what was required was an educational resource that was multi-cultural, recognising and acknowledging black history. In order to do this ACER (Afro-Caribbean Education Resource) was set up. Its aim was to give black children a sense of identity and belonging to be proud of, and one that could be traced back to their African roots. It would make them black British citizens, with a part to play in multi-cultural Britain. Garrison saw ACER as an archive of Black history from which educational material could be developed for school children of all ages and abilities. He campaigned for two years with the Inner London Education Authority (ILEA) and others for the funding and resources until 1977, when the ACER project was launched with Garrison as director. ACER's black history educational packs, first introduced at Dick Sheppard School in Brixton, went on to be used all over the country. Of the many schemes that ACER organised, the most successful was the Young Penmanship awards for creative writing about their reality and experience as Black young people in Britain. The award helped launch the careers of many black professionals, including the playwright Michael McMillan, novelist and barrister Nicola Williams, the music critic Clive Davis and Dr Michael Beckles. When ILEA was dismantled in 1988 ACER closed due to lack of funding. ACER's legacy can be seen today in black history being part of the mainstream British educational curriculum and its work has inspired the Dutch to develop similar multi-cultural learning. In the late 1980s, Garrison took the ACER idea to Nottingham, where he became director of the ACFF (African Caribbean Family and Friends) Centre. There he was instrumental in establishing EMACA — East Midlands African Caribbean Arts — an organisation that promotes positive cultural practice in the arts, particularly the black visual arts. He also developed local history work around George Africanus, Nottingham's first black entrepreneur. Black Cultural Archives Garrison believed that "collecting and structuring the fragmented evidence of the Black past in Britain as well as in the Caribbean and Africa is a monumental task, but it is a major agenda item in [the] last decade of the 20th century [to create a] better basis for achieving a fully multicultural British society" To this end he co-founded the Black Cultural Archives (BCA) in 1981 and became a trustee. The BCA's mission is to ensure that black history is properly recorded and available