Ebinehita Iyere, founder of charitable youth organisation Milk Honey Bees

Milk Honey Bees celebrates and empowers Black girls and young women by providing a safe space for creative expression and healing. Here, the organisation’s 28-year-old founder Ebinehita Iyere discusses her personal journey, the impact of violence on women and the importance of putting ‘HER’ first

LUX: What’s your earliest memory of wanting to be involved in youth work?
Ebinehita Iyere: Youth work has always been a significant part of my life. My earliest memory of wanting to be involved was at the latchkey after school club I attended in primary school, supported by some amazing youth workers. I naturally started applying those skills to other young people around me.

Follow LUX on Instagram: luxthemagazine

As I got older I really realised the impact that those youth workers had on me. When I left home aged 15, I became a youth worker without even knowing it, providing peer support to other young people like me. I was living in a hostel, so I created a youth work space in my small hostel room and everyone would come to my place. The community always had an impact on me and how I viewed society because people didn’t understand us, but the community did, the youth workers in the community understood us.

LUX: What inspired you to set up Milk Honey Bees?
Ebinehita Iyere: The work I was doing centred around young men. I was raised to believe that most issues in the community predominantly affect young Black men. That’s all I knew. Then, after a very tragic event affected me deeply, I realised that there weren’t any spaces for girls and young women to process the things they had experienced. I thought, when an incident happens in the community, where do the girls go?

Milk Honey Bees started with me, working on myself. My traumas had forced me to grow up far too quickly. So, there was a long process I had to go through to heal my own inner child, and through that important work I saw what I could do with other Black girls.

I had always used reading as an escape and when I read Milk & Honey by Rupi Kaur it was the first book that I felt in a long time really connected with me, so I shared it with a few girls, and essentially, with and for them Milk Honey Bees was created. ​​​​​​​

No one had ever asked these girls what they needed. My whole view on the needs of girls changed. Through creativity and putting ‘HER’ (Healing, Empowerment, Resilience) first, we were able to create a safe space for girls, where they could finally put themselves first, celebrate themselves and be visible.

LUX: How has the organisation evolved since its inception?
Ebinehita Iyere: The organisation has evolved in many ways and continues to do so. Milk Honey Bees began as a project that sat under my full-time job at Juvenis, where I work as a Therapeutic Diversion Practitioner. Through Juvenis we quickly found that the intersection of race and gender is incredibly important, and as a result Milk Honey Bees has evolved into something far bigger than we ever thought it would be – a space for Black and Mixed Girls to be themselves – which means we’ve been able to reach and support more girls than I could have imagined.

We’ve been able to take our time to develop our presence: who we are, what we want to achieve. Black girls are forever evolving so as an organisation we must grow with and for them. We have built and sustained more relationships with the community, schools, parents, and professionals. Some of the girls came to me at 17 now they’re in their early twenties – we’ve all been growing and evolving together.

Read more: The artistic legacy of Valmont’s Didier Guillon

Before the pandemic, we were doing creative projects and most of our work was done face-to-face. So, we set up online spaces where the girls could just chill and be still, feel empowered and vent about things. We also used creativity to stay connected which has led to us being able to reach and impact many more young lives.

Through the pandemic we actually evolved to become more sustainable and more visible, and are emerging with enormous energy and exciting plans for the future, both on and offline which led to being supported by the likes of major brands like Barbie, Sony Music, PR agency DH-PR and Adwoa Aboah’s media platform the ‘Gurls Talk’ podcast.

Milk Honey Bees’ partnership with Barbie aims to instil Black girls with the belief that they can do anything

LUX: Can you tell us more about the concept of H.E.R and how it works in practice?
Ebinehita Iyere: The concept is about putting ‘H.E.R’ first because Black and mixed race girls typically have to wear an armour. They have to mobilise in their families and communities and tend to be denied the time and space for healing themselves.

H.E.R stands for Healing, Empowerment and Resilience. It works in practice through helping the girls learn how to navigate themselves, and in turn, how they can navigate within the sisterhood and the wider world. Essentially, it teaches them to understand whilst being understood.

