VALERIE SIMMS
City Councillor for Moreland District, Gloucester, Director of Arts Diverse-City CIC, founder and trustee of OpenDoors 4U, an organisation advocating for young people with additional learning needs.
Photographed in Gloucester Cathedral
Born in Gloucester and raised in Matson before moving to Chequers as a young adult, Valerie Simms is deeply rooted in her local community.
In this portrait, Valerie reflects on home, belonging, and connection across time and place.
Much of her working life has been dedicated to creating spaces that celebrate Black culture, fashion and wearable art - and to honouring Gloucester’s shared heritage and diverse voices.
Most recently, in 2025 she supported Gloucester’s Windrush Day celebration event, Changes in Waves: Belonging, Being and Becoming, held at Gloucester’s Waterways Museum.
In this portrait, Valerie reflects on home, belonging, and connection across time and place.
“Whatever our background, wherever we’re from — in Gloucester, it’s the water that connects us…”
In researching for this project, we chose to look further back in time, focusing on the historical record of Gloucester’s Black history from it’s earliest days as a Roman town, nearly 2,000 years ago.
From the late Bronze Age to Medieval times, there is evidence of people with African heritage living right across Britain, and finds from Romano-British cemeteries suggest that at that time, immigrant communities formed a significant part of the population.
As recent excavations in Gloucester have shown, the food, clothing, religious beliefs and ethnicity of the city’s population at this time reflected it’s connectedness with the rest of the world, and it’s status as an important river port.
The Gloucestershire Archives offers a handlist of records relating to Black, Asian and minority and ethnic people and communities in Gloucestershire that is accessible via their website.
The documentary evidence from the 1600’s onwards provides us with snapshots of the lives of Black residents across Gloucestershire over the centuries. From free women to lawyers apprentices to servants to musicians, the county continued to be a place of social and ethnic diversity.
The archives also provide us with evidence of the links between some of Gloucester’s landowners, and the wealth accumulated from their estates in the West Indies, and trade which relied upon the labour of enslaved people. The records document their visits to these estates, their political connections in England, and their attitudes to slavery.
THE PORTRAIT:
In the portrait, Valerie’s clothing draws on Jamaican and West African heritage, echoing Gloucester’s long links to global exchange. The bright colours represent both her own creativity, and that of communities in Gloucester, both past and present. The design and the plants around her connect us with the flora of both the UK and the West Indies, and a sense of our human connectedness through nature.
“…We’re intertwined — like the limbs and the vines in the photos — because we’re bound together in our history and heritage.”
Valerie Simms
Her feet are surrounded by fruit - English applies from Gloucestershire, and mangos, papaya and pomegranates from the Caribbean, reflecting the mingling of food and cultural traditions in Gloucester over millennia.
In one hand Valerie holds a pomegranate. In many cultures this is a symbol of fertility, growth and prosperity, as well of belonging and home. In English royal tradition, this was also the symbol of Catherine of Aragon, Henry VIII’s first wife.
In the other hand, she holds a sugar cane, and is seated on an antique chair belonging to Gloucester Cathedral. She is surrounded by the Cathedral’s medieval stone arches and stained glass windows depicting biblical stories and English legends.
Her final pose, on a throne and holding an orb and sceptre, references both portraits of English medieval monarchs (for whom Gloucester Cathedral was an important centre of power), and the medieval kingdoms of West Africa.
Seated here in the heart of Gloucester’s political, religious and cultural life, Valerie celebrates her sense of place within the community’s living history.
Roots, rivers, and resilience: this portrait celebrates Gloucester’s enduring global connections and the strength found in belonging.