Daydreams into reality ! Liz Brant Millman

By: Adrian Kibbler AKPR

Liz Brant Millman is a flesh and blood endorsement that you should never judge a book by its cover! Meet Liz in the street and she is almost a caricature of a middle aged former teacher, but little would you imagine what lies within the slim, well turned out exterior of this woman of Wolverhampton suburbia.

At a time in life when too many people are turning their attention to a steady decline into a future of good books, country walks and seaside holidays with the grand children, Liz has launched an international business career and a role as an unlikely champion of Rastafari, as well as Caribbean and African languages.

The transformation from academic to entrepreneur stems from a meeting with dub poet, reggae artiste and author, Yasus Afari, at a summer school on Caribbean Languages that she organised with the Jamaican Language Unit at the University of the West Indies in Kingston.

As a result an academic interest in promoting cultural awareness has blossomed into an international business which includes Liz acting as agent and manager for Yasus Afari.

Successful tours in UK led to touring in Japan, New Zealand and Australia, where Yasus Afari became the first Rastafarian to make a presentation to the “Parliament of the World’s Religions” in Melbourne.

Now Liz Millman and Yasus Afari tour in the UK regularly with a busy schedule of activities connected to the “Black History” season to work with school children, community groups and also offenders.

“Yasus is a remarkable individual who like me, comes from humble village roots and shares a passion for teaching and promoting cultural understanding which I am convinced is a key to improving social cohesion,” said Liz. “His book “Overstanding Rastafari: Jamiaca’s Gift to the World” has the potential to become a definitive work on a faith and way of life that has its birth in the response to the African slave trade”

“He also has a firm attachment to his first language which is Jamaican, or Patwa, as it is called in Jamaica. I don’t speak my father’s heart language which was Welsh, so I have an affinity for others who face language loss or negation.”

Liz is no pure academic and despite a lifetime in teaching, she has an appreciation of the world outside the classroom and has run a successful charity “Jamaica 2000” creating educational links between Jamaica and UK since 1999. UK and Jamaican School Links are the main focus and Liz leads the Jamaican Diaspora Education Group in the West Midlands.

Yasus Afari is a key partner in her new business “Learning Links International CIC”, but this is only part of a venture that includes bringing other international academics and performers into her portfolio, promoting events and with them in the UK and overseas.

Liz is also using her background in education to organise programmes for teachers, other professionals and students wanting to learn about other cultures and languages, staging conferences and seminars in the UK, Jamaica and other countries.

Travelling to the World Parliament of Religions in Melbourne provided the added bonus of giving Liz the chance of spend time with her daughter Sarah, who is a nurse in the city.

Family is important to Liz who has recently been reunited with the daughter she had as a teenager and gave up for adoption more than 40 years ago. Building this relationship has involved getting to know the grandchildren she did not know she had.

However, it has not all been joy and Liz is still coming to terms with the breakdown of a marriage of more than 30 years – a split which in her words “sent me spinning out of orbit.”

“It has not been easy. Life has been a roller coaster, but I am now embarking on one of the most exciting phases in my life. It is an incredible journey and I am enjoying the chance to do something that I used to dream about as a little girl in my Worcestershire village.” “I vividly remember sitting in the classroom of my village school joining in with ‘Singing Together’ - the BBC schools radio programme that linked the children of the Commonwealth. Even now I remember daydreaming about ackees being sold on Linstead Market and yellow birds high up in banana trees! Jamaica seemed so interesting and exciting. I also have the happiest of memories of the time when my father worked in Nigeria and we lived there. I was fascinated by the rich Yoruba culture, the music and most of all the wonderful people I met.”

It has taken a long time, but for Liz turning a daydream into reality offers so much more than the prospect of subsiding into the shadows of retirement.

If you met Liz Brant Millman you would never imagine!

Contact Liz Millman 01902 429185 or 07711 569 489