshops for women of colour to come together and feel safe. To feel heard. To feel important and inspired” (Purple Drum workshop participant, 2014)
“I am now the co founder and director of youth engagement of my own youth led human rights organisation [which] engages young people in politics, social change, research and campaigning in order to build community resilience. My experience with MsUnderstood contributed to where I am now by giving me an insight into what it takes to run an organisation inspired by young people, but also that puts young people at the forefront of its works” (MsUnderstood partnership intern, 2015)
“I enjoyed being in an environment that allows me to be myself. In addition to the opportunities that came from it like, going on the Victoria Derbyshire show and talking on various panels…The work I’ve done with Imkaan gave me the confidence to work on my own personal project. I have recently launched the project which is a blog-site about feminism, women’s issues and VAWG” (Participant in our film on racialised sexual harassment, 2016)
It has been an immense joy and privilege to serve young women in this way for so many years. When we started this work as young women, one of the things that really felt missing for young black and minoritised women was space, even to just exist. Whilst we are now (a bit!) older and still fighting all the same injustices, it is beautiful to be writing this at a time where so many young black and minoritised women have created space. Whether it’s intimate or large events, online platforms, products for us and by us, art that speaks loudly… In many ways, things feel more hopeful.
Signing off for the last time,
Purple Drum 💜