5 top tips for planning a remote Black History Month celebration

Black History Month (BHM) is fast approaching and with most of us working remotely (thanks COVID!) you may be wondering how you can celebrate within your business. 

BHM is all about recognising the contributions of black people as well as driving connection and better understanding - in 2020 it feels more necessary than ever. 

The prospect of doing it all remotely may have you feeling like postponing or scaling down your plans but there’s no need because with a few adjustments you can still have a successful and meaningful Black History Month celebration - whatever your budget.

1. Find your advocates

You may have an employee network in place, if so work with them to develop a program or sense check your ideas. If you don’t have this in place use your company intranet or enterprise social networking to find people who are passionate about BHM and want to be part of making it happen. 

Ultimately, BHM should work for your people so get together and find out what’s most important to them. Our aims are to celebrate our culture and achievements, educate colleagues and to help normalise talking about race in the workplace.

2. Thought-provoking conversations

Many people may be thinking about external speakers although at this point in time many will already be booked and blessed! 💁🏾‍♀️

If you have the budget then go for it but you also have people in your organisation who can be just as impactful, if not more so. 

If your advocates or network members are comfortable sharing their experiences,then facilitated conversations that can be pre-recorded or hosted with an audience over a video call can be very powerful. Lived experiences and storytelling can really bring it to life for people whose only interaction with black people is “Keisha in accounts”.

Facilitate these conversations by setting the ground rules - no challenging a person’s experience or being overly-defensive. The benefit of using video conferencing is that you can use the chat function to prompt dialogue or allow direct questions to the facilitator which can be beneficial to introverts.

3. Connecting through music and food

Music and food go hand in hand and are embedded in black culture.

Unfortunately we can’t do catering but instead we’re hosting a virtual cookout - we’ve asked members of our Black Diversity Network to share some of their favourite recipes over Slack. Employees will then try to recreate the dish at home and post a picture of the finished product.  

We have selected a panel of judges to choose a winner as well as special mentions for those with the most likes/comments.

We can learn so much about people through music and so we have curated Spotify playlists with themes such as “what mum and dad listened to”, “house party” and “sounds of South Africa”. With each playlist we’ve asked members of the network to share what their song means to them. And to involve the whole company we’ve got a number of BHM request shows throughout the month that will air on our internal radio station. 

4. Get social

In the physical office space we’d be using visual cues such as screens, posters or decorations but while working remotely the intranet and any social enterprise site is your best tool for keeping the drumbeat going throughout BHM. You can post facts, articles or spotlight black pioneers in your industry. Custom Zoom backgrounds are a great way of signposting in meetings. If you use blogs, why not ask people to blog about their experiences or what BHM means to them.

While you might usually put on a lunch session or after hours gathering, it’s fairly straightforward to turn these into remote events. Try hosting a movie night or holding a book club and if you’re not all quizzed out, a virtual black history Pub Quiz with a prize can be a fun way to connect with colleagues.

5. Support and elevate your Black employees

Last and by no means least is to find ways to make BHM meaningful for your Black employees - shine a light on their achievements; set up mentoring opportunities or create safe spaces for conversation. 

 How are you celebrating BHM in your organisation? Share your plans in the comments.