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2023-03-31-accounts

The David Oluwale Memorial Association (DOMA)

10th Annual Report 2022 — 2023

RememberOluwale www.rememberoluwale.org

Contents

  1. Objects of the charity .................................................................................................................. 3 1.1 Who was David Oluwale? ..................................................................................................... 3 1.2 DOMA: the #rememberoluwale campaign ............................................................................. 4 1.3 DOMA’s impact April 22 – March 23 ...................................................................................... 5 2. Report of the Trustees ................................................................................................................ 7 2.1 Raising our profile ................................................................................................................. 7 2.2 Governance .......................................................................................................................... 7 Patrons.................................................................................................................................... 7 Directors and Trustees ............................................................................................................ 7 Advisory Committee ................................................................................................................ 7 Volunteers and Consultants .................................................................................................... 8 Partners .................................................................................................................................. 8 3. Review of work to date ................................................................................................................ 9 3.1 Civic Engagement work ......................................................................................................... 9 3.2 Community and Civic Engagement Programme .................................................................. 12 3.3 Educational and campaigning work ..................................................................................... 19 4. Future priorities ......................................................................................................................... 21 5. Annual Accounts 2022-2023 ..................................................................................................... 22 6. Public benefit statement ............................................................................................................ 24

The Leeds artist King Monk showed us his sculpture of David Oluwale in March 2023. © Max Farrar

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1. Objects of the charity

The David Oluwale Memorial Association (DOMA) has adopted aims agreed with the Charity Commission. It aims to promote equality, diversity and racial harmony for the public benefit in Leeds specifically and the UK in general, in particular but not exclusively by any or all of the following means:

  1. educating the public about the life and death of David Oluwale

  2. educating the public on the progress the City of Leeds has made towards justice for ethnic minorities and humane treatment of the homeless and destitute, and in combating the stigma of individuals experiencing mental ill health

  3. educating the public on what more needs to be done to achieve full racial justice and humane treatment of the homeless and destitute in Leeds, and to combat the stigma of individuals experiencing mental ill health.

1.1 Who was David Oluwale?

David Oluwale arrived in Hull (East Yorkshire, UK) in 1949. With some friends, he had stowed away on a merchant ship in Lagos, Nigeria. He was imprisoned in Leeds (UK) for one month for the offence of not buying a ticket. Since he was a British citizen, he was free to make his way when he left prison. Like all migrants in search of a better life, he arrived with energy and ambition. He had various manual jobs until 1953. Despite gruelling work and racism, he seems to have enjoyed himself in the pubs and dance-halls of Leeds. He was known as Yankee by his friends, such was his love of American popular culture and his zest for life. This is the period of hope for David Oluwale.

After a dispute over the bill at the King Edward Hotel in Leeds city centre on 25th April 1953, he was arrested and sent to Leeds Prison in Armley. From there, he was dispatched to Menston psychiatric hospital in Leeds (later renamed High Royds). He was briefly released in 1961. In 1964 he was jailed for being drunk and disorderly, assessed as paranoid and a ‘dullard’, and sent again to High Royds hospital in 1965. Released in 1967, he lived as a vagrant on the streets of Leeds. David was found dead in the River Aire/Leeds Canal at the Knostrop weir on 4th May 1969.

While he was of no fixed abode (‘wandering abroad’ was his crime under the 1824 Vagrancy Act) and sleeping rough in the Leeds city centre over the last two years of his life, David Oluwale was persistently assaulted and abused by two Leeds police officers, Sergeant Kitching and Inspector Ellerker.

These officers were arrested following the brave whistle-blowing of a police cadet named Gary Galvin soon after David’s body was found. The investigating officer, Chief Superintendent Perkins of the Metropolitan police, recommended that they were charged with the murder of David Oluwale on 18th April 1969. Instead, they were prosecuted for manslaughter, ABH and GBH (Actual and Grievous Bodily Harm).

