Keskidee Centre

The Keskidee Centre, or Keskidee Arts Centre, was Britain's first arts centre for the Black community, founded in 1971.^[1][2] Located at Gifford Street in Islington, near King's Cross in London, it was a project initiated by Guyanese architect and cultural activist Oscar Abrams (1937–1996)^[3] to provide under one roof self-help and cultural activities for the local West Indian community. Its purpose-built facilities included a library, gallery, studios, theatre and restaurant.^[4] The Keskidee became a hub for African and Afro-Caribbean politics and arts, and for years was the only place in London that produced black theatre,^[5] developing its own vibrant drama company and attracting both a black and white audience.^[6]

Keskidee Centre

Green plaque unveiling, 2011. Photo provided courtesy of Islington Council Heritage Services
Location	Gifford Street, Islington, London, England
Type	Arts centre; community centre
Opened	1971
Closed	1991

History

In 1971, Guyanese-born architect and cultural activist Oscar Winston Abrams (1937–1996), who had settled in Britain in 1958,^[7] bought a run-down Victorian mission hall^[8] from the Shaftesbury Society for £9000^[2] and transformed it into the Keskidee Centre,^[9] which came to provide "a unique and hugely influential cultural and political environment for the black community throughout the 1970s and early-1980s."^[2] The community centre's name and logo derived from the keskidee bird native to Guyana and elsewhere in the Caribbean.^[9][10]

The Keskidee Theatre workshop was co-founded by Oscar Abrams and Norma Ashe-Watt in 1971, with a full-time drama company dedicated to black theatre, under the artistic direction of African-American Rufus Collins, who had originally come to Britain on tour with The Living Theatre.^[11][12][13]Among other professional actors, directors, and playwrights it attracted were Yvonne Brewster, Anton Phillips, Howard Johnson, Jimi Rand (Say Hallelujah),^[14] Edgar Nkosi White (Lament for Rastafari, 1977; Les Femmes Noires/The Black Women),^[15][16] T-Bone Wilson (Jumbie Street March; Body and Soul, 1974),^[17] Pat Maddy (Gbana Bendu, 1973),^[18] who at one time was Director of Drama,^[19] Yemi Ajibade, and Lindsay Barrett.^[9][4] Staged in the Keskidee Centre were productions of Derek Walcott's Pantomime,^[20] Wole Soyinka's The Swamp Dwellers (1975)^[21] and Lennox Brown's Throne in an Autumn Room (1973).^[22][23]

Nigerian artist and sculptor Emmanuel Taiwo Jegede was also an artist-in-residence;^[24] his son Tunde Jegede, born in 1972 and now a composer and virtuoso kora player, has credited the Keskidee Centre with initiating and nurturing his earliest appreciation of African diaspora culture.^[25] Errol Lloyd was also brought in by Abrams to be artist-in-residence (1974–75).^[4] As an indication of the significant role played by the Keskidee Centre in nurturing, supporting and celebrating Black visual artists, Diaspora Artists quotes from the Preface to the journal Savacou, issue 9/10, in which John La Rose and Andrew Salkey wrote about a session held at the Keskidee Centre on Friday, 10 March 1972, entitled A Tribute to Ronald Moody, describing it as "a historical exposition, illustrated with slides, of [the] Jamaican sculptor, arranged and presented by Errol Lloyd, the Jamaican painter."^[10]

Linton Kwesi Johnson was the Keskidee's first paid library resources and education officer, and his work at the centre featured in Franco Rosso's 45-minute documentary film Dread, Beat an' Blood, produced in 1979.^[26][10] It was at the Keskidee Centre that Johnson developed dub poetry, a staged version of his poem "Voices of the Living and the Dead" being produced by Lindsay Barrett there in 1973, with music by the reggae group Rasta Love.^[2] The venue was also used for community meetings and events by the Caribbean Artists Movement.^[2] On 10 December 1974, Angela Davis spoke at the Keskidee Centre, while she was in London to attend a rally in support of South African political prisoners.^[27]

Up-and-coming bands such as Misty in Roots and Steel Pulse also played at Keskidee, and in 1978 Bob Marley used the centre to make a video (in which a seven-year-old Naomi Campbell took part along with other children) for his song "Is This Love?"^{[2][28][29][30]}

The Keskidee centre influenced the lives of many local Black youth including the artist, playwright, curator and educator Michael McMillan who visited the centre often as a child.^[31]

The Keskidee Centre ran into financial difficulties in the 1980s, and closed in 1991. The building was subsequently taken over by the Christ Apostolic Church.^[6]

Oscar Abrams died on 15 February 1996, aged 58.^[2]

Legacy

In 2009, The Keskidee was the subject of a BBC Radio 4 programme based on oral history interviews conducted by Alan Dein as part of the King's Cross Voices project.^[32][33]

On 7 April 2011, to celebrate the 40th anniversary of the opening of the Keskidee Centre,^[34] an Islington Council heritage green plaque was unveiled on the building, at the time a church, by David Lammy and former resident artist Emmanuel Jegede.^{[5][35][36][37][38]}

On the night of 8 March 2012, the building was ravaged by fire.^[6][39] The police treated the blaze as suspicious, and the investigation was closed a month later after a Scotland Yard spokesman announced that the police had "exhausted all lines of inquiry".^[40]