Tony Warner, Black History Walks

Tony Warner established Black History Walks in 2007. BHW explores the thousands of years of African/Caribbean history in London via 15 guided walks, bus tours, river cruises, talks, films and courses.

Black History Walks has featured on BBC, ITV, Arise TV, The Guardian, Huffington Post, Time Out and Channel 4. Tony has written and presented documentaries for Teachers TV; Conde Nast Traveller listed BHW in their Best 15 walks in London in 2018; and in 2011 the Guardian put them in their Top Ten walks.

Tony is an author on the ground-breaking ‘Pearson GCSE (9-1) Edexcel History Migrants in Britain Student Book’. This exam textbook, for the first time, introduces Black British Civil Rights at GCSE level. The book is part based on his Notting Hill Black History Walk. It sold out its first print run and is increasingly being used in schools across the country.

Tony is the co-founder and chair of the African Odysseys programme. This grassroots initiative has been screening African diaspora films plus Q&As, on a monthly basis at the British Film Institute’s Southbank cinema for 15 years. It is the only such programme in the country and has shown thousands of films to tens of thousands of people.

Tony has been exhibiting educational and empowering films about Black history in museums, art galleries, restaurants and youth clubs since 2000. He pioneered community partnerships with and lectured at the Imperial War Museum, National Portrait Gallery and Museum of London/Docklands – which all led to huge increases in Black audiences.

In 2020 he was part of Jacaranda Books unprecedented initiative to publish 20 Black British authors in one year, Twenty in 2020. ‘Black History Walks in London Volume 1’ was delayed by the pandemic and comes out this October.

In 2021, he was selected as the first ever Activist in Residence at University College London’s Sarah Parker Remond Centre for the Study of Racism and Racialisation. As such, he curated numerous events such as ‘Books, Violence and Resistance’, ‘Trailblazers of Black Theatre’, ‘The Superb Success of Saturday Schools’ and ‘African history at the Tower of London’ etc.

Since 2011 Tony has sponsored 10 Nubian Jak blue plaques in honour of Black historical figures such as Sarah Parker Remond, Phyllis Wheatley, Emma Clarke, Darcus Howe and Dr Harold Moody.