Our Story.

The Free Black University is an initiative born out of the intention to create a radical, anti-colonial and queer space in which we can reimagine higher education. We are students and activists that have been working tirelessly in the fight to decolonise education for many years. We recognised that the scope of decolonial work within inherently colonial institutions  is deeply limited, if not impossible. This work rather serves so as to exhaust Black students. As Black students, we have to overcome the barriers related to the coloniality that exists across the institution and then also take on the additional labour of teaching our institutions how to be ‘anti-racist’. This is work that we at The Free Black University have resolved to divest from. Black students should no longer be the unpaid labourers of colonial institutions to teach them how to create a space that traffics in the bare minimum of respect and acknowledgement of Black students. Instead, we believe Universities and other institutions should support and invest in initiatives that centre anti-colonial learning for Black students, and the broader community, created by Black students.

Black students are going to university and leaving traumatised. This is a story that we have heard time and time again. This is a reality for us too and it must end. 

We decided that transformative healing must happen alongside radical education as a part of our vision. Knowledge that transforms the world cannot be created under conditions of harm and trauma. We have seen the ways in which institutions cause harm to Black students by the very nature of the way they operate and the ways in which they offer culturally incompetent and limited care that fails to end the cycle of harm. It is important to recognise that mental health support cannot, and should not, exist within a vacuum. We want to explore creating a space that engenders wellness in Black folk, designing curricula in which they are centred, creating learning spaces which do not perpetuate or silence racism, and so on. We also recognise that the Western paradigm of  wellness is limited. As such, we believe in looking back (Sankofa) to our ancestors and exploring holistic and spiritual routes to wellness in the face of the persistent violence that Black folk live amongst.

We strongly believe that education should be free, both for accessibility reasons but also for reasons relating to how we engage with education and the kind of education that can take place under a system of fees. The commodification of education is ever-deepening within our society. Degrees have become currency with which we  enter into the labour market. We often question what the use of learning radical thought is if we are to exist within institutions that operate on a logic that is diametrically opposed to said radical thought. With the 2012 hike in tuition fees in the UK, the cultural shift from education as a public good to education as an individual financial investment became ever sharper. We recognise that the relationship between the learner and the degree changes when such a demand for financial payback  is put on the learner. We firmly believe education should be a public good and the purpose of education should not simply be to get a job. Instead, the purpose of education should be to transform self, and through doing this, to transform the world. Our view is that education should be the most freeing and liberating experience one can partake in. It should offer people the chance to envision and create new ways of existing in the world. It should be a vehicle that instils the belief that the world can be deeply transformed and that we will be a part of that transformation.  

We believe this because we work from the position that the world is built on a foundation of racism, inequality, and harm. We believe that the current push towards ‘diversity’, ‘inclusion’ and so on are insufficient modes to achieve the goals that are necessary for institutions and society to reach a place where racism and other forms of inequality no longer exist. It is not a change to the current framework that is needed — it is a radical and systemic transformation that is required. That is why we exist; we aim to create a space that encourages and drives the radical production of knowledge that transforms the world.

We believe that the need and the right to imagine is the first tenant of Black liberation. There is an important difference between the right to imagine and the right to learn. We firmly hold that we must learn the layered and textured histories of Black folk across the world through a decolonial lens. We also recognise that history is always being created and world transformation is not something located in the past, but in the present. We exist to support in the process of imagining Black radical futures. Futures in which Black queer and trans folk are at the centre, futures in which we no longer have to speak about racism, futures in which tiredness and pain are not synonymous with the Black experience. This is a space that aims to imagine, to create knowledge that facilitates this radical and transformative future. The world is ever-changing and we need new visions for it to be built upon — that is fundamentally why we exist.

The art of queering is the art of disruption. We are not just queer in identity; we are queer in approach and philosophy. We want to break the boundaries of what is considered ‘normal’ and create spaces and knowledges that disrupt the current mode of things. Our work is informed and built upon the work of Black feminists across the world, many of whom were and are queer. These Black feminists taught us to imagine. They taught us that different worlds can exist. They taught us that we deserve to experience life in a way that aligns with our truest selves. They taught us that freedom is something that we can and must have a hand in creating.