Minds of the Movement - Imarn Ayton

Image credit: Joe Watson

On July 30th 2020, we spent the day with some of the women who are changing the way we look at black history. We invited activist Imarn Ayton and the girls from The Black Curriculum down to a studio in Haggerston where we captured their portraits and listened to their inspiring stories. These interviews are just the first in a series where we set out to amplify the voices of important female figures in the black community. These are the minds behind the movement.

IMARN AYTON – FROM PECKHAM GIRL TO PROTEST LEADER

Jaz: What you have achieved in the last few months is pretty wild, did you see yourself or refer to yourself as an activist before all of this started?

Imarn: No. Not even in the slightest. So to break it down in terms of who I am before I got to this kind of random blonde wig activist, I’ve never been religious, I’ve always been very spiritual. I live at home with my mum who is a very strong and spiritual black lady. She’s very much been the force behind my wisdom at 29. I grew up and realised there was only one thing I wanted to do which was to inspire, and I thought, okay how on earth are you gonna do this? There’s nothing more beautiful than being inspired and being able to affect change, and I wanted to be an actress to be able to find a way to do that. So I went to the BRIT school and at the time it gave me this air of ego. I mean, Adele went there, Amy Winehouse went there, and it makes you feel like your shit don't stink. It was predominantly white and it was the time of hipster culture where everyone used to listen to dubstep and have big plugs and skateboards. Then I came in, a girl from Peckham. I was really overweight at the time. It was before the area was gentrified so there was all this stigma. This black girl from Peckham, she don’t know nothing about Shakespeare, she don’t know about Oscar Wilde, she can’t be articulate and present herself in the way that we need her to, and that’s how I found my ego in BRITschool because I was able to surprise people. 

I left BRIT school and spent 10 years of my life in delusions of grandeur, thinking I would be some kind of famous actress. But you start out in auditions and then realise you’re not getting anything. That kind of coincided with other things in my life and I found myself in a state of sheer depression. But going through that depression the amount of wisdom, life experience, and knowledge that I gained from being in that state is invaluable and something I would never take back. So if I thought I could act when I got into BRIT school, I’m far better now having 10 years of life experience. It ultimately helped me grow as a person, but in those 10 years I had very little social life. I lived with my mum and I was struggling.

During lockdown I was given this video of the murder of George Floyd, and lord knows I weeped like it was my mum. These feelings really just took over me, and I cried my eyes out as the majority of people did. I was so devastated I refused to do anything that day. The following day I woke up, and I had this very bizarre, almost schizophrenic voice in my head saying ‘Put on a blonde wig’. So I decided to listen to it, I had a blonde wig sitting in a plastic bag at home that had been there for a while, and I thought why not? You’ve been feeling low, why not pretty yourself up and put on a blonde wig? I put it on and headed outside, I was going to get some toothpaste from Superdrug. On that journey through Peckham Rye, I looked up and all I heard was ‘BLACK LIVES MATTER’ ‘BLACK LIVES MATTER’ ‘BLACK LIVES MATTER’. I just found myself in that beat! My god, the universe has taken over, this is your moment! You’ve been feeling so bad about George Floyd, you’ve spent a whole day crying, and you look up and there is just this charge of black people strong and empowered saying ‘Black Lives Matter’. I jumped over this fence and I joined the front of the march ‘BLACK LIVES MATTER, BLACK LIVES MATTER’, you know when you just find yourself caught up, I didn’t even buy the toothpaste! I happened to meet loads of random people on that march and they invited me to drinks afterwards. Little did I know that these people were connected with all these other different groups who had something to do with the movement. So they invited me to the protest that was happening at Trafalgar Square, they said they weren’t organising it, they were nothing to do with it, but let’s go to it. 

