Black Lives Matter UK Festival of Collective Liberation 2025 (Subject to change)
Date: Saturday 19th July 2025 10:00am – 8:00pm
Location: Friends House, Euston, London NW1 2BJ (Venue website)
10:00am – Doors Open and Registration
10:30pm – Opening Libation
Room: The Light
Ceremony led by Uwarobosa Enobakhare
11:00 – Festival Welcome and Introducing BLMUK Coordinating Group Members
Room: The Light
Host: Richie Brave
11:30am – 12.30pm: Opening Plenary – Black Women, Class War and the Anti-feminist Backlash
Room: The Light
Speakers: Aviah Sarah Day (Sisters Uncut), Lola Olufemi, Kischa (Solace Women’s Aid) and Chloe Filani
As we live through the current rollback of the feminist movement gains of the 1970s, we’ll explore the importance of misogyny and transphobia under capitalist authoritarianism.
Lunchtime Programme
1:00pm – 3:45pm: Headline Film Screening – Shoot the People
Room: The Light
Post-film Panel chaired by Richie Brave with Misan Harriman (Cast), Andy Mundy-Castle (Director)
In Shoot the People, Harriman examines how protest and organised movements can lead to social change, all while capturing the resilience of activism through his lens.
Time | Session Title | Facilitators / Speakers | Description | Room |
|---|---|---|---|---|
12:30pm – 2:30pm | Lunch | N/A | N/A | N/A |
12:30pm – 12:50pm | VISIBLE film screening | Kayza Rose | “VISIBLE” challenges common misconceptions that LGBTQ+ Black and People of Colour have no history and no story to tell. Calling upon inspirational ancestors and contemporary artists and activists working to challenge mainstream perception and the sanitisation of LGBTQI + legacies. | |
12:45pm – 2:15pm | Communities in Struggle [Panel] | Sly Mido (Congo Action Youth Platform), Mohammed Elnaiem (Decolonial Centre), Elif Sarican, Yara El-Issar, QUEST9ja, Additional speaker – TBC | Join Congolese, Sudanese, Nigerian, Kurdish and Palestinian comrades, organising in diaspora, for a round-table discussion on anti-imperialist organising in the belly of the beast. | |
12:45pm – 2:15pm | Building Black Trans Futures [Workshop] | Black Trans Assembly | This session exclusively is by and for Black trans people. Join the Black Trans Assembly to create a cross-regional network for movement building, necessary intra-communal conversations and collectively owned/accessed infrastructure and resources. | |
1:15pm – 2:15pm | The Black Atlantic: A Ritual of Response and Resistance Building Black Trans Futures [Workshop] | Rhian Parker, Philip Ofe | For artists, poets, organisers and anyone invested in the role of art as a means of cultural survival. Beyond performance, this is a ritual. | |
1:00pm – 3:45pm | Headline Film Screening: Shoot the People [Panel] | Richie Brave Misan Harriman, Andy Mundy-Castle | Following his debut, White Nanny, Black Child, director Andy Mundy-Castle turns the camera on Oscar-nominated British-Nigerian photographer and activist Misan Harriman, who became the first Black man to shoot a cover of British Vogue in 2021 including. In Shoot the People, Harriman examines how protest and organised movements can lead to social change, all while capturing the resilience of activism through his lens. There will be a post screening talk with Andy Mundy-Castle and Misan Harriman |
2:30pm – 3:45pm Sessions
Session Title | Facilitators / Speakers | Description | Room |
Surviving Prison Pending Revolution [Panel] | Jemmar Samuels (Collective Punishment Campaign), Ife Thompson (BLAM Charity), Zara Manoehoetoe (Kids of Colour), Francesca (formerly of Palestine Action) | Prison is not about safety, it is a ruling class weapon against ordinary people. Hear from formerly imprisoned people discussing prison abolition in Britain today. | |
Island of Strangers? [Panel] | Mona Bani (Revoke), Gargi Bhattacharyya (UCL Sarah Redmond Parker Centre), Akli Habiballah, Justice for Windrush Generations (Liverpool) | This session may be filmed. As racist rhetoric escalates in Parliament and the press, this session explores the realities of the border regime – and the tools of resistance at our disposal. | |
