Last year, Simone collaborated with Black Minds Matter to design a t-shirt for their Black History Month fundraiser. Black Minds Matter is a charity who aims to connect Black people in the UK to free mental health services.
Simone’s design read ‘Black children dream in colour but live in a racially biased world obsessed with black and white’. Learn more about the intentions behind this piece below:
“These words are from the opening of Simone Yasmin’s poem ‘Grey Area’, written in August 2020 after she had finally processed the horrific events of June 2020. The words she has selected for this piece initially celebrate the big dreams Black children have, but these dreams are so often diluted and lost to the systemic racism rife in society.
In the poem she asks, ‘Do you understand your own biases? Your privileges? Do you understand that we never wanted to be martyrs made hashtags?’ Simone believes that all children dream in a full spectrum of colours, and it is only until we impose our own biases on them, that they start to scrutinise the world through the lens of black and white. A lens which always differentiates and disadvantages Black children.
In a world which constantly tells Black children to shrink themselves, dreaming is everything. Against all odds, Simone hopes Black children not only continue to dream in colour, but live in colour, beyond the grey area.”