The Dream

The Dream grew from SPID’s youth project to develop heritage and drama skills and advocate social change. Young people researched the unwarranted police raids on Notting Hill’s Mangrove Restaurant, and the innocent verdict won by those arrested for protesting racial hatred. It was commissioned by Dr Camilla Schofield, senior lecturer in modern history at University of East Anglia, and delivered in collaboration with Decolonise the Archives.

The story follows Delvin, a black British teenager as he discovers the wrath of police brutality at the same time as the rise of the Black Power Movement in London in the late 1960s and early 1970s. Delvin’s Trinidadian parents travelled to the UK for a better life, as part of the Windrush generation, settling in West London, where they encounter systemic racism on a daily basis. The Mangrove Restaurant, opened by Frank Crichlow in 1969, is the favoured hang out spot for Delvin and other black teenagers in West London, however with police continually raiding the Mangrove restaurant, harassing staff and patrons, friction between the local Black community and the police is heightened.

Nnenna Samson Abosi, winner of a Goldsmith’s University Playwrighting prize, wrote the play for the young people from the SPID ON THE WEB: Estate Endz project. It is directed by Nnenna Samson Abosi and co-directed by Connie Bell.

The Dream will be airing at the Brighton Fringe festival !

Read the accompanying study notes from the National Archives here

Watch the panel discussion with Decolonise the Archives here

Read the 4 star press from Everything Theatre and A Younger Theatre