Re-Imagining Black Britain Conference 2018

The ‘Re-imagining Black Britain’ Conference is a one-off collaboration between Black British platforms and organisations No Fly on the WALL, Sassy Tees, We Are Superwoman and Cultured Lens.

The conference aims to bring together a wide range of attendees, speakers, facilitators, and performers for a day of inspiration, celebration, collaboration, and re-imagining.

With panels exploring identity and Afro-futurism, arts and culture, business and enterprise, and of course networking and collaboration, as well as workshops hoping to inspire attendees to move ‘from idea to action’, we aim to provide attendees with the resources, energy, and space in which to Re-imagine Black Britain and our individual as well as collective place in it.

The political landscape in Britain has changed significantly, particularly since 2013, when various grassroots and DIY organisations began. Since then there has been an upsurge of creative, radical, grassroots, and independent platforms taking space and providing a voice and representation for young black women in particular.

However, faced with the sobering events of 2016 and 2017, we feel a new approach is needed to confront and challenge the growing oppression and marginalisation of the Black community, in all its variety and heterogeneity.

How can we liberate ourselves through education and decolonised histories? How can we empower each other through starting and supporting Black-owned businesses? How can we build as a community, whilst still dissecting our differences and the way those may impact our lived experiences in Britain? What role can the arts play in our liberation, the archiving of our stories, and re-shifting the narrative, especially as Black poets, writers, filmmakers, and artists continue to shake the status quo online and offline? How can we build a meaningful and inclusive movement?

We hope to explore and make some headway towards answering these questions and more throughout the day, aiming to be solution-focused at every turn.

We’d also like to highlight that we have made a conscious decision to hold the conference in Birmingham, rather than London, in the spirit of ‘Re-imagining’. We hope that decentring the capital and bringing our collective energy to a vibrant and upcoming city like Birmingham, which also has a significant population of people of Afro-Caribbean descent, will send a strong message about community building, intersectionality, and new approaches.

The ‘Re-imagining Black Britain’ Conference will take place at Centrala Space, Birmingham, on Saturday 27th January 2018.

A note on special tickets:

If you are a student and/ or on low-wage or no wage please email the team on reimaginingblkbritainconf@gmail.com to receive a special discount code. Discounted tickets are limited and will be offered on a first-come-first-served basis.

A note on inclusion and language:

The conference is open to all and we welcome attendees from a variety of backgrounds. In order to maintain an inclusive safe in which to explore the limitless possibilities of Blackness in Britain and to Re-imagine, we emphasise that racism, xenophobia, sexism, classism, ableism, homophobia, transphobia, ageism, islamaphobia or any other bigotry of any kind will not be tolerated at this event.

To avoid any potential room for confusion, we wish to highlight that by ‘Black’, we refer to people in Britain racialised as Black – of Afro-Caribbean and/ or Afro-Latinx or any other Black identity descended from the African continent. We also wish to highlight that by ‘Black Britain’, we refer to those identifying as ‘Black British’ as well as those identifying as being Black in Britain but not necessarily British.

Communication:

Keep an eye out on our website and our social media to stay in the loop.