Written by Janie Winter, Young Producer Alumni and former Young Producer Panellist on the Blue Plaque Panel.
You can read about Janie’s experience on the panel here.
Mapping Winifred Atwell: The Story of a Blue Plaque Engagement Project
During my tenure as the Young Producer Panellist on the London Blue Plaques Panel, I was able to use my position to engage with young people in the city by helping create and deliver an educational project in two different schools.
It centred around the unveiling of the plaque to Winifred Atwell, an iconic Boogie-Woogie pianist born in Trinidad and Tobago, who toured globally and became the first Black artist to top the singles chart in the UK!
The project took around six months from start to finish, initiated in spring 2025, and was a collaboration between us at English Heritage, and the fantastic VoicesProject, who deliver educational projects in schools focusing on anti-racist approaches and oral geographies to engage with people, place and the past. We wanted to inspire young people to research Winifred Atwell’s life and share their own perspectives on it at the Blue Plaque unveiling that would take place in early October.
We worked with Chantal Mayo-Holloway, Geography Lead at the David Ross Educational Trust, to develop a presentation for the students at both schools, designed with both organisations’ branding in mind, introducing the project. We had decided to launch a competition to have students generate their own research on Winifred Atwell, and create resources to go into a digital Story Map that illustrated her incredible life. All of the students’ work would be integrated into the map, but each school would select a winning piece whose authors would be invited to attend the unveiling in Mayfair and present their research to the attending crowd.
We developed the pitch for the project to schools and parents over the summer, and in early September we confirmed the two schools who asked to participate, which were located in Stratford and Balham – great both for a broader connection with different groups of young people, and for me to explore!
We structured our sessions around a presentation I made which included information about English Heritage, the Blue Plaques scheme, the Voices Project, and talking them through the research project – offering a very simple timeline of Atwell’s life, and some best practice tips for referencing and research.
I was absolutely nervous going into the schools to deliver the presentations – the last time I was at school was before the pandemic! Once we were in the classrooms and all set up I had no time to panic, and we were able to deliver the information and give students time for discussion during the set time which was great! The only thing I would change would be having the confidence to get more involved with the discussion afterwards, and getting into more conversations with the students, but now that I have the experience it’s great to know what I would do if I have the chance to deliver something like this again- although we did get into a little trouble by playing her iconic tune ‘The Poor People of Paris’ loud enough to disturb the class next-door!
I was glad Chania, National Youth Development Officer for English Heritage, was able to come along, it was great being able to share the great marker of progress the project had gotten to – the satisfaction of actually being able to follow through on an idea and see it come to life in schools with young Londoners was incredible!
There was a very tight turnaround on the student research, and they absolutely delivered! By the last week of September, we had some fantastic pieces of work, and our standout speakers chosen for the unveiling on the first of October.
Jools Holland unveiling the plaque!
Speakers with the plaque
Winifred’s Blue Plaque is installed at her home at 18 Bourdon Street in Mayfair. The Blue Plaques team brought together an incredible group of speakers, celebrated musicians YolanDa Brown OBE DL, Sir Richard Stilgoe (of CATS fame!), Orphy Robinson MBE, Lee John and Jools Holland OBE DL, who spoke about her impact on the world of music, and their personal connections with Atwell. We also had a representative from The Halo Collective, a group that campaigns for an end to discrimination against racialised hair, linking nicely to Atwell’s entrepreneurial project at her ground breaking hair salon in Brixton.
I felt so proud arriving at the unveiling and getting to talk to the students before they presented alongside music legends and actually teared up a bit listening to the passion that they had put into their work as they spoke about Winifred and her impact. They did a fantastic job in front of a large crowd, including the press! It was incredible getting to experience the full cycle of the project, from idea to interactive map, and I cannot say enough wonderful things about the work that Cathy Power (Blue Plaques Manager for EH), Chania Fox (National Youth Development Officer), Akhera and Chantal (The VoicesProject) put into this, and the support they gave me.
Being part of the Blue Plaques panel was a fantastic experience, but this project was truly the icing on the cake.
You can view the VoicesProject’s incredible Story Map below, and learn more about the BP unveiling as well as Winifred’s remarkable life. 👇