The 2000s sees the breakthrough of several writers of colour - Zadie Smith (White Teeth, 1999), Monica Ali (Brick Lane, 2003), Andrea Levy (Small Island, 2004), Aravind Adiga (The White Tiger, 2008) - and the establishment of multiple organisations dedicated to supporting writers of colour: writers collective Malika’s Poetry Kitchen (2001); independent publishing house flipped eye (2001), which will publish many poets of colour at the start of their award-winning careers; creative development agency Words of Colour (2006), which will agitate for industry-wide change. In 2001, Modern Love takes place at the Southbank Centre, and it is the first show of its kind to showcase poets of colour alongside musicians of colour in the spoken word art-form. Inspired by ‘A Great Day In Harlem’ - the iconic 1958 photograph of 57 jazz musicians, including Count Basie, Dizzy Gillespie and Thelonius Monk, outside a brownstone in New York - 50 of Britain’s black and Asian writers gather at the British Library for ‘A Great Day’ photograph (Renaissance One, 2004).
In 2007, after much persuasion from literary activists of colour, Arts Council England investigates the lack of published poets of colour in British literature. The resulting report, Free Verse, finds that only 1% of poetry published by the UK’s major presses is by black and Asian poets. A major national programme is initiated in response: The Complete Works, which selects 10 black and Asian poets a year for mentoring and publication. The Complete Works will run for the next 10 years; it produces poets whose work will win the biggest poetry prizes in the world, and the number of black and Asian poets published by major UK presses rises to almost 10%.