The I’m Tired Project’s Paula Akpan shares her experience of effecting positive change (Report)

Paula Akpan is co-founder of the I’m Tired Project, which aims to highlight the lasting impact of everyday micro-aggressions, assumptions and stereotypes. She also co-founded last weekend’s enormously successful Black Girl Festival.

Paula will be speaking on NME’s How To Effect Positive Change panel at our #Lifehacks event on November 23. Ahead of the big day, we gave her a call to find out about her activism journey so far.

What does “effecting positive change” mean to you?
“I think it’s about realising that not everything’s going to be done for you. If you’re thinking, ‘I wish there was more of this type of event out there,’ it’s about realising that actually you can do it yourself. For example, we started the Black Girl Festival because there was nothing out there celebrating Black British women and girls. We tried to make the festival as accessible as possible – by making it free, making sure it was at a wheelchair-accessible venue, and avoiding jargon in our communications. We made sure we got to the point of what the festival is all about.”

What made you realise, ‘Hang on – I actually can do this myself’?
“I think it was after complaining about how things were being done, quite regularly! I was getting frustrated with diversity panels that didn’t really have any effect because they were bringing people in to speak, but not then changing the structure of the organisation or business. So I just realised, ‘Maybe I can do this instead.’ And then I found out how receptive people can be. When we started the I’m Tired Project, it was just meant to be a summer project for us and our friends, but pretty soon we realised there was media interest in what we were doing, so we kept going and making it bigger.”

So is being flexible and adaptable an important…