Lola Young in conversation with Paterson Joseph

In this illuminating and intimate event, Baroness Lola Young sheds light on the oft-ignored foster care system, and her personal relationship with it. Before Baroness Young was an actress, an academic, an activist and a campaigner for social justice, she was a foster child, moved between countless placements and children’s homes between the ages of eight weeks and 18 years. Decades later, the crossbench peer was able to begin the search for answers to the long-standing questions that would help her make sense of her childhood.

She talks to actor and writer Paterson Joseph about searching through her care records, fragments of memory and her imagination to assemble the pieces of her past into a portrait of a childhood in a system that often made her feel invisible and unwanted.

Baroness Young of Hornsey became one of the first Black women members of the House of Lords in 2004. She is an active campaigner against modern slavery and unethical fashion and is Chancellor of the University of Nottingham. Joseph is a British actor and writer who has acted on shows including Vigil and Noughts and Crosses. He is the author of the historical novel The Secret Diaries of Charles Ignatius Sancho.