In November 1971 they were convicted of ABH. They were acquitted of David’s manslaughter on the Judge’s direction. Ellerker was sentenced to three years, Kitching received 27 months.

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Portrait of David Oluwale by Victoria Mienkowska, produced in the 2021 Locks to Legacies programme coordinated by DOMA Board member Asher Jael.

There was much publicity of the trial in the local and national press. The artist Rasheed Araeen produced his work For Oluwale between 1972 and 1975. In 1974 Smiling David, the script of a BBC radio play by Jeremy Sandford, was published. Linton Kwesi Johnson referenced David Oluwale in his 1979 poem Time Come . Until two more books about David were published in 2007, by Caryl Phillips and Kester Aspden, his story was almost forgotten. In 2007, while speaking about David Oluwale at the launch of his book at Leeds Metropolitan (now Beckett) University, Caryl Phillips suggested that there should be a memorial in Leeds to David Oluwale.

1.2 DOMA: the #rememberoluwale campaign

The David Oluwale Memorial Association (DOMA) started life in 2007 as a committee based in the Community Partnerships and Volunteering office at Leeds Metropolitan/Beckett University. In 2012 it was registered as a charity and as a company limited by guarantee, unaffiliated to the university. Its objects are listed above. It is now branded as #RememberOluwale. In remembering David Oluwale, and in joining with all those who are working today to overcome all the challenges that

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David faced (the ‘Oluwale issues’: migration, racism, mental ill-health, homelessness, police malpractice, destitution) our charity sees itself as restoring David’s initially hopeful trajectory. We support Leeds Council’s ambition to create a compassionate, inclusive and more equal city, where diversity is welcomed and everyone is able to fulfil their dreams.

In 2022 there was a major contribution to DOMA’s work when Leeds City Council supported the LEEDS2023 Festival of Culture in managing the making and installation of Hibiscus Rising for David Oluwale by Yinka Shonibare CBE, RA, to be installed in Leeds in November 2023. This artwork symbolises the creativity and energy that migrants bring to our city. The special place of remembrance that is being created exemplifies the city’s aim to embrace diversity and welcome everyone to Leeds.

David’s story started with hope and ended in abjection; DOMA aims to restore hope as the City of Leeds becomes a place that is fully inclusive. We work with artists of every type to tell David’s story and to campaign for social justice with vivacity, creativity and enjoyment.

[Much more information about David Oluwale and the charity can be obtained from our website: rememberoluwale.org.]

1.3 DOMA’s impact April 22 – March 23

This report covers the charity’s activities over the period of 1st April 2022 to 31st March 2023. It provides the charity’s accounts up to 31st March 2022. Details are provided below.

In 2023-3 DOMA returned to full activity. After the difficulties experienced during the Covid 19 pandemic, the charity was able to restore its previous levels of activity in pursuit of its aims.

In brief, we:

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We consider therefore that our impact has been to:

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2. Report of the Trustees

2.1 Raising our profile

We have kept our story in the public eye by regularly posting items of interest to our followers on social media. Facebook seems to be dropping in popularity, but our other social media platforms have seen reasonable increase in followers.

2.2 Governance

Patrons

Caryl Phillips, writer and Professor of English Literature at Yale University, USA became our Founding Patron in 2013. Phillips was born in St Kitts and grew up in Leeds. The third part of his book Foreigners — Three English Lives (2007) analyses David Oluwale’s life and death. He initiated the memorial to David Oluwale in Leeds. carylphillips.com

Ruth Bundey, MA, became a Patron in February 2019. Ruth has lived in Leeds since 1969. Initially she worked for the Race Relations Board but soon became a solicitor. Her office in York Place merged with Ison Harrison on Chapeltown Road in 1993 becoming Harrison Bundey. Ruth now works from the city centre representing families at inquests into deaths in custody and mental health detention.

