The Association for the Teaching of Caribbean, African, Asian and Associated Literatures, or ATCAL, was founded with the aim of familiarizing British teachers with the range of "Black" writing that was available for school use.Larby, Patricia M., and Harry Hannam, The Commonwealth, International Organizations Series - Selective, Critical, Annotated Bibliographies, Volume 5, New Brunswick, NJ: Transaction Publishers, Rutgers University, 1993, p. 188. In the 1980s, ATCAL was a pressure group that played a key part in "the gradual process of expanding syllabuses in British schools, to include subjects such as contemporary black writing into the National Curriculum.", History Timeline, The 1970s. ATCAL held annual conferences, compiled booklists for schools, and held meetings and workshops in order "to increase awareness of the importance of cultural diversity in British society in education at all levels".Low, Gail, and Marion Wynne-Davies (eds), A Black British Canon?, Palgrave Macmillan, 2006, p. 182.
History ATCAL (the acronym originally stood for the Association for the Teaching of African and Caribbean Literature,Africana Periodical Literature Bibliographic Database, Africabib.org. but was soon extended to include Asian material) was founded by past members of the Caribbean Artists Movement at a conference at the University of Kent in 1978,Schwarz, Bill (ed.), West Indian Intellectuals in Britain, Manchester University Press, 2003, , p. 225. and was inaugurated in 1979, its first meeting — entitled "How to Teach Caribbean and African Literature in Schools" — being held at the Africa Centre, London."Making Tracks: Susheila Nasta in conversation with Jonathan Barker", Wasafiri. . Retrieved 30 March 2012. The organization campaigned for greater diversification of the English literature traditionally taught in UK schools at that time, and sought to get writers such as Derek Walcott, Jean Rhys and V. S. Naipaul included on the A-level syllabus.Reisz, Matthew, "Worthy traveller: publication that reshaped the landscape turns silver", The Times Higher Education Supplement, 17 September 2009. ATCAL published booklets on Third World literatures for schoolteachers,"ATCAL reading guides: African, Caribbean and Indo-British literature for the classroom", WorldCat. lobbied for such texts to be accepted by British Schools Examination Boards, and published the literary journal Wasafiri, which still continues, with Susheila Nasta as editor-in-chief.
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