David Stickman Higgins

On Wednesday We had a lecture from a guy called David stickman Higgins on about Black history Month and his personal experiences and projects he as been involved in and how on being creative with all your senses, sight, touch, smell etc. He spoke about what black culture means to him and gave life stories, poems and techniques on being creative with language too. Dave ‘Stickman’ Higgins is  a world class drummer and percussionist. Dave is also a poet, actor and educator of Black History. 
Dave gave a very personal account of growing up in multicultural Britain, sharing his mother’s tale of moving from Barbados to Bury in the 1960s, his experience of growing up to by a lot of sensory and poetry throughout his talk.

Higgins started his talk in an unusual way, rather then introduce himself and soon as we sat down the first thing he did was set the audience a task. He wanted from us was to write  five certain things. A colour, an natural element for example water, our name and an animal. When he returned from his 'water break' the whole point of this came clear, he tasked us what we had then took a couple and created various poems and 'played with the words' showing how he creates his poems, which was very interesting and totally different. 

 Throughout the talk he told us about stories that took pace in his life, about his childhood and family but also some were about the projects he has done in the past. each story he told he gave visual references for  such as photos, actual pieces of work or things he as collected that he brought  with him, which was really good and made it more interesting and interactive.

As well as stories and poems he also did a lot of interacting with the audience, Firstly by  waving a piece of cloth with some really strong scent on. Then he asked the audience what we can smell and people replying with likes of ginger and some other spices and they were correct. It was his way of getting a message out to us in different way, by saying basically behind that was that everything we smell or touch brings back memories, either from the childhood or our life in general. He also passed a box that was tied up with an object in and him asking people to think and and see if they can tell 'whats in the box'. It worked out to be piece of rock, where again it a contained a hidden message.  This time the message was everything we touch is a 'DNA story', holds a memory, which led him on to a particular sofa he brought with him and the story behind it. The sofa was a part of a little setup in the corner of the room, which also contained a box with black history related items in it, such as masks from africa, words written on the side of the box etc.

To sum up this talk, it was strange well more then strange. He was lively and very interesting. The way he played with the words he was given and made poems of was fascinating and made me think about things alot about the things we touch and smell and how they can bring back memories and past events.