Directors and Trustees

In March 2023 our Directors and Trustees were: Abdullah Adekola, Victoria Ajayi, Max Farrar, Asher Jael, Chloë Hudson, Emily Zobel Marshall, Abigail Marshall Katung, Peter Hindle-Marsh, Ellie Montgomery, Meleri Roberts and Mariam Sadikot. Full details appear here on our website rememberoluwale.org

Advisory Committee

Our Advisory Committee is Saphra Bennett, Max Dunbar, Ian Duhig, Arthur France, Mike Love, Sai Murray, Chijioke John Ojukwu and Martin Patterson. Information about each of them is on our website www.rememberoluwale.org

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Volunteers and Consultants

There are lots of people who help DOMA’s work as Patrons, Board members, Consultants, Advisers, Partners and Volunteers and we are grateful to them all. We particularly thank the two consultants who gave us much support in developing Phase 1 of the Yinka Shonibare sculpture project: Pam Bone and Pippa Hale. LEEDS2023’s Sue Ball was very helpful in developing the early part of Phase 2 of this project (delivery of the completed sculpture).

Partners

We are indebted to these organisations, with whom we have had association and partnership arrangements and/or financial support over several years:

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3. Review of work to date

3.1 Civic Engagement work

Hibiscus Rising for David Oluwale, by Yinka Shonibare CBE, RA.

Yinka Shonibare is a world-famous British-Nigerian artist based in London. His website says this about his work:

[Shonibare’s] interdisciplinary practice uses citations of Western art history and literature to question the validity of contemporary cultural and national identities within the context of globalisation. Through examining race, class and the construction of cultural identity, his works comment on the tangled interrelationship between Africa and Europe, and their respective economic and political histories.

Yinka Shonibare CBE, RA in his office. Source: Https://Yinkashonibare.Com/Biography/ [Accessed 4.6.2023] © Shonibare Studio

While his art is usually interpreted as being critical of British colonialism, it often contains humorous and playful motifs, and is always bursting with colour. His use of Indonesian batik techniques that became so important in West African cloth indicates his global vision. This is why we approached him. On 3rd February 2017 Yinka took up our invitation to make a piece of art that remembered David’s life, and inspired people to think anew, in a positive spirit. He quickly provided us with his drawing of a hibiscus flower, rising out of water, in a green space, with benches nearby.

We felt that this was a fine expression of our suggestion that the place of memory for David would be a place of dialogue and conviviality, attractive to people of all ages, including children,

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referencing the vivacity and growth that migrants bring to the city of Leeds. The water feature was to remind us that migrants must cross (dangerous) water to reach the UK, that Leeds is, as our patron Caryl Phillips puts it ‘a city on the water’, and that David was drowned in the river/canal that made Leeds so prosperous in the 19th Century.

In the summer of 2020, thanks to grants from Arts Council England and LEEDS2023 Year of Culture, the Shonibare Studio was commissioned to make a maquette of the sculpture. The pandemic slowed down the construction of this model, but it arrived in Leeds, along with a short film of it being made, in the Spring of 2022.

In that film (produced and directed by a to b films, a Leeds company) Yinka says his inspiration in choosing to make a hibiscus flower was his happy memory, as a child in Nigeria, of sucking the sweet juice of the flower — imagining David Oluwale experiencing the same pleasure before he left Lagos. This artwork for David, typical of Yinka’s entire output, speaks to the possibility that there is a beautiful antidote to injustice.

Yinka Shonibare speaking about Hibiscus Rising , by a to b films, is available on our You Tube channel. Click here.

The hibiscus will rise in November 2023!

Yinka Shonibare’s Hibiscus Rising will be the centrepiece of a special place of memory in the heart of the city of Leeds. It is designed to delight and stimulate people of every background and every walk of life, drawing them into a ‘place with a purpose’. At the time of writing, this sculpture, almost ten metres high, is being manufactured. It will be installed at the end of November 2023 in Leeds City Council’s Meadow Lane Green Space in Aire Park, just south of the River Aire. It will be close to the recently opened David Oluwale Bridge, not far from Leeds Bridge, near to the point where David was drowned in April 1969. All this has been made possible because Leeds City Council has underwritten the costs, while LEEDS 2023 Festival of Culture has undertaken the fund-raising to cover these costs and the management of the technical aspects of the installation. DOMA is immensely grateful to both of these organisations.