Healing comes first, and we use creative expression to do much of this work because people need to feel safe and comfortable to express how they feel. We use tools like play, art and healing circles, which allow the girls to be vulnerable in a supportive expressive environment.

Empowerment is about the reclaiming of power. So, taking back the power they felt they’d lost through their negative experiences. We do this by doing things the girls were told they couldn’t do. Black girls are often told they can’t or shouldn’t do certain things, but we empower them to do whatever they want, through raising aspirations through giving them amazing opportunities, such as new educational opportunities, writing for magazines like Grazia, and working with exciting brands like Barbie and Sony Music. It’s important to show the world the power the girls have, so they in turn feel self-empowered.

Resilience is about building on what the girls already naturally possess – and they possess a lot of it – especially with this generation dealing with the pandemic and social media pressures for example. Milk Honey Bees shine a light on various forms of resilience and support our girls to build it within and beyond the community. We also focus heavily on the fact that it’s OK not to be OK, and even just articulating this is a form of resilience. We show ourselves that we don’t always have to be strong or present a certain way. You have put HER first!

LUX: Why is it so important to enable and support creative expression amongst young Black women?
Ebinehita Iyere: As I mentioned before, creative expression is really important for healing. You can feel a sense of both strength and vulnerability through creativity in all its forms. It comes from within – plus, creative potential is limitless.

It’s particularly important for Black girls, who have long been the pioneers of creativity – yet are rarely credited for it. We support them to take ownership of it. Creative expression also determines how your internal feelings are shown and embraced by the world. For Black girls and young women, it’s so important, so that the world doesn’t continue to only see one side of them. Our one-to-one and group sessions often lead into social action projects. Their creativity fuels their voice and visibility.

LUX: Are the girls you work with referred or do they tend to reach out directly?
Ebinehita Iyere: Both! We have a referral system in place through Juvenis, which is our parent charity. We also get referrals from social care, education, mental health partners and sometimes local institutions like the police.

We are really strong on encouraging and facilitating peer-to-peer support, which means that girls can reach out to us directly – they often refer their friends or refer themselves. We even have boys referring girls to Milk Honey Bees! Young men who see the work we do sometimes refer their sisters or girlfriends to us, which is great. We also get a lot of parents coming to us.

LUX: How do you ensure you’re meeting the needs of the individual within the collective?
Ebinehita Iyere: Before anyone is put in a group, our work always begins with a one-to-one session. I always start by asking the girls how they are, who they want to be and what they need, and we co-design an individual support plan.

The next step is the group process. We spend time getting to know each other and ourselves as individuals. Within the group, everyone has a role, or ownership/leadership of something. Everyone is individually celebrated, even within a group.

We create a space free of judgement and rooted in the celebration of Black girlhood. We work to the ethos of: “I am my sister’s keeper, while I’m keeping myself.”

Milk Honey Bees organises creative workshops and projects based on what the girls want to do, see and learn

LUX: You’ve said before that “people need to start seeing Black girls and stop putting them in the same category as women”. Can you explain what you mean by that?
Ebinehita Iyere: A lot of the time Black girls are judged as adults when they are still children. One of the key barriers to the intersecting needs of Black girls and young women being centred by services is the manifestation of adultification bias, where notions of innocence and vulnerability are not afforded to certain children due to racial prejudgement. They are held to greater levels of responsibility due to being treated as though they are more mature, with their rights often being diminished or overlooked.

For example, research has found that adultification contributed to the perceptions amongst those in authoritative positions view Black girls and young women are less innocent, which influences a greater use of force, harsher punishments, and decreased protection and support from services in comparison to white girls. This can have further damaging impacts on how they view themselves, their mental health, as well as negative experiences and interactions with various professionals across so many systems, including education, justice, health, and social care.

If society views Black girls as Black women they are essentially taking away their childhood. There’s an erasure of innocence because of this assumption. We need to allow Black girls to thrive and fail in their girlhood, in order to become the best women they can be.

It’s easy for others to try and write you off and label you as an “angry Black woman” without even knowing who you really are or based on your expressions. I know this stigma first-hand from teachers, to social workers and even previous managers. It affected me deeply. I don’t want any more girls to have to go through that as girls or women.

