Ansel Keith David Wong was born on 4 October 1945 and is a Trinidadian-British cultural and political activist, who has been influential in many organisations particularly in the black community in the United Kingdom, where he has been based since the 1960s.
15 Facts About Ansel Wong
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Ansel Wong is the former Chair of the Notting Hill Carnival Board and founder of Elimu Mas Band.
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Ansel Wong is an educationist and academic, and in a wide-ranging career has worked at senior levels in various organisations in the public and charitable sectors, including with the Windrush Foundation established in 1996 by Arthur Torrington.
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Ansel Wong was born in 1945 in San Fernando, Trinidad and Tobago, where he went to San Fernando Boy's Government School and Naparima College.
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Ansel Wong moved to the UK in 1965 to read English and American Studies at Hull University, leaving in 1968.
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Ansel Wong went on to do a postgraduate certificate in education, attending the Institute of Education at the University of London, and Brunel University, and later working as a teacher, as well as becoming involved in various black British arts and radical political organisations and campaigns, among which was the Black Liberation Front, founded in 1971, whose newspaper Grassroots he edited under the pseudonym "Ade Kimathi".
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Ansel Wong ran an arts organisation, as he described in his own words:.
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From 1974 to 1976, Ansel Wong was the founding Education Co-ordinator of the Ahfiwe School, the first black supplementary school that was funded by the Inner London Education Authority.
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Ansel Wong was instrumental in supporting the setting up in 1987 of the UK's Black History Month, conceived by Akyaaba Addai-Sebo, with whom Wong co-edited the 1988 book Our Story: A Handbook of African History and Contemporary Issues.
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In subsequent years Ansel Wong was Education Officer at the London Borough of Ealing, and has held such public appointments including being the Chair of North West London Workforce Development Confederation, Chair of London Health Commission and Non-Executive Director of North West London NHS Mental Health Trust.
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Ansel Wong has been active with the Notting Hill Carnival Trust, Caribbean Development Trust, and has contributed to the Advisory Panel on Cultural Diversity of English National Opera.
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Ansel Wong has worked in various capacities for intercultural understanding, especially promoting street art through Mas and Carnival Arts.
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Ansel Wong's papers were donated to Black Cultural Archives in December 2008.
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In September 2018, to mark Time Out magazine's 50th anniversary Ansel Wong was one of 50 people featured as helping to shape London's cultural landscape.
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Ansel Wong was appointed Commander of the Order of the British Empire in the 2020 Birthday Honours for services to arts and culture.