BLMUK Festival of Collective Liberation

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WHAT: Black Lives Matter UK's Festival of Collective Liberation 

PRICE: Free - £10+

HOW: Click on Buy Tickets

COVID Guidelines: https://ukblm.org/festival-2024/covid-guidelines/

Safety Guidelines: https://ukblm.org/festival-2024/safety-principles/

Event Details

Festival of Collective Liberation - Join us to discuss and develop the future of Black liberation movements in Britain and beyond

We will be building upon the long legacy of Black anti-colonial liberation organising in Britain. Uplifting the work of our elders, like Brixton Black Women's Group, the Bristol Bus boycott organisers, the Race Today collective and the Windrush scandal campaigners. They continue to ground us in fight for liberation, to create a Black-first one day festival that will - we hope - in turn generate new legacies for Black organising in Britain.

BLMUK’s Festival of Collective Liberation will aim to demonstrate and strengthen our international solidarity with anti-colonial/anti-imperialist struggles across the world. Following in the tradition of the Pan-African Congress, it will focus on three sites of anti-colonial struggle: the Democratic Republic of Congo, Sudan and Palestine. 

The one-day festival will be comprised of panel discussions, strategy debates, keynote speeches, workshops, trainings and art and music. As well as international solidarity, it will explore Black resistance in the labour movement, police and prison abolition, migration and climate justice, bodily autonomy, cultural and artistic resistance and Black radical education. It will also launch Project Timbuktu, BLM's inaugural political education course.

If you have any additional queries, please email hello@ukblm.org. 

Draft Festival Programme (subject to change)

10:00am - Doors Open

Check out our stalls and get refreshments

10:45am - Festival Welcome and Opening

Host: Emma Dabiri

Opening message from our host

Grounding Ceremony led by Mama D

Introduction of our exclusive showing of DYLEMA’s Last Madonna’s Exhibition

Meet the team: introducing Black Lives Matter UK Coordinating Group

11:30am - Honouring our Black Women Elders - British Black Liberation, past and present

Chair: Lola Okolosie 

Speakers:
- Zainab Abbas, founder member of the Black Liberation Front

- Dorothea Smartt, Brixton Black Women's Group

An intergenerational discussion on understanding the British Black Power movement of the 1970s and 80s through a Black feminist lens.

Lola Okolosie leads our panellists from organisations such as Black Liberation Front and Brixton Black Women’s Group to reflect on material and organising conditions during their struggles for housing. We invite all to contrast those conditions to austerity Britain.

2.30pm Sessions

Keynote Session: Becoming Abolitionists

Chair: Leah Cowan (author, Why should feminists trust the police?)

Speakers: Derecka Purnell (Hammer and Hope Editorial Board), Shanice McBean (Black-Jewish Alliance), Sara Bafoe (No More Exclusions)

4.15pm Sessions

Black British Film Screenings curated by Campbell X

6pm - 7pm Reflection Sessions

Keynote Session: Until all of us are free

Chair: Mohammed Elnaiem (The Decolonial Centre)

Speakers: Lina Dohia (Sudan), Sly Blood-Coltan (Congo), Akram Salhab (Palestine)

7.15pm - Closing Session

Music Performance: Louis Culture

Closing comments by Host - Emma Dabiri

End 8pm