Mollie Hunte: Educator, Psychologist and Champion of Caribbean People

Speakers include:

• Conference Chair Professor Dame Elizabeth Anionwu: Elizabeth is a qualified nurse and health visitor tutor. She was appointed the first ever UK sickle cell/thalassaemia nurse counsellor and was Head of the Brent Sickle Cell & Thalassaemia Information and Screening Centre from 1979 to 1990. She also established and was the Head of the Mary Seacole Centre for Nursing Practice, at the University of West London.
• Professor Joan Anim-Addo: Professor of Caribbean Literature and Culture at Goldsmiths, University of London with research specialism in Caribbean Literature and the diaspora, women’s writing, Feminist perspectives and the Black presence in Europe.
• Dr Aggrey Burke: A Jamaican Psychiatrist, senior lecturer and specialist in mental illness in ethnic minority families
• Professor Gus John: Education campaigner, consultant, lecturer and researcher, who has done notable work in education policy and international development. He is also an anti-racist campaigner and since the 1960s he has been active in issues of education and schooling in Britain's inner cities such as Manchester, Birmingham and London. He was the first black Director of Education and Leisure Services in Britain.
• Dr Elaine Arnold: Elaine was a trained teacher in Trinidad and Tobago before moving into Psychiatric Social Work specialising in Child Guidance. She taught and lectured at Goldsmiths, UCL and Sussex University and has done extensive research into experiences of the separation of children and mothers during migration from the West Indies.

London Metropolitan Archives (LMA) will be hosting the Mollie Hunte conference: Mollie Hunte: Educator, Psychologist and Champion of Caribbean People. This event will celebrate Mollie Hunte (1932-2015), an educational psychologist from Guyana, who settled in West London and advocated for her community in her professional and personal life. Her archives were deposited at LMA in 2016 where they are currently being catalogued as part of a project funded by the Wellcome Trust. The archive collection includes sources relating to Hunte’s work in the field of child psychology and education, including details of her collaboration with organisations such as the Thomas Coram Research Institute.

It also includes considerable material relating to her community engagement and her relationships to key figures in the Black Education Movement such as Winston Best and Len Garrison. The collection is rich in correspondence, ephemera and personal papers which reveal the extent of her commitments and tell a broader story about black community activism in London in the 1970s and 1980s, and well as providing an insight into the life of a professional and business minded black woman in the period.

Mollie came to the UK in 1961 where she became an educational psychologist working specifically with young black children in her employment with the London Borough of Ealing (1973-1982) and the London Borough of Brent (1982-1988). She founded and co-founded several key organisations for the Caribbean community including The Caribbean Parents Group (established 1975), PEV Consultancy (1989) and the Caribbean Parents Group Credit Union (1990), organisations that were created to aid the Caribbean community by supporting parents and children through the education system, providing mental health services and assisting in parenting skills.

This conference will be a day of celebration of Mollie Hunte’s life and work, honouring her contributions to the black community and her activism. It will also be a chance to highlight the richness of the archive collection which will be available for public consultation on completion of the project.

A hot catered lunch will be provided as well as teas and coffees during the day.

PEV Consultancy Logo. the organisation was set up by Mollie Hunte in 1989

Programme (provisional)

• 9:30 - Registration
• 10:00 – Introduction to the Conference
• 10:15 – 11:00 – Morning Session: Talk on the Mollie Hunte Collection from Rebecca Adams, Archivist
• 11:00 – 11:15 – Tea break
• 11:15 – 11:45 – Dr Elaine Arnold
• 11:45 – 12:15 – Dr Aggrey Burke
• 12:15 – 14:00 – Lunch time – Archive tours, Mollie Hunte collection show and tell and Mediatheque films
• 14:00 – 14:05 - Introduction: Dame Elizabeth Anionwu
• 14:05 – 14:35 – Professor Joan Anim-Addo
• 14:35 – 15:05 – Professor Gus John
• 15:05 – 15:50 – Panel of including Gus John, Joan Anim-Addo, Aggrey Burke, Elaine Arnold and Elizabeth Anionwu and Rebecca Adams
• 15:50 – 16:30 – Event close and Performance by Keith Waithe

Carribean Parents Group Credit Union logo, 1990