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Artist’s impression of Hibiscus Rising , in the Meadow Lane green space, Aire Park, Leeds LS11 5BJ. Illustration & landscape design © Planit-IE. planit-ie.com, instagram.com/planitie

Originally, the sculpture was to be installed near The Tetley Centre for Contemporary Art in the part of Aire park currently under development by Vastint plc. It would have been surrounded by water and close to a children’s playground. These were ideal features, as suggested in our commission to Yinka. This plan was approved by Leeds City Council, and then Vastint changed its mind, fearing that the art-work would become a focus for Black Lives Matter protests. Despite strong representations by DOMA’s co-chairs, Cllr Abigail Marshall Katung and Dr Emily Zobel Marshall, they maintained their decision. Fortunately, Leeds City Council stepped in and allocated a site in its Meadow Lane Green Space. The only drawbacks have been that it proved impossible to create a pool of water to surround the sculpture, and that the playground will be a few minutes walk away. On the plus side, LCC is building an events facility right beside its Green Space.

Our purpose in commissioning and installing this world-class artwork is to help people reflect on David Oluwale’s life and death in Leeds — and to think about what can be done to eliminate the issues that marked his life, stemming from his migration from Lagos to Leeds in 1949. David endured racism, mental ill-health, homelessness and police malpractice. Despite real progress in each of those fields, these issues continue to blight the city of Leeds to this day. DOMA’s mission

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is to educate and campaign with LCC and all the other agencies in the city that are working to make Leeds more welcoming, more hospitable, more inclusive and more equal.

This enterprise is sometimes referred to as ‘place-making’. While ‘art for art’s sake’ is perfectly worthwhile, this is ‘art for social justice’. Titled the ‘David Oluwale Memorial: Hibiscus Rising by Yinka Shonibare CBE, RA’, surrounded by green space and (after completion) leading seamlessly into the other parts of Aire Park on the South Bank of Leeds, this place will exemplify the core values that DOMA has specified since its first meeting with Yinka in 2017.

The core ideas underpinning the David Oluwale Memorial remain as before. It will be a place where:

3.2 Community and Civic Engagement Programme

In this section we describe the work we’ve done in the past year to engage with communities and the city as a whole:

A Leeds Civic Trust Blue Plaque for David Oluwale (April to October 2022)

Back in 2007, when we started this work as a working party based in the Community Partnerships and Volunteering office at Leeds Beckett University, we asked Leeds Civic Trust if there could be a Blue Plaque for David Oluwale. Definitely not, was the reply, we only make Blue Plaques for positive stories. As a mark of how much has changed in Leeds since then, in December 2021, the Civic Trust, after a lively internal debate, changed its mind. Leeds City Council’s 2021 review of the role in the city of its statues and public art apparently influenced their decision.

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With this good news, we then set 25th April 2022 as our date for installing the plaque. We organised a pantheon of speakers, and some poets at a special ceremony in the newly created Meadow Lane Green Space. Conducted by our co-chair Dr Emily Zobel Marshall, the roster was headed by Caryl Phillips, our founding Patron, and included Cllr James Lewis, Leader of Leeds City Council, our co-chair Cllr Abigail Marshall Katung, Jane Taylor, Chair of Leeds Civic Trust, Alison Lowe OBE, Deputy Mayor of West Yorkshire for Crime and Policing, and Detective Chief Superintendent Carl Galvin, son of Police Cadet Gary Galvin, who exposed the crimes against David Oluwale. Our poets were Joel Leigh (who wrote a poem about David at an earlier project coordinated by the Geraldine Connor Foundation) and the celebrated Leeds poet Ian Duhig.