The next day I went down with a group of them to Trafalgar Square and when I got there everyone was chanting. I’m half Jamaican, half Nigerian and I’ve been brought up with predominantly Jamaican culture, and I know what it feels like to be in a room with a lot of Jamaicans. There is a vibe, there is an emphasis, there is an enthusiasm, there is a loudness about us. I got there and there was just this lack of energy, so out of sheer curiosity I stand on this pillar. I’m ready. I’ve been crying my eyes out for George Floyd and I’m here to now express this pain. I’m not here to be shy, I want to hear loud and proud ‘BLACK LIVES MATTER! BLACK LIVES MATTER! BLACK LIVES MATTER!’. I wanna hear it because that’s what I’ve come out for. So I walk up, I stand on a pillar to look for these so-called leaders that I thought were there, and I see no-one. I just see everyone looking back at me! I’m looking over here, I’m looking over there, I’m looking at no-one! Everyones just looking at me. I’m like OK, I’ll just carry on chanting, but I had this subconscious feeling of – I’m very tall now, everyone’s staring at me – I’m just gonna go with it. The actress in me said settle into it. You’re looking very tall right now but there are no other leaders, there is no-one taller than you and nothing’s going on on the ground. So you have a choice, you either shy away from it or you stand here strong. 

As I continued chanting, a random lady makes her way through the crowd. She taps me on my ankle, and she says ‘Hey, here you go. This is for you.’ She hands me a megaphone. So what do I do at that moment? I either get off of the pillar and give it back to her, or I say fuck it, I’m going to use this megaphone. So I used it. And that is how my voice got out there. Two days later I was invited to come down again on the third. So I have my megaphone, and I was surprised that it was so organised! Everyone had their hi-vis, everyone had face masks, and there were leaders. Opposite to the Trafalgar Square protest. Naturally people saw me with the megaphone and again I had two options. I can do nothing with the megaphone in my hand or I can make myself useful. I start doing a speech outside of parliament and then I talk and talk and talk, then I look to my left and John Boyega’s standing next to me! The next thing you know there’s a flurry of news reporters surrounding us and John Boyega is up there, right next to me listening to me speak. I had to compose myself. Don’t get distracted Imarn, this is not the time to talk about celebrities! Focus on the mission. So I talked and I did my thing and then John Boyega went after me doing his speech. At this point I’m on BBC News stood next to him talking, so people are like – this must be the person that’s the leader, right? She has to be! That’s when it kind of solidified my position as the chick with the blonde wig. It really started from that day.

Now that I’d been on the BBC, that bit of ego allowed me to say to the group ‘Hi guys! What’s happening on Saturday?’ But they said it wasn’t them organising the protest, so I said okay, can we find out who is? We found that nobody had organised it. So I decided to take it on myself, and I said right, can I get help because I’ve never done this before? I’ve got about 100 followers on Instagram, I can’t do this by myself. Can you help? The first thing they told me is you’ve got to talk to the police, and I said what? I’ve never talked to a fed in my life! But that’s what you’ve got to do, you’ve got to talk to the police and organise a route. I stayed up all night planning the route. Did it with my mum, and then LDNBLM came in really handy because they offered two things. A massive pallet of water, which I needed, and the other was drummers. 

It was an excellent day, and then what ended up being even more fortuitous is that I did my speech, low and behold I look up and someone says ‘THAT’S MADONNA!’ So the day before I had John Boyega on my left, the following day on my right is Madonna. And she was on crutches. I’m like okay this is a very surreal moment. Then she was like – oh, can you do another speech for me? Madonna is asking me to give a speech! I felt really awkward because I didn’t have any new material, I’d been up all night rehearsing the three speeches that I had so I tried to reword one that I had said before. I thought that was a good speech Imarn so let’s do that again and try to do it a different way, and the main thing that I was talking about was institutionalised racism. So I chanted ‘Institutionalised racism drives poverty, poverty drives crime, crime drives violence, institutionalised racism drives poverty, poverty drives crime, crime drives violence’. The second time round the crowd started joining in! Madonna was looking at me like ‘this girl seems to know what she’s doing!’ But little did they know the crowd had just heard it before. So I looked even more legit in front of her. Then her bodyguard was like okay, we want to go down to the gates in front of Downing Street, would you like to come with us? I said no problem, I’ll march in front of you guys and clear the area. So I ended up marching with Madonna, and we stood in front of Downing Street. There were people on the steps and they were throwing the coloured smoke, things started to get a bit more heated and everyone was saying things like – all cops are ba***ards, and at that point I had found myself in this rhythm of wanting a peaceful protest, obviously, because I understand that media is a part of institutionalised racism. It’s one of the driving contributors for why we have this generalisation and this stigma around black communities, and us being angry, aggressive, and violent, so if we then decide to do that in these protests we are playing into their hands and that was why I was so convinced, if I was going to be anywhere it was going to be promoting peace. So then it turned into ‘THIS IS A PEACE-FUL PRO-TEST, PEACE FUL PRO TEST’, and so me and Madonna are singing, we get in front of Downing Street, then David her son starts doing a beat, and then the next minute, just because I’ve got Madonna with me singing Peaceful Protest, everybody decided to shut the fuck up and sing with us. 

