Honouring Legacies
Since joining the Rekindling Nello James steering group, I’ve found myself moving through layers of memory and emotional labour. My position on this steering group asks me to listen deeply, to honour histories, and to recognise the threads that connect us across generations.
Being part of the steering group has allowed me not only to contribute professionally as a counsellor and wellbeing facilitator, but also to connect personally with my own heritage. It’s a space where my therapeutic values empathy, listening, collaboration meet my cultural values of community, resilience, connection.
Although my cultural values of community, resilience and connection have always travelled with me, they were shaped in interesting ways by not being born in Manchester. Growing up in Bristol, I learned these values early, but it’s Manchester that taught me how deeply they can be lived. Over the years, this city has held me, stretched me and welcomed me so fully into its cultural rhythm that I often feel I’ve quietly “graduated” into being a Mancunian, not by birth right but by belonging, by contribution, and by time spent rooted in its communities.
The Rekindling Nello James project feels so significant to me. It mirrors my own journey of finding home through heritage, connection and shared storytelling. The project preserves the power, pride and activism of Caribbean and African Manchester, a history I didn’t grow up inside, but one I’ve grown into with respect, gratitude and responsibility. Being part of this work allows me to honour the elders, educators and everyday people who built community here with heart and resistance. It lets me contribute to a legacy that is bigger than any one of us: a legacy of cultural ownership, radical learning and collective memory.
Being offered the opportunity to weave wellbeing into this project feels not just beneficial, but essential. The memories we are holding, the histories we are surfacing, and the stories we are inviting carry both beauty and pain. Integrating wellbeing practices ensures that as we revive these narratives, we also protect the people sharing them. It brings care, grounding and emotional safety into a process that requires courage and vulnerability.
In many ways, my role allows me to stand at the intersection of healing and heritage. The professionalism I bring ensures the work is held with care; the cultural values I carry help me stay connected to the heart of what we’re doing. Together, they strengthen the project’s commitment to community power, cultural pride and collective wellbeing so the legacy of the Nello James Centre is preserved in a way that uplifts, restores and honours everyone involved.
In many ways, my personal journey and the project’s purpose meet in the same place, a belief that community is something we make, protect and pass forward. And Manchester, more than anywhere else, has taught me how powerful that can be.