LUX: As a young founder, what challenges did you face in setting up the organisation and how did you overcome them?
Ebinehita Iyere: Initially, my biggest challenge was me and not being able to process myself. I realised very early on that I had to work on myself first before I could really help anyone else. So, I learned to look after myself while trying to look after others. Now I allow myself to process my feelings and sit with my emotions. They are valid.

You’re allowed to cry, rest, be happy, feel confused – you’re allowed to ask for help. There is amazing strength and power in helping others, but you have to love and take care of yourself first before you can do that for anyone else. I’ve learned how to embrace my vulnerability and turn it into great strength, by speaking up for myself when it matters and allowing myself to be vulnerable with others, knowing it’s more than OK.

Your experiences do not define you; they will only allow you to learn, grow and become the best version of yourself for you. My experiences have not allowed me to grow personally and professionally.

Read more: Juanita Ingram on empowering women in the workplace

Outside of my personal life, my transition to a founder was as a result of most of my work being with boys in the community, but I started to realise that there was a real lack of understanding when it came to creating safe spaces for Black girls to express themselves in the community after incidents happened, or even spaces that celebrated Black girl joy. Creating safe spaces for girls is something I assumed people would understand, but they didn’t. People couldn’t understand what I was doing.

Being supported by my passion, family and a core group of people in the youth sector who understood my vision (Jenni Steele, Winston Goode and Whitney Iles), and receiving funding and recognition through awards and press also helped my journey to ensure that no matter the challenge I could overcome it.

LUX: How do you think education systems can better support young people? Are there any skills, for example, which you think schools should be teaching?
Ebinehita Iyere: I think education systems can provide better support by allowing young people to be creative. Life, career, and success – none of these are linear. Thinking creatively helps young people navigate these things.

I also think schools should be teaching more life skills – processing emotions, managing money, and mindfulness for example – to prepare young people for the highs and lows of the working world.
Schools should have a four-day teaching week with one day set aside for play, mental health, life skills, pastoral care etc – for both staff and students – plus engaging with families. Showing that it’s OK for them to express themselves because without expression you can’t function. We saw it in the pandemic – imagine if adults had had the personal tools to have been able to support kids more during the pandemic?

LUX: What impact does the exclusion of women from conversations around violence have on individuals and communities?
Ebinehita Iyere: For every experience of violence whether it’s structural violence, domestic violence or youth violence, there’s always a woman on the end of it – whether that’s on the side of the perpetrator or victim. Violence is not just the act itself. It’s the aftermath. Instead of grieving and healing, girls have to wear this armour and protect boys and men. In other words, girls are spending more time mobilising for others than healing themselves.

Excluding women from these conversations leads to overwhelming feelings of invisibility, not feeling like our voices are heard, and erasure from our experiences. We are more than just a hashtag, we should not only be visible when being mourned but also while living. We should not be excluded from conversations about our safety in fact we should be safe.

Even when we are included in these conversations we aren’t leading them. The impact is really bad. Giving the women of tomorrow the skills, language and tools to be able to have these conversations in their spaces and beyond is essential in my opinion.

Iyere at the Veuve Clicquot Bold Woman of the Year Awards 2021 in London. Photo by David M. Benett/Getty Images for Veuve Clicquot

LUX: What upcoming projects are you looking forward to?
Ebinehita Iyere: We have so much coming up for us and essentially everything is led and developed by the girls. We are developing a new schools based project for teen girls and have just launched our project with Barbie for 5-10 year olds.

We are super excited for the launch of Creative Connection, our a brand-new project in partnership with Sony Music UK. I’m really looking forward to this because it’s an incredible chance for young women to navigate the industry they want to be in – and an amazing chance for the inspirational businesses and creatives they engage with to learn from the girls.

Creative Connection is a 8-week mentoring project purposed with empowering Black/Mixed Black young women, who have an interest in getting into the music and wider creative industry, through a series of introductory workshops and sessions. In collaboration with Sony Music UK, Milk Honey Bees have curated a unique curriculum supporting a selected group of 10 Black/Mixed Black female creatives aged 18-23, by offering them creative mentoring and work placements. Being able to fuse creativity, work and wellbeing together to all work hand in hand is really exciting, and the ten young women who are selected will be the first of their kind.