Jane Taylor, Chair of Leeds Civic Trust, with Dr Emily Zobel Marshall (DOMA Co-Chair) at the blue plaque ceremony in Meadow Lane green space, 25.4.2023. © Max Farrar

After the speeches we processed to the Leeds Bridge where the plaque was unveiled by Caryl Phillips and Ellen Smith led the David Oluwale choir in singing her arrangements of the songs created by Leeds United fans in 1972 after the trial of Ellerker and Kitching for the manslaughter of David Oluwale.

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L-R: Seth Leigh, James Adesanlu (Chair Of Nigerian Community Leeds) , Cllr Abigail Marshall Katung (Doma CoChair), Sam Leigh, Victoria Ajayi (DOMA board member), Ndidi Nwokpara, Joel Leigh And Gilda Smith-Leigh, Just After The Installation Of The Blue Plaque On Leeds Bridge, 25.4.2022. © Max Farrar

Exhilarated by this work, some of us went to the nearby Tetley art centre for a meal, where we heard, as we were preparing to go home, that the Blue Plaque had been stolen. There was serious consternation but, we had to admit, we weren’t entirely surprised. What did surprise and delight us was the surge of public support that emerged straight after the theft was announced the following day.

The Yorkshire Evening Post made it front page news. The advertising company J C Deceaux put a photo on its hoardings all over the city. A company that makes stickers produced copies of the plaque for free — distributed by our friends at the Welcome skate shop in Thornton’s Arcade, they were stuck up all over town. The Civic Trust launched a crowd funder campaign and over £3000 came in (to replace the plaque) within three days.

Examples of the support that DOMA and the Leeds Civic Trust received after the theft of the blue plaque on 25.4.22

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Soon after the theft, this message came to us in email:

‘[In 1971] I returned to Leeds, to University, as the trial of the police officers [accused of Oluwale’s manslaughter] began, and followed the events intently. I was appalled by the outcome. For many years I thought I had been one of only a few to have been in emotional turmoil from what had been done to this poor man, but only a few months ago I discovered the plan to unveil a plaque, and realised I was not alone. Thank you to those who keep his memory alive’.

There were further setbacks when two replicas of the Blue Plaque — a photograph of it that had been laminated and installed by Cllr Jonathan Pryor (Deputy Leader of Leeds City Council) — were stolen. West Yorkshire Police took all these crimes very seriously and two people were later arrested in connection with crimes against the plaques and a spate of racist graffiti that appeared all over the city to coincide with our installation in April. At the time of writing these cases are pending — we will report on the outcomes next year.

We bounced back on a wet Sunday in October 2022 when a new Blue Plaque was installed at another ceremony on Leeds Bridge, unveiled by Rose Marshall Brown, the daughter of our cochair Emily. Lucy Moore, chair of the Leeds Civic Tryst Heritage Panel made a speech, the Caribbean Breeze steel pan duo played, Ian Duhig performed his new poem, The Bridge .

L-R: Cllr Jonathan Pryor, Dr Emily Zobel Marshall and her daughter Rose, Cllr Abigail Marshall Katung and Ian Duhig on Leeds Bridge, 23.10.2022. © Leeds Civic Trust

In our customary spirit of celebration we then presented a cultural jamboree at The Tetley art centre, with the Yoruba Heritage dancers and drummers, musicians Des Hurley and Sean Kaye from Leeds Irish Arts, the Afrobeats singer Dayuur, Ellen Smith and the Oluwale choir, poetry from Zodwa Nyoni, Emily Zobel Marshall, Cherie Taylor Battiste, Abdullah Adekola and Joel Leigh, plus a welcoming address from The Tetley’s Georgia Aguillar Taylor and a speech by Alison Lowe OBE, the Deputy Mayor of West Yorkshire. A Nigerian meal from Tunto’s Aroma was on sale and

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an excellent time was had by all. Enhanced video surveillance and the use of cement and a tracker have meant that the Plaque has remained in place to this day.

