Documentary film-making, public history, and heritage - with speaker Joe Hopkinson (DOMUS Seminar)

Domus Seminar Series

A Screening of Joe Hopkinson's 'Dispersing the Problem', followed by a talk and discussion.

With speaker Joe Hopkinson of the University of Huddersfield

Joe Hopkinson’s film ‘Dispersing the Problem: Immigrant Children in Huddersfield during the 1960s and 1970s’ was created as part of a Masters by Research, and won the Royal Historical Society’s post-graduate award for Public History in 2018. The film is about the African Caribbean and South Asian children who were dispersed by bus around Huddersfield’s schools during the 1960s and 1970s. Dispersal, or ‘bussing’ as it was colloquially known, was part of a national government policy that operated in Britain from 1963 until the early 1980s. It was in fact the only national policy directed at Black, Asian or Minority Ethnic children during the early years of what was initially described as multiracial education in Britain. Despite explicitly discriminating against children because of the colour of their skin bussing was, until recently, not well-known or understood by the British public.

Join us for a screening of the film followed a talk on the research and production process, and a discussion of the importance of film-making as a form of public education, and heritage. Joe is now in the second year of a PhD at the University of Huddersfield on the education of children from visible minoritized groups in the north of England, 1960-81.