We Go Together We Grow Together

Words by Louis Coulthard

Photos by Toby Shaw

Hair & Makeup by Emma Rekker

“I get things done” says Dawn Dublin, as we sit down together to chat about her company, Black Butterfly. Amidst dashing outside to tell a random passer-by how cool he looks and cuddling her hot chocolate, she tells me about a phone call she’s just had on her walk here involving motherhood, miscarriage and marginalization. I can already hear the cogs whirring in her head, ideas sprouting of what she (or we as a community) can do to support people in these situations. There’s a chaos and clarity to Dawn all at once, brain buzzing, options forming and decisions made. It’s clear to me within seconds of meeting her that she really does get things done.

In 2020 Dawn grew frustrated that public funds were not being distributed fairly and felt that leaders, both national and local, were out of touch with the communities they were meant to serve. She wanted to set up a local, black-led community and cultural development agency focused on creating positive change using diverse local perspectives. Dawn found inspiration in "hackathons" during the pandemic, where innovators from across the globe collaborated to tackle major challenges. These groups were formed of students, engineers, nurses, farmers, a range of people coming together and achieving amazing things. They had lived expertise of situations rather than learned assumptions, something which is so often missing in rooms where the decisions affecting our communities are made. Dawn was witnessing a migration of people moving to this area and wanted to make sure that the inevitable gentrification wouldn’t leave communities behind, and the lockdown sparked an idea. Why not focus on urban regeneration, using the empty buildings around town to create community led cultural spaces, whilst honouring the heritage of the building and bringing value back to both it and the area?

Black Butterfly was born (or, more appropriately, metamorphosed) with the faith that from small changes big differences can be made. Dawn primarily looked at systems of exclusion, “everyone talks about inclusion but it’s often just gaslighting, let’s flip the frame and think about exclusion, who are we keeping out, and why?” she said. “Isolating layers of society from our spaces, whether it’s race, working Mums, people with disabilities, the youth, our elders…it’s costing this country so much, both economically and socially. Diversity, equity and inclusion should be a baseline for any organisation, it should be the norm, not something we strive for”. Dawn envisioned Black Butterfly as a company that empowers people to work collectively and with solidarity, fostering a sense of independence and moving beyond a charity model. This approach was captured in their motto: “We go together, we grow together”.

We’re trying to nurture and provide love gently

The company focuses on holding space for minoritized groups to get together and decide what they want to do as a collective, whether that’s hosting a pop up, organizing events, or just telling stories and being together, empowering people to take the lead in their own way rather than being instructed or told what to do. “It sounds so simple but doing it in the right way takes a lot of work. We’re trying to nurture and provide love gently. A lot of people don’t get it, or don’t know how to quantify it, but it has so much value”.

Their first space was an old betting shop on Kings Rd, St Leonards, which they styled into a 1970s Caribbean living room. “A woman brought her elderly Mum in, she walked through the beaded curtains into the space, hunched over her wheelchair to gaze at the miniature glass ornaments, looked around and said ‘I’m back home’. It was profoundly beautiful to watch, like an awakening… those small things are food for the soul”. Dawn couldn’t believe such a little thing that the business had put together so quickly could be this transformative. People would come and go, sitting and chatting like neighbours once did in a time before everyone locked their front doors.

I wasn’t trying to be non-conformist; I was just trying to find more richness and a greater truth

Dawn grew up in 1970s North London, where her parents’ home was a space that people were drawn to. Her Dad would sit with the men in the front room playing dominoes, philosophising and politicising, whilst her Mum and all the women would cook up a storm in the kitchen with their collections of pickles, preserves and herbs from the garden, all set to the backdrop of retro furnishings, kids running wild, records playing and groovy wallpaper. Dawn’s dad had been an academic and studied under a British educational system in Guyana, but when he arrived in the U.K he was told that despite his qualifications, he could only work in menial jobs. “My Dad took that really hard, he held onto a lot and didn’t know how to get it out” she recalls. With four boisterous brothers, Dawn was the only girl and often found herself quietly sitting in the corners at these social events, watching everything unfold. She soon realised that her home (and the space it provided for storytelling), became a place of safety and resistance, where knowledge was being shared by the collective. They would devise schemes together and develop their community, sharing information on access to properties, housing and employment, it’s where she began learning about environmental and social injustice. Listening to those conversations, she started to see things from a different viewpoint. Dawn would read endlessly (mainly the dictionary, so she could use big words when arguing with her brothers) and loved finding the morals in all kinds of stories, whether they were traditional African tales or excerpts from religious texts. Her teachers at school called her a troublesome daydreamer and ‘non-conformist’ which Dawn (after looking up its definition in the dictionary) soon became proud of, “I wasn’t bad; me and my teacher were just on different paths, seeing the world in different ways. I wasn’t trying to be non-conformist; I was just trying to find more richness and a greater truth”.

Challenging ourselves to find alternative and new ways of approaching life is important to Dawn, and she’s especially passionate about encouraging this in young people. “Kids see things differently, and we need those perspectives to nurture creativity. I didn’t teach my own children to talk to then just shut up, we need more conversations with our youths”. This attitude drove Dawn to set up St Leonards Film Society when she first moved here decades ago, prioritizing accessibility, affordability and with the kids voices at the club’s core. Her fascination with storytelling and urban regeneration then led her to take over The Observer Building in 2015, re-opening it as a community space after it has been closed for decades. “It’s an amazing place with such an interesting heritage, it was important for the people who were connected to that space come and tell their story in their own voice, especially the couples who met working there and got married, I loved hearing about it all. This town is known for its history, but I don’t think we tell those stories as much as we could”.

It's clear how Dawn’s own story is what led her to Black Butterfly. Her childhood experience of how trauma can be gently explored by being welcomed into a space to just sit and be, to tell our stories in our own way and for these to be held by others, these acts are powerful and go on to have a great effect on our lives and those throughout our communities. “Ultimately it’s about freedom, that’s all Black Butterfly is trying to do”.

The company is now based at Hattons Yard in St Leonards, where their Joyful Roots gardening project and therapy van aim to promote both the physical and mental wellbeing of the community, alongside a host of social gatherings ranging from parent and baby art sessions to choirs and women’s support groups. But the future of Hattons Yard is now under threat and Dawn finds herself, once again, banging on doors to try to save the space. “The barriers are everywhere but we’re not afraid to try and circumnavigate them from a grass roots level.”

That attitude is what Dawn loves so much about Hastings and St Leonards, that people here aren’t afraid to try and make stuff happen despite the challenges facing us. She hopes to harness that cultural spirit and community power to reimagine ways of living here, with decisions being made from the roots up rather than from the top down. “The tourist economy is great in this town because of the independent shops, small businesses and the creatives, it’s not ‘cos of the systems in place. We should be supporting and promoting that, centring their voices and learning from their methods, otherwise we lose them”. Holding on to that creative and cultural richness whilst making small changes is what Dawn believes can make all the difference, and how by embracing the connections between us and working as a whole, we will get things done.

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