Leeds Yoruba Heritage Cultural Group dancers and drummers at the Tetley Gallery, 23.10.2022. © Max Farrar

Discussing Hibiscus Rising with the people of Leeds (June-July 2022)

We took Hibiscus Rising (in a big white van with a tray lift) out to the people over six very busy weeks over the summer of 2022. The Tetley Centre for Contemporary Art had kindly agreed to store and protect the maquette of Hibiscus Rising when it first reached Leeds in its huge wooden crate. To engage with communities during June and July, we hired The Tetley’s technicians to unpack the crate and assemble the parts of the maquette in four venues in the north, south, east and west of Leeds during the summer of 2022. We employed professional facilitators, trained in the 'art of hosting’ techniques, to produce fully dialogic events where we could note local people’s responses to Yinka’s art-work and DOMA’s ideas for how it might contribute to the campaigns for social justice in Leeds.

Saphra Bennett, Ruth Steinberg and Jon Dorset, our facilitators, supported by DOMA Board members and Sue Ball from LEEDS2023, elicited a huge range of overwhelmingly positive and thoughtful responses from the people who attended these events. We are so grateful to them for their professionalism and support. Our detailed report, including all the views expressed, is available on our website (rememberoluwale.org) The report is long (and full of photos) in order to detail the high degree of engagement with our work, and our flagship project, a special place of memory for David that will inspire progress on all the “Oluwale issues”.

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Hibiscus Rising maquette at The Old Fire Station in LS9, 12.7.2023. © Max Farrar

L-R: Kauser Jan, Ruth Steinberg (found poetry) and Saphra Bennett (art of hosting facilitator) at Seven Arts, LS7, on 7.7.2023 © Max Farrar

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Exhibiting Hibiscus Rising at The Tetley (September to January)

We are very grateful for the support we get from The Tetley Centre for Contemporary Art. The first time we worked with Bryony Bond and her team was to provide contextual materials for their exhibition of Rasheed Araeen’s For David Oluwale II . That was from February to June 2019. This time, we provided some materials, and the film of Yinka speaking about his maquette we commissioned from a to b productions, to complement their exhibition of Yinka Shonibare’s Hibiscus Rising. Exhibition details are here . The maquette was therefore available to the public from 11th September 2022 to 8th January 2023 and almost 8,200 people were able to inspect it and learn about David’s life and death in Leeds.

Remarkably, 109 people left written comments, all positive. Here’s one comment from an adult: ‘Hibiscus Rising is a powerful and potent eulogy to a Leeds citizen just like any of us. It serves as a reminder that despite the threats of noxious racists, David’s memory persists. For future generations; an elegant tribute’. A child wrote: ‘I like that he is black and I am black’. Another adult said: ‘The hounding of David Oluwale was a shameful stain on the history of Leeds. It is extraordinarily generous of Yinka Shonibare to use it as a springboard to create something hopeful and celebratory.’

L-R: DOMA Board members Chloë Hudson, Emily Zobel Marshall and Asher Jael with the Hibiscus Rising maquette at The Tetley, 19.3.2022. © Max Farrar

Exhibiting Hibiscus Rising at the Leeds City Museum (February to June)

We worked closely with a group of young volunteers at Leeds City Museum, facilitated by staff member Jordan Keighley, who titled their group The Preservation Party. They wanted to include David Oluwale’s story in an exhibition they curated which they described as follows: ‘ Overlooked brings together the voices of people whose stories have been largely disregarded and invites

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visitors to embark on a fascinating and thought-provoking exploration of the city with inclusivity, diversity, and accessibility at its core’.

The Oluwale section of this excellent exhibition had the Hibiscus Rising maquette as its most eyecatching item, allowing another section of the Leeds Public (and distinguished visitors from The Art Fund) to appraise it. It included materials we supplied, such as the damaged replica Blue Plaque and the original Blue Plaque and examples of our publicity and merchandise; boards showing additional research they had done; the scrap-book that Police Cadet Gary Galvin had assembled, including a vast number of press cuttings relating to the Crown Court trial that Galvin’s whistleblowing had initiated; and original documents and photos from the National Archives in London showing the depositions that the barristers had used in the prosecution of Ellerker and Kitching.

