We have had a very long partnership with the University of Manchester's Centre on the Dynamics of Ethnicity (CoDE). The work we have produced together with CoDE over the years has been monumental in uncovering the different issues that are facing ethnic minority communities in the UK in the main focal points of health, employment and policing.
In the 18 months that followed the spring of 2020 the world saw a collision of crises.
In May 2020, the murder of George Floyd was the spark for worldwide Black Lives Matter protests, which demanded not only an end to the killing of Black men and women at the hands of the police, but also an examination of wider issues of systemic racism.
But at the same time the world was fighting the health crisis of COVID-19. That health emergency and the lockdowns that happened in response, only served to exacerbate some of these long-standing racial inequalities even further.
Ongoing research conducted by the Centre on the Dynamics of Ethnicity (CoDE) aims to capture the in-depth experiences of racially minoritised individuals and communities during the COVID-19 pandemic.
A series of briefings looking into each of the key areas in depth:
Brick Lane is in a very interesting position geographically in the sense that it's next to the city, it's next to Spitalfields, it's next to Liverpool Street Station. It's right on the neighbour, of a lot of very, very rich areas. Although itself is quite poor.
Brick Lane is an iconic space in the history and contemporary present of the Bangladeshi community in Britain. The street was once home to the largest concentration of curry restaurants in the UK. Explore the pages of this site to uncover the changing fortunes of the Bangladeshi-owned restaurant trade in Brick Lane's ‘Banglatown’. It is a story of empire and migration, of settlement, of urban change, of place-making and the struggle to belong.
It is a Brick Lane story, a London story and a story of Britain.
