Bruce Gill, Assistant Director of Personnel and Equalities, Birmingham Education Department: "Don't underestimate what you can do. It is still difficult defining who you are, and what it means to be black in Britain today. I think that the most important definition is their own, they define it."


Photograph by Robert Taylor. Produced for the book 'Portraits of Black Achievement: composing successful careers' by Jacqui MacDonald.

Robert Taylor is a freelance photographer and artist. His parents came to England from Jamaica in the early 1950s. He was born in Sutton Coldfield in 1958 and spent his childhood there. He came to photography via the RAF, qualifying as a barrister, and five years in publishing. He has exhibited widely in the UK and abroad, illustrated several books, and has work in the collections of the National Portrait Gallery and the Victoria and Albert Museum.


The caption above is taken from Jacqui MacDonald’s book 'Portraits of Black Achievement: composing successful careers' (Lifetime Careers Ltd, 2001). The book includes extended interviews with 70 black achievers, whose fascinating stories paint a telling picture of what it means to be black in Britain today.

Copies of the book are available for purchase from Lifetime Careers Publishing or The Institute of Education, University of London bookshop (links below).