LUX: And finally, you were recently nominated for the Veuve Clicquot Bold Future award. What does that mean to you personally and to your organisation?
Ebinehita Iyere: It was so amazing to be recognised by Veuve Clicquot, mainly because it’s so rare to see that kind of visibility for people like me. Even though I didn’t win the actual award, I am still a winner!

My name, Ebinehita, means ‘my destiny’. My journey fluctuated from not feeling like I had a destiny to fulfilling my density. I’ve worked so hard to create one for myself through hard work and self love, so to be recognised by such a prestigious brand made me so proud. For every woman who fought to get where you are: continue to be bold because you are the future.

Find out more: milkhoneybees.co.uk
Follow Ebineita Iyere on Instagram: @ebinehitaiyere_

‘Twenty Seventeen’ (2017), by Luc Tuymans, Pinault Collection

Favouring themes of conflict, violence and death, renowned Belgian painter Luc Tuymans fulfils the brief of brooding artist, yet his work is deeply layered and complex. With two major retrospectives on his work being held in Europe this year, Millie Walton meets the man behind the canvas

The artist in his Antwerp studio

Through a garage door and down a wide passageway: a man’s bleached face stares blankly ahead with large, piercing eyes. To the right, there are two more enormous pale faces. “These are dead people,” Luc Tuymans says of the series of three portraits hanging in his studio in Antwerp. They will soon be shipped off to form part of his upcoming show at De Pont Museum of Contemporary Art in the Netherlands, one of two major retrospectives this year. We sit on two sagging armchairs; there’s a small table between us with a cup of cold black coffee and in front of us, another much smaller painting of a ghostly, hooded figure tacked onto the wall with masking tape. It’s a present for the director of De Pont, Tuymans tells me, lighting up the first of many cigarettes. Apart from the paintings and a table stacked with paper and dried-up paint mounds, the studio is stark, almost blindingly white in the sunshine. A former laundrette, Tuymans bought it over ten years ago, having previously worked in a much smaller apartment, which looked “more like Francis Bacon’s studio”. This place, he says, is, “antiseptic, but it works well”.

Follow LUX on Instagram: luxthemagazine

The Belgian artist famously completes most of his works in one day, giving the impression of a feverish outpouring of creativity, but really the works have been brewing for some time, often for months, before Tuymans applies paint to canvas. For him, the process begins with a careful curation of pre-existing imagery, drawings, Polaroids and photos he takes on his iPhone, or things he encounters online. He selects his source material according to its relevance and paintability, by which he means, “what kind of kick I can get out of it”. Considering that much of his subject matter is violent, morbid or at the very least, deeply cynical, we might consider these ‘kicks’ to be somewhat sadistic.

‘Disenchantment’ (1990), by Luc Tuymans, private collection

Right from the start of his 40-year career, Tuymans has been depicted by the media as the brooding artist, in part due to his intimidatingly large physical presence and flickering eyes, but also because of his ongoing fascination with the darker corners of European history and reluctant approach to beauty. Speaking of his current retrospective exhibition at the Palazzo Grassi in Venice, he laughs growlingly at the idea that people might consider his paintings beautiful. In the press video for the show, he is depicted as a stereotypical villain lurking in dark alleyways and brandishing his paintbrushes as weapons. It says a lot that Tuymans himself made the short film.

‘Die Zeit (pt 4/4)’ (1988), by Luc Tuymans, private collection

And yet, something in Tuymans tells you not to trust appearances. Just as his paintings may appear prosaic in their imagery, their significance is deeply layered. To view his work is to enter into a game in which you neither know the rules nor the aim. “You could actually see my work as the deep web, or the precursor of it,” says Tuymans with a slight smile, making it hard to gauge how seriously to take such statements. Nevertheless, his practice is certainly preoccupied with peripheries, hidden objects and meanings, things the ordinary eye would ignore or miss. There is a tension in his paintings between uncovering and disguising, remembering and disremembering. As with the series of cadaver portraits, his subjects often seem to be disappearing, fading from memory and simultaneously, clinging desperately to life.

