Distinguished friends
Khalid Abdalla
Maria Adebowale-Schwarte
Sukhpal Singh Ahluwalia
Rajesh Agrawal
Riz Ahmed
Sughra Ahmed
Keith Ajegbo
Claire Alexander
Kitty Arie
Julian Baggini
Zelda Baveystock
Haidee Bell
Richard Beswick
Dinesh Bhugra
Karan Bilimoria
Geoffrey Bindman
Karen Blackett
Nicholas Blake
Ian Blatchford
David Blunkett
Hina Bokhari
Mihir Bose
Alain de Botton
John Bowers
Stephen Briganti
Des Browne
Mukti Jain Campion
Paul Canoville
Gus Casely-Hayford
Michael Cashman
Saimo Chahal
Reeta Chakrabarti
Shami Chakrabarti
Stephen Claypole
Robin Cohen
Linda Colley
David Crystal
Angélica Dass
Prakash Daswani
Sandie Dawe
Navnit Dholakia
Sherry Dobbin
Ibrahim Dogus
Lloyd Dorfman
Alf Dubs
John Dyson
Damien Egan
Graeme Farrow
Daniel Franklin
Edie Friedman
Jitesh Gadhia
Manjit Singh Gill
Teresa Graham
Ann Grant
Susie Harries
Naomie Harris
James Hathaway
David Hencke
Sophie Herxheimer
Afua Hirsch
Michael Howard
Clive Jacobs
Kevin Jennings
Adrian Johns
Shobu Kapoor
Malik Karim
Jackie Kay
Ayub Khan-Din
Francesca Klug
Tony Kushner
Kwasi Kwarteng
Kwame Kwei-Armah
David Kynaston
Brian Lambkin
Mark Lewisohn
Joanna Lumley
Michael Mansfield
Sue McAlpine
Neil Mendoza
Nick Merriman
Munira Mirza
Abigail Morris
Hugh Muir
Tessa Murdoch
Sandy Nairne
Bushra Nasir
Susheila Nasta
Eithne Nightingale
John O’Farrell
Kenneth Olisa
Kunle Olulode
Julia Onslow-Cole
John Orna-Ornstein
Sameer Pabari
Ruth Padel
Panikos Panayi
Bhikhu Parekh
Nikesh Patel
David Pearl
Caryl Phillips
Mike Phillips
Trevor Phillips
Sunand Prasad
Kavita Puri
Charles Rix
Trevor Robinson
Aubrey Rose
Michael Rosen
Cathy Ross
Salman Rushdie
Jill Rutter
Philippe Sands
Sathnam Sanghera
Konrad Schiemann
Richard Scott
Stephen Sedley
Maggie Semple
Babita Sharma
Nikesh Shukla
Jon Snow
Sonia Solicari
Robert Soning
David Spence
Danny Sriskandarajah
Stelio Stefanou
Dick Taverne
Jane Thompson
Robert Tombs
Rumi Verjee
Patrick Vernon
Edmund de Waal
Iqbal Wahhab
Yasmin Waljee
David Warren
Iain Watson
Debbie Weekes-Bernard
Henning Wehn
Nat Wei
Janet Whitaker
Gary Younge
Economic hardship, the struggle for opportunity and the demand for equal rights have been central to the migration narrative. But this story is also bursting with creativity, joy, resilience and an unquenchable desire for individual and collective self-improvement.
An institution which aims to capture this experience should be celebrated as a national reference point. That’s what I hope the Migration Museum will be for people of all backgrounds.
Kunle Olulode
Kunle is a pro-immigration activist and Director of the umbrella charity Voice4Change England. Voice4Change is a BME charity and support body. Its members number over 460 black and minority community organisations and charities covering everything from education, social enterprise, criminal justice, race discrimination to migrant rights. Currently it is working with a host of leading campaigning and research organisation such as the Runnymede Trust, the Joseph Rowntree Community Trust and Migrant Rights Network, looking at the media framing of the discourse on diversity, race and inclusion within contemporary political debates.
He also has a long-standing interest in the arts and heritage sector, having worked in London and Barcelona for more than 20 years as the creative director of the Anglo-Catalan arts group Rebop Productions alongside Aurelio Munoz. Through their work they provided live performance space for a host of British and American music artists.
A keen film buff and historian, Kunle is a member of the BFI African Odyssey programming board and a trustee of the English Heritage Trust. In 2012 he curated ground-breaking work on the relationship between jazz and modernism in art presented and filmed as part of the Miró season at Yorkshire Sculpture Park.
In 2018 he was a co-curator of the Black & Banned season at London’s South Bank which considered the impact of censorship in black film, literature and music.