Towards Black Disability Justice [Panel] | Simi Roach, Dr Annabel Sowemimo | This panel explores how welfare policy and racist conceptions of disability contribute to the discrimination, violence and murder of our communities – and how we resist. | |
Housing for All: Property is Theft [Panel] | Josh Virasami (London Renters Union), Andrea Gilbert, Nadia Vogel, Bushi Badawi-Macintosh | Hear from organisers taking on the housing crisis through tenants’ organising, direct action and squatting – and how you can take on the landlord class. | |
Project Timbuktu – Black Liberation Circles [Workshop] | Kojo Kyerewaa (Black Lives Matter UK) | Join the special taster and reflection session on BLMUK’s Black liberation learning circles. Meet participants before it is expanded across England in September | |
How to Survive a State [Workshop] | Sunflower (Global Majority Copwatch), Mariam Bafo (West London Resistance Collective), Ayesha (Campaign for Psych Abolition), Sara Bafo | This workshop explores the tools at our disposal – and those yet to be developed – to resist state violence across policing, the border regime, psychiatry and securitisation. | |
Preach Like Martin and Malcolm [Workshop] | Wa’el Qasim (Anglican Diocese of Southwark), Dr Kesewa John (Goldsmiths University) | Let’s take back the Black Church! Join us to discuss how we reclaim this space by thinking through Black Liberation Theology as an organising tool. | |
Organise Now! Black Workers Assembly [Workshop] | Pan-African Workers Association, Shanice McBean, Steeven Biset, Mel Mullins, Michelle Codrington-Rogers | Hear from experienced trade unionists and share your own experiences of workplace organising at this assembly, which will launch Organise Now!’s new initiative for Black workers. | |
Solidarity with Sudan [Workshop] | Madaniya | Two years into the counter-revolutionary war in Sudan and the world’s largest displacement crisis, what forms should solidarity with the Sudanese people take? | |
Engaging with the Archive [Workshop] | George Padmore Institute | An introduction to engaging with movement archives, with materials from the George Padmore Institute | Library |
4:15pm – 5:30pm Sessions
Session Title | Facilitators / Speakers | Description | Room |
|---|---|---|---|
Labour Austerity – What is to be done? [Panel] | Kojo Kyerewaa (BLMUK), Fiona Lali Mothin Ali (Green Party Councillor) Mariam E (Abolitionist Futures) | This session may be filmed Starmer’s Labour governs as a Conservative continuity government. More cuts, migrant violence and unwavering support for genocide. BLMUK’s Kojo and Fiona Lali debate the left response. | |
People’s Tribunal on Police Killings [Panel] | Ken Fero, Samantha Patterson | Learn about the next steps for the people’s tribunal on police killings. Funded by BLMUK and organised by United Families and Friends Campaign. | |
Self Defence is No Offence: Anti-fascist Strategies [Panel] | Zainab Abbas, Nadia Vogel, Lexie, Hafsa | One year on from the pogroms of 2024, how do we resist fascist street violence? And what does a communitarian approach to anti-fascism look like? | |
“Mad” Liberation: Beyond The Clinic and Towards Resistance [Panel] | Seyi Keyamo, Micha Frazer-Carol, Ruben E. Darrell | This session may be filmed. Psychiatry is a vehicle for racist violence that has always faced resistance. What is “mad liberation”? What do communitarian approaches to mental health look like? | |
The Black Parents Movement: 50 years on [Panel] | Hannah Francis, No More Exclusions, AS Francis, Jay Hall | This session may be filmed. What role do we want culture to play in the lives of our children? Let’s learn from the legacies of the BPM to decide. | |
Radical Care 101 [Panel] | Muva O. (