Such was the impact of this exhibition that The Preservative Party won the Museums and Heritage Award for Volunteers of the Year 2023. This is a national award. They were also shortlisted for the Eurocities Awards 2023 in the category of Young People Co-curating spaces.

Part of the ‘David Oluwale’ display from the Overlooked exhibition at Leeds City Museum. © Max Farrar

3.3 Educational and campaigning work

Essentially, DOMA is an educational charity which takes a very broad view of education and does not make a strong distinction between education and campaigning. (We see all our public events as both educational and change-making.) We are educationalists with a mission: to remind people of David Oluwale’s story, its relevance today, and to make links with all those educating and

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campaigning for racial and social justice, with special attention to mental health, homelessness and migration, while joining with all those who are eliminating malpractice in the police service.

Illustrated talks

Whenever we are asked, we provide a PowerPoint talk. This illustrates David’s life, DOMA’s work and the continuing need to redress the issues that scarred his life. We describe his better days from 1949-53, his medical incarceration from 1953-61, his abjection (homelessness, imprisonment, more psychiatric ‘treatment’ up to 1967, and his relentless persecution and hounding by Ellerker and Kitching in the last two years of his life); we emphasise the intersection of the issues that structured his life and death, and we speak of our use of the arts to inject creativity, vitality and beauty into David’s memory.

This year, DOMA has made the following contributions to education for social change:

(All these talks are via PowerPoint, making extensive use of the large bank of photos and illustrations we have to bring David’s story to life.)

Our work with the School of Humanities and Social Science at Leeds Becket University

Our most sustained educational work arises from an arrangement we have with what is now the School of Humanities and Social Science at Leeds Becket University. This provides us with a welcome source of funds and this year we have delivered three programmes in conjunction with their excellent staff and students. Although the numbers of students opting into these programmes are small, because we work with them over a period of time, and because they produce assessed work to a high standard, we consider this to be high impact work. This year we contributed to their:

Applied Humanities module: in this module, led by Dr Emily Zobel Marshall, who works in this School and who is co-chair of DOMA, four humanities students worked with the American historian Dr Kennetta Hammond Perry in supporting her research for her next book, which takes David Oluwale’s story as its central theme. They interviewed members of the Nigerian community in Leeds to find out more about the experiences of Nigerians in Leeds today and reflect with them on the impact of David Oluwale’s story.

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Employability module for Psychology students: over a two-week period, three students shadowed our co-secretary Max Farrar’s work for DOMA. They had an ‘experiential’ walk around the places where David enjoyed himself in Leeds, where he slept rough and where he died, including a visit to the David Oluwale Bridge, the Blue Plaque and the site for Hibiscus Rising . They began to research the Oluwale issues to assist in the development of resources for the DOMA website and learned about the events we were planning (and two of them subsequently helped us deliver an event). The outcome was some understanding of what it is like to work for a small social justice charity.

Public History module: In this module, devised and led by Dr Henry Irving, we helped ten students with their work in producing an innovative digital resource for learning about David Oluwale’s life and DOMA’s work. Launched on 27.4.23 at a well-attended event at the university which featured two of the Oluwale-related films previously made by LBU students and short speeches (including one about Stephen Lawrence), this extremely useful resource had the twin benefits of teaching students how to make history alive and relevant to the public at large and helping DOMA make David’s story and our work more accessible. ‘Remembering Oluwale’ is viewable here on the LBU website and there are links to it in the DOMA website. [The LBU students’ films were ‘We Are All Migrants’ by Rowenna Baldwin (2019) and ‘Hounded’ by Connor Orton (2021), featuring a poem, and acting, by DOMA Board member Abdullah Adekola.] Extending David Oluwale’s reach even further, Dr Irving presented talks about this project at conferences of the Urban History Group and the Social History Society.