Read more: The new age of Chinese ink art

‘Allo! I’ (2012), by Luc Tuymans, private collection

“From very early on, my work was born out of an insane and very profound distrust of imagery,” he says, which is now especially relevant in the age of the digital image and mass reproduction – where the lines between originality and forgery are increasingly blurred. This distrust, in fact, was the reason Tuymans started painting as a teenager in the late 1970s, seeking a deliberate ‘regression’ by creating a work that had the appearance of another era and thus, developing a practice of so-called ‘authentic forgery’. However, this seems somewhat reductive to Tuymans’ intentionality, which is one of total disillusionment. Take, for example, the mosaic of pine trees that covers the floor in the entrance hall of Palazzo Grassi. Visitors might be forgiven for assuming it to be part of the Palazzo’s grand decoration rather than an act of wilful deception by Belgium’s most famous contemporary painter, who worked with an Italian firm to perfectly match the green marble to the existing floor colouring. Then there’s the fact that the mosaic is based on Tuymans’ iconic 1986 painting Schwarzheide, named after a Nazi labour camp where many inmates were worked to death. This seemingly picturesque cluster of pine trees represents the evergreens planted along the border of the camp to hide it from public view.

‘Technicolor’ (2012), by Luc Tuymans, private collection

‘München’ (2012), by Luc Tuymans, Pinault Collection

Encountering works such as these for the first time, how can we know or begin to understand their embedded contexts? “I am a big believer in not overestimating or underestimating the public,” says Tuymans. “I don’t believe in wall texts. You’re given a reader, which you can choose to look at whenever you like, but there is a point I’m trying to make in the experience through which you have a feeling of not just oblivion, but utter ignorance.” This comes from the fact that the exhibition at Palazzo Grassi, titled La Pelle after Curzio Malaparte’s book of the same name, is a retrospective show in one of the world’s most visited cities, so the audience being addressed is the wider public rather than art experts. Tuymans notes that many viewers may be drawn not by the art, but by a “certain kind of voyeurism to get into spaces such as the Palazzo”. He relishes the idea that the exhibition may disrupt their expectations, functioning as “a strong confrontation with the space”.

Read more: Photographer Viviane Sassen’s ‘Venus and Mercury’ at Frieze London

Installation from ‘La Pelle’, ‘Turtle’ (2007), by Luc Tuymans, private collection

Does he think of himself as a political painter, then? “No artist can be political because you can’t load up an artwork from the start, if you do, you’re just making propaganda,” says Tuymans. “But that doesn’t mean the work cannot have a political stance at a certain given moment.” Whether his paintings work or not, in his opinion, has a lot to do with the images that surround him. “I need an extreme tension when I paint,” he claims, also referring to the anxiety that he feels each time he approaches the blank canvas. There are conditions for his creative process: Thursdays and Fridays only (“because it’s the end of the week”), a clear head (“no drinking the night before”) and a sense of risk. “I think that fear of failure is very necessary,” he says. “Otherwise I may as well do a 9-to-5 job.” Of course, failure is a less painful prospect when you’re one of the world’s most respected painters. Now, Tuymans has the luxury of “throwing away” a painting when it’s not working, and by that he means literally into the bin. Antwerp residents, take note.

‘Ballone’ (2017), by Luc Tuymans, private collection.

“Whenever I’m asked the question: why do you still paint?,” muses Tuymans, “the answer is always: because I’m not f*cking naive. Painting is a medium that works within its own proposition with time and it’s always had this inheritance of being an anachronism within that time, which has an appalling impact on your brain.” The impact he speaks of relates again to the multilayered aspect of his work, to the way in which he both draws from and mimics the past, while simultaneously and inevitably applying his contemporary, subjective perspective. It is this perspective, combined with the cultural context in which the work is viewed, that creates its relevance. So the significance of Tuymans’ paintings – as perhaps with all artworks – is continuously reforming. “I’m currently working on a two-year project with three scientists,” he says. “We’re going to put [my] work into algorithms. Not to make a painting with a computer, because that’s stupid, but to see what the signifiers mean in terms of language. Language is something that is always changing and the aim is to compare that to the anachronism of painting and to see what the outcome would be.” Admirers of his work will anticipate this next incarnation with interest.