I walked her back, she left and she put me on her story. And people began to say ok, who is this Imarn girl? Madonna has put her up on her story. If you imagine you go to bed, you wake up and see a message saying that Madonna has messaged you. You’re thinking, what is this? Who’s this random troll that’s just put Madonna on on my DM’s and I look and it’s legitimately Madonna, not the Madonna fanpage. It’s actually her, she’s actually tagged me, and she had the whole day story saying she felt compelled to bring her family, saying thank you Imarn. So at this point people are beginning to call me. And so from there on, I’d spoken with John Boyega, I’d chanted with Madonna, and that’s how I’d managed to get involved in more and more of the London protests. 

Before long I realised that the protests were lacking narrative, and 6 weeks on people were saying the same thing. ‘I can’t breathe’ ‘Justice for George Floyd’ ‘Breonna Taylor’, these are American people, no-one’s addressing what we go through in the UK, we’re just talking about America. We had to have some direction, we’ve not just come out on the streets in thousands to march and be angry and aggressive. This has to amount to tangible change. I did my research and I realised that there were several things I wanted to focus on, and one of the quickest ways to get change is law. It’s just a fact, it’s not complicated. In my eyes I wanted to find out a law that’s going to help us and benefit this movement, and then I started studying and I realised there were reviews, which I thought - oh my god if these things were implemented it would help us so much, to the point where we’d feel a lot more comfortable in the way we’re heading. I realised that the Lammy review from 2017 hadn’t been implemented, and it’s a review into the treatment of black and asian minority ethnic groups within the criminal justice system, so instead of just screaming peoples names on the streets we can find ways to actually help them, and find a way to actually implement change. I knew that there was a review that could help the way black people were treated in the criminal justice system and in my humble opinion that was the Lammy review. 

I did a BBC news interview, and the speech was more or less the same speech that I’d been giving for the last 6 weeks which is that institutionalised racism is rooted in every aspect of life, it is rooted in education, it’s rooted in healthcare, it’s rooted in fashion and beauty, it’s rooted in politics, it’s rooted in the criminal justice system. I say this on the same segment as Boris Johnson, so that BBC article was first Boris, second was Lammy, third was Imarn Ayton. I said that it was rooted in everything and it needs to be addressed because institutionalised racism affects all of these aspects of life,  and then about four days later Boris Johnson says ‘Okay! We’re going to look at the disparities within all of these different areas, we’re going to look at education, we’re going to look at healthcare, and I thought - you were a part of my segment, I know you heard everything I said, and now you’ve used it, which is great. But now we have a problem which is that nobody else is talking about it on the ground, it seems to just be me, so if I’m organising a protest on the 20th I’m going to address the fact that the prime minister has said and has heard the black lives matter movement, and has actually come back to us with a race inequality commission. Someone has to address that. So we held the protests, and we got the crowd chanting ‘IMPLEMENT THE LAMMY REVIEW’ and ‘MUNIRA MURZA MUST GO’, These were the words that got into every newspaper in the UK. 

Imarn Ayton, interviewed by Jaz O’hara

 @imarnayton @theworldwidetribe