4. Future priorities

We will continue to organise events to raise the charity’s profile and to support educational and campaigning activities on all the issues that David Oluwale endured: mental ill-health, homelessness, racism, police malpractice and destitution, while always mindful of the current plight of migrants seeking settlement in the UK.

Up till the installation of Hibiscus Rising in November 2023, our work will focus on preparing the people of Leeds for this major event. We will work with LEEDS2023 Festival of Culture on the following:

Arts-based performance events in July and August designed to draw people into the city centre near the site where Hibiscus Rising will be installed, to explain the work we do and the purpose of Yinka Shonibare’s sculpture.

A third outing in September of the David Oluwale’s Leeds Walk/talk/sing, led by the Leeds historian Joe Williams (Heritage Corner), accompanied by the musician/singer Juwon Ogungbe (with three songs he wrote for David Oluwale).

Our annual lecture and forum, on the intersection of race, homelessness and mental ill-health, by Lord Victor Adebowale in October.

In preparation for the launch of Hibiscus Rising , we will undertake a major improvement to the RememberOluwale.Org website, so that educational resources on the ‘Oluwale Issues’ are given due prominence, fully accessible to those who want to develop their own education programmes, and/or seek further understanding of those issues.

We will prepare events for the summer of 2024 that will animate the Hibiscus Rising site, ensuring that it fulfils its mission to be a place that makes a difference.

Our Business Plan for this period raised the prospect of a David Oluwale Digital Cultural Centre. We will work on this idea in the coming year.

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5. Annual Accounts 2022-2023

DAVID OLUWALE MEMORIAL ASSOCIATION

Company Registration Number (England and Wales) 8107693 Charity Registration Number (England and Wales) 1151426

Abbreviated (Unaudited) Financial Statements

Period of Accounts:

Start date: 01 April 2022 End date: 31 March 2023

COMPANY INFORMATION

for the period ending 31st March 2023

Directors

A Adekola

V Ajayi M Farrar C Hudson A Jael

A Marshall Katung

P Hindle-Marsh E Zobel Marshall E Montgomery M Roberts M Sadikot

Co- Secretaries

M Farrar C Hudson

Office address

8 Gledhow Park Road Leeds West Yorkshire LS7 4JX

Company registration number 8107693

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David Oluwale Memorial Association Accounts for the 12 months to 31 March 2023

2023 2022
INCOME
Donations
10,772.76 12,401.43
Book & Other Sales 1,512.13 2,738.68
Grant Income 19,504.34 47,494.00
Event & ticket sales 1,393.84 511.00
Interest and Other Income 5,675.00
Total Income 33,183.07 68,820.11
EXPENDITURE
General Events (including performance fees and prizes) 4,915.08 830.00
Merchandise for resale 409.41 750.22
Sculpture & Garden Project 11,335.23 0.00
Marketing, Brand and Website 727.81 190.00
Book Publishing Costs 0.00 0.00
Consultancy and professional fees 21,474.00 55,797.40
General expenses 672.74 39.02
Total expenditure 39,534.27 57,606.64
BALANCE OF INCOME OVER EXPENDITURE (6,351.20) 11,213.47
BALANCE SHEET as at 31 March 2023
ASSETS
Bank balance 27,461.18 34,055.48
Cash / PayPal balance 3,055.83 2,882.73
Total Assets being Bank and Cash balances 30,517.01 36,868.21
LIABILITIES
Current liabilities 0.00 0.00

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Total assets less total liabilities 30,517.01 36,868.21
Represented by Total Funds 30,517.01 36,868.21
MOVEMENT IN FUNDS RECONCILIATION
Opening Funds 36,868.21 25,654.74
Income less expenditure in period (6,351.20) 11,213.47
Closing Funds 30,517.01 36,868.21

Audit Exemption

Approved by the Trustees on 28[th] June 2023

6. Public benefit statement

The David Oluwale Memorial Association promotes equality, diversity and racial harmony for the public benefit in Leeds based on the story of David Oluwale, and in this way complies with its duty as set out in section 4 of the 2006 Charities Act.

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