City of Vancouver honours ‘hometown heroes’ during Black History Month

The City of Vancouver is honouring the impact of Black residents and organizations who are shaping their communities through activism.

As a part of Black History Month, Give Them Their Flowers: Celebrating Vancouver’s Hometown Heroes is highlighting 10 Black B.C. residents and organizations, including activist Shanique Kelly.

An event producer, DJ, and equity educator in the black-queer community, Kelly tells CityNews she is grateful for the honour. She says it is meaningful to see other members of the Black community be featured on the list.

“I think that to see members of Vancouver’s Black community be highlighted for their achievements is super meaningful. In Vancouver, we all know you don’t have a massive Black population,” she said. “There’s a lot of us doing really great, really cool stuff, so it’s great to have a platform to showcase that for people to learn a bit more about what we’re all up to.”

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Part of Kelly’s work includes carving out safe and inclusive spaces for people in marginalized communities.

Kelly organized the LEVEL UP YVR event that is set to run on Saturday. She says the all-Black line-up event is aimed at celebrating Black-queer artists.

“You can expect music, dancing, high energy, hip-hop music,” she said. “For me, it was important to create a space where folks could just experience catharsis and community.”

She says that through events like this one, she hopes communities will continue uplifting Black people year-round.

“I think when we’re talking about working towards creating better communities, that looks like things like being actively anti-racist, actively uplifting folks in marginalized communities,” she said.

Kelly says that February is a great time to be mindful of past events, and also look toward the future.

“Black History Month is an opportunity for us to look collectively at the past, what’s happened in the past, and also use that to inform where we want to go in the future,” she said.

“Racism does exist here. And I think it’s super important to remember that past so that we don’t repeat [it],” she said.