Stuart Lawrence – Favourite Things

The Right Honourable Stuart Lawrence is an author, motivational speaker and the younger brother of Stephen Lawrence, the British teenager murdered in a racially motivated attack in 1993. After working as a youth engagement specialist and secondary school teacher for twenty years, Stuart Lawrence has written his first book, Silence is Not an Option, in which he talks about the lessons he has learnt and the tools that have helped him live positively, even when times get tough. He also campaigns for racism awareness and promotes Stephen Lawrence Day on 22 April each year.

These are a few of Stuart Lawrence’s favourite things…

Food

Cooking is a great way to show my love and affection to people. I think it is born out of watching my mum cook when I was growing up, which is also how I learnt to cook. During lockdown, I didn’t feel like I had a purpose, and I found weeks two and seven of the first lockdown really hard; I couldn’t find any motivation to get out of bed or do anything. One of my cousins told me to do what I love — cooking — so I started recreating Stephen’s favourite meals and going on missions to find different ingredients that you wouldn’t conventionally find in a supermarket. One of the things I was trying to make was doughnuts, but yeast was quite hard to find during that time. I realised Wholefoods in South Kensington was the only place I could go during lockdown that didn’t have queues and had all these lovely, amazing ingredients (though it is more expensive), so I used to go there once a week and pick up all these different bits and pieces — they had plenty of live yeast. 

Football

I am an Arsenal fan, and I coach and football scout too. My son plays football to a decent level, so most of our weekends are consumed by travelling around the country for him to play football. I really love sport, and the ability sport has to bring people together. One of my favourite memories of my son is from a holiday to Barcelona where we bought him a football, and when the local schools broke up for the day, he ended up orchestrating a football match on the beach with a couple of Spanish kids, despite speaking no Spanish himself. It is such a universal thing; all you need is a ball and something to make goal posts from. My son and I are trying to go to all of the football grounds in the country, which will probably take a lifetime, but I want to give it a go and see how far we get. 

Drawing and type

I fell in love with typography and spent two years in college studying type at the London College of Printing. This developed into a love of type and graffiti, and whilst I don’t have my sketchbook with me as much as I should, I love doodling and drawing. It is a great way to communicate. I studied type pre-computers, so I did a lot of hand-rendering text, but as I finished computers, Macs and photoshop were becoming a big thing. Now, things like printmaking and typesetting have come back in fashion, almost 30 years later. People don’t want the perfect digital look, they want analogue with mistakes and misfiring. With type, mistakes can often become the best idea or outcome. Lots of creative people know that sometimes you do things by accident, and it ends up looking great.

Family 

I taught at a school for 15 years and then supply taught at another for five more, and one of the things I realised is that it consumed my life. I didn’t get out to see my family and spend time with them enough, because I was working in cycles and in my weeks off I was just trying to recover myself for the next seven weeks. I fell out of contact with a lot of people. Towards the end of my teaching, I wrote a list of what success looks like to me and quickly realised that spending time with my family was what I enjoyed doing the most. Lockdown also showed me that. Every Friday in the first lockdown, I got together with my old school friends, we just talked laughed and rode that journey together. We all needed that human interaction. 

Being present

I recently went to go and watch Get Up Stand Up – The Bob Marley Musical, and one of the songs was an emancipation song that I realised I knew. It happened to be a song that we used to perform in my youth group, and it was probably one of the last things that we performed as a group with Stephen in. Sitting there, hearing the song, I was transported back, and it reminded me of the importance of being present and making memories. I am trying to get better at avoiding the urge to get my phone out and take a picture, and actually stopping, smelling, looking and listening — taking a mental picture of that time and moment instead. Why not keep your memories in your mind and verbalise them to other people rather than always relying on photos and visuals. 

Enjoyed Stuart Lawrence’s favourites? Explore last week’s Favourite Things here.