Honouring Our Communities — A Reflection Through Journeying

Black History Month UK 2026 centres on “Honouring Our Communities” — a theme that celebrates the everyday people whose quiet contributions have shaped Black British life for generations. It recognises the elders, neighbours, market traders, faith leaders, parents, and grandparents whose care, culture, and presence have built the foundations of our communities, often without recognition or applause.

This year’s theme invites us to look beyond famous names and historical milestones, and instead honour the individuals who held families together, sustained traditions, and created spaces of belonging. It is a celebration of the people who made home feel like home.

Journeying is a perfect embodiment of this theme.

The story follows a granddaughter’s childhood trips with her grandmother, Miss Claris — journeys that reveal how community is built not only through grand events, but through everyday rituals of care, culture, and connection. Through lyrical memory and vivid sensory detail, Journeying honours the quiet heroism of a Caribbean grandmother living in Britain, and the community she helped sustain.

Miss Claris represents the heart of Black British community-building. Her kitchen becomes a cultural archive: lemon and lime cleansing chicken, thyme and scallion perfuming the air, rice simmering with butter. These rituals are more than cooking — they are acts of preservation, passing down knowledge, identity, and love. Her humming, her precision, her warmth form the emotional architecture of the narrator’s world.

Their weekly trip on the X6 bus becomes a journey through the living landscape of Black British community. The market is a vibrant ecosystem of connection: the veg man, the spice man, Sister Brown, Sister Pat, Brother Brown — each one a thread in the tapestry of shared culture. Miss Claris’s sharp humour, familiar greetings, and confident presence show how elders anchor communal spaces, creating networks of support long before institutions recognised them.

The narrator, pockets full of Haribo and liquorice, learns belonging through observation — through the rhythm of dialect, the colours of the stalls, the warmth of familiar faces. These journeys teach her that community is not abstract; it is lived, felt, and carried in memory.

In the final section, the story shifts to reflection. The granddaughter imagines her grandmother’s final journey “home‑home,” wondering whether it resembled the X6 — fast, familiar, filled with people who cared. This moment transforms personal grief into communal honour: Miss Claris’s life becomes a symbol of the countless Black women whose everyday labour shaped families, neighbourhoods, and cultural identity.

Journeying aligns with Black History Month’s theme by showing that community is built through:

It honours the people whose contributions are rarely documented but deeply felt — the Miss Clarises of the world, whose love and presence shaped generations.

This Black History Month, Journeying stands as a tribute to them: a reminder that the most powerful histories are often carried in the smallest journeys, and that community is made, preserved, and remembered through the everyday acts of those who came before us.

You can purchase Journeying below.