Black Women in Europe Blog™ 10 Year Anniversary

Wow, I can’t believe we have our 10 year anniversary in 2016. Sounds cliche but I remember launching the blog as if it were yesterday. But 1,827 posts, 15 awards, and 3 international speaking engagements later it truly does add up to 10 years of passion.

Logo created by Andy Collins

We have grown from blog to social network, to private groups, with Twitter list and You Tube channel, and as we’ve branched out to more platforms we continue to grow and learn new things always keeping in mind that the Black Women in Europe Blog was created to celebrate the lives of the ordinary and extraordinary black women living in Europe.

We will celebrate all year with special contributions from sisters across Europe and a brother that supports us.

Black Women in Europe Blog™ 10th Anniversary notes:

One such brother is Andy Collins who created the Black Women in Europe™ Blog logo several years ago and graciously created our anniversary logos. I first met Andy when he called me to ask what I thought about a website he was launching: an urban website in Sweden. I was on Sweden’s west coast, he was on the east, easterly at least up in past Stockholm. We talked, we clicked, I encouraged, he laughed, I laughed, we talked some more and I remember thinking, wow: aren’t British dudes cool? But when I hung up the phone I marveled, with a grateful heart, at the power of the Black Women in Europe™ blog to make connections. It was my vision come true. I not only wanted to “meet” black women in Europe who were doing amazing things, I wanted to meet other people in my community doing amazing things. And that’s what Andy is doing: amazing things! And he’s incredibly talented in graphic design and he’s a visionary too. He’s putting Soul Music on the map in Scandinavia. Or rather Scandinavian Soul Music on the world map.

Thanks for being a brother who supports black women in Europe, Andy! We love you back.

Here’s more about Andy:

BWIE 10 year anniversary — **Logo by Andy Collins**

I moved from London to Sweden in September 2005 with my native girlfriend hoping to lay some foundations for my children, to realise some hopes and dreams for a better life for ourselves too. After the initial disorientation that comes with emigrating I found myself a student again but this time learning about life. Not ordinary life but ‘urban life’, right in here in Sweden. I had to learn how to speak Swedish, read Swedish, shop in Swedish and convince other people that I could be ‘Swedish?’ (Being of Afro- Caribbean descent, that was no mean feat!).

It wasn’t long before I had yearnings for my previous life. There were things I missed from home, my heritage and I began to question ‘would I ever fit in here?’ I feared not least for myself but for children and the same unanswered questions they would face whilst growing up here. It was then that the concept and website ‘urbanlife.se – a website for the afro-swedish community’ was born. I turned to the best blog/website I could find for inspiration, which was Adrianne George’s Black Women In Europe (BWIE). It was literally the only website discussing and highlighting life for black people in Sweden!

Thanks to her advice and guidance the platform was born and I happily worked on creative projects with her. Times have changed for me since then. I now promote soul music in Scandinavia, www.scandinaviansoul.com, which also highlights the multi-cultural background that represent modern Scandinavia.

Meanwhile BWIE is still going strong and I’m simply delighted to help celebrate such a wonderful, positive blog driven by such a delightful and hard working woman.