This article was originally published in the Autumn 19 Issue.

Last year, 13-year-old Dagmar Rothschild travelled to Bangladesh to visit the Rohingya refugee camps with the non-profit organisation BRAC. Here the young writer reflects on her journey and the impacts of discrimination

All photography by Dagmar Rothschild

I walk along the narrow dirt paths with sewage flowing through the gutters, the sound of screaming children fills the air. The roads are lined with huts held up by thin pieces of bamboo. I turn around looking at the thousands of tents that seem to go on forever as no matter how far I look it seems as if the people and the tents don’t stop. Standing in the centre of one of the largest refugee camps in the world which holds nearly a million Rohingya refugees, I feel as if I have been transported into another world.

Follow LUX on Instagram: the.official.lux.magazine

A large number of Rohingya refugees fled from Myanmar to Bangladesh in August 2017 because they claim that the Burmese government was persecuting them for their religious (Muslim) beliefs. They say that fleeing the country was the only option since their jobs were being taken away, their houses were being burned down and the military had been using violence against them. The refugees reported shootings, beatings and rapes.

As I travelled through the camps, I began to realise that although nobody could ever call a place like this home, at least it provided the refugees with a feeling of safety, which is something that many of them have rarely experienced. Although the Rohingya have no form of citizenship (the Myanmar government did not issue them passports), they do have shelter, healthcare, food, water, and primary education. Yet, I still sensed a profound feeling of loss. Not only had they lost everything they had treasured most in the past, but they also had lost all hope for the future. What I wanted to find out is: how you could provide such a significant number of people with the essentials to live in such a short amount of time and what the future might look like for the Rohingya people.

I was a guest of BRAC (formerly known as Bangladesh Rehabilitation Assistance Committee), an NGO that has long been effectively active in Bangladesh working in the areas of healthcare, education, and micro-finance. BRAC was one of the first NGOs on the scene in Cox’s Bazar when the Rohingya started coming over and they are able to work quickly and efficiently because they know the country and the people. There were people from all walks of life in the refugee camp showing how the Burmese government was discriminating against a religion, not a class. The Bangladeshi government does not allow the refugees to go outside of the camp, so their opportunities for work are minimal. The adults are permitted to open a food stall or do small jobs around the community. People want to work, they want to support their family and not sit around all day because they have nothing to do. Throughout the camps many people are being trained on how to prevent disease spreading by washing their hands regularly in clean water and cooking food in a sanitary way.

I spent four days touring around the refugee camps, but I didn’t come close to seeing all of it. One of the things I was interested in is talking to young children. Children in the camps are encouraged to spend their days in a child-friendly space where they have access to a safe child-friendly environment and can get a standard education and interact with children their age. However, as I talked to these kids with a translator, I could tell that they were still afraid. They didn’t know whom to trust and when they would be able to sense the feeling of safety again. Although some children do spend their time in the child-friendly spaces, many other children spend their days either sitting in their tents or wandering the streets desperately looking for something to do, someone to talk to. Many children, girls in particular, are too scared even to leave their tents because they fear that they will be kidnapped and will have to relive their horrifying memories.

Read more: Model and stylist Mouchette Bell on Buddhism and Anna Wintour

I left these camps with questions and thoughts whirring around my brain. I’ve grown up in a world where I don’t have to worry about having to flee my country or having access to clean water. For me, these essentials to life were just handed to me, and I tend not to even think about it. From a young age, my parents always tried to teach me how lucky I was because there were people all around the world who were struggling, and it didn’t have anything to do with what they had done. I guess a lot of it is due to luck. I definitely would not be sitting here right now in my air-conditioned house typing on a laptop. Instead, I would be crunched up in the corner of a tent with 20 other people  wondering why I was there, what I had done. The Rohingya refugees did nothing wrong; they were persecuted and discriminated because of their beliefs. How could anyone let this happen?

We hear about acts of violence and discrimination every day. A lot of us think that something needs to change, but still most of us carry on with our everyday lives. That’s where the problem is, nothing is going to change if we don’t change it.

Find out how you can help: response.brac.net