“When our mothers first arrived in the East End the world was a very different place and London was a very different city.”

From Enoch Powell’s Rivers of Blood to Keir Starmer’s Island of Strangers, “She Was There” is a playful exploration of the lives and hidden histories of women who resisted racism in 1970s and 80s London. This one-woman performance by Tasnim Siddiqa Amin of Queen of Arts Theatre Company is informed by in-depth research by Dr Julia Giese.

The performance will be part of an Adda, an informal space for conversation and reflection, with food and hot drinks provided.

The event is part of the Being Human Festival and is presented by the University of Derby in collaboration with Surtal Arts.

Attendance is free, but spaces are limited, so advance booking is strongly recommended.

Tickets are available from Derby Theatre. BOOK TICKET

Queen of Arts was founded by Tasnim Siddiqa Amin in 2016. Based in East London, the company tells radical stories, past and present, that cross time and place. With a focus on artist wellbeing, interdisciplinary storytelling, and intersectional feminism, Queen of Arts creates work that challenges, disrupts, and reimagines. Recent productions include The Pigs are Coming (2025) her first one-woman-show on protest, policing, and resistance, The Final Trumpet (2024), exploring a mother and daughter’s journey through a Bangladesh flood, and Knotted (2023), a play about two Muslim schoolgirls navigating tensions of friendship and romantic desire, presented at A Season of Bangla Drama festival.

Tasnim Siddiqa Amin (she/they) is a working-class Bangladeshi-British artist, theatremaker and activist. Tasnim studied Politics, Philosophy, and History at St. Andrews and Birkbeck. Her work is rooted in anti-racism, postcolonialism, and intersectional feminism, blending research with lived experience to create urgent, thought provoking work.