Black Environment Network (BEN)

BEN’s Mission: Enable full multicultural environmental participation in the UK.

BEN is an exemplar for multicultural environmental participation and has influenced international approaches to working with culture-defined groups. After the ending of Apartheid, South Africa sought us out and used our approach as a template for involving different cultural groups – of course there they are in the majority!

BEN and archives

Over the years, we promoted integrated ways of seeing, bringing together the social, cultural/spiritual, environmental and economic dimensions of environmental participation and contributed to the overview of how the relationship between plants, people and places are seen.

BEN flagged up many themes related to cultural dimensions in the context of enabling cultural minorities to reclaim contact with and engage with nature in the UK. These themes include the fact that the movement of plants parallel the movement of people, how identity is seen in the changing landscapes, evolving lifestyles through increasing the range of what we eat and what we can make from plants, the intercultural encounter with people and the exchange of cultural traditions, and how these revelations have been incorporated into “British” culture.

We have no organised archives, but we hold:

1. Reports on our work, with the early ones being especially interesting as we worked to pioneer the methodology for enabling full multicultural environmental participation.

2. Collection of policy documents relevant to BEN, articles and key papers written by BEN in the mainstream over the years – including newspaper cuttings, magazines, professional publications.

3. Photo library highlighting multicultural participation

4. Records of chapters contributed by BEN in influential publications

5. Bank of examples of good practice

6. Collection of OHP slide presentations and PowerPoint presentations over the years.

7. List of resources on the Internet – listening, reading, watching – with clips from conferences and events, discussion panels, presentations.

8. Records tracing the establishment of key concepts, the coining of new terminology and ways of seeing that opens out environmental participation for ethnic minorities

9. We hold the memory of many significant stories that may yet be captured on paper.

Please see BEN website www.ben-network.org.uk

Main contact Judy Ling Wong CBE judy@ben-network.org.uk