COLIN Cole spent much of his early life moving from home to home with his family, which he says gave him an insight into what it feels like to be an outsider.

Born in Lincolnshire in 1967, both of his parents came from Kingston, Jamaica, but met at a church in Brixton.

He is one of four siblings and his late father, Martin, served for a dozen years in the RAF before beginning a civilian career in avionics.

Colin spent parts of his childhood in Singapore, Abingdon and Jamaica, where he completed his primary education in Kingston before the family returned to England. There he lived in Croydon and Bracknell, and it was in Bracknell that he began training in engineering, which has been his career ever since.

He said: “When I look back, I think it’s the idea of always being the new kid in school. I always knew how it felt to be an outsider, a person coming in and not a part of the main group.

“I will always try to have empathy – to look at things from that person’s point of view. That comes from moving around a lot as a child. One of the things you get from that is an ability to integrate into a community.”

Colin came to Swindon from Bracknell in about 1987 in search of a home to buy and has been here ever since. He grew to like the town very much and found it to be a place where overt racism was far less in evidence than it had been in his previous homes, though he found less of an Afro-Caribbean community consciousness than he expected.

This may be a side effect of a long-ago Swindon Council policy of promoting integration by settling immigrants in various locations across the town rather than in proximity to one another.

Colin became involved with a youth organisation called Plus One, an experience which inspired him.

“They had a really good youth worker – he was brilliant. He used to take us on trips – he had a coach and we’d all pay part of the cost. It inspired me, the work he was doing, the influence he had on us as young men. I suppose it gave us this sense of community.”

Later still came his involvement with the Swindon Afro Caribbean Centre and the organisation that runs it – Swindon West Indian Community Association.

Starting in about 2000 he was one of a new generation of community members who made it their mission to revitalise the centre, with more music, more events and one of the best sound systems around.

He believes the centre in Faringdon Road represents a lot more than its bricks and mortar and the attractions it offers.

He said: “My personal opinion is that we should never, ever sell it. It should be a beacon because of that dispersed community in Swindon. If you didn’t have that building, a person could drive into Swindon and not know there was a Caribbean Community here. No matter what we do, whether we get another building as well, I think the centre should always be there.”

He wants more members of that community to come forward and take on responsibilities.

He said: “I’d like to see people switch from saying ‘why don’t they do something?’ to ‘why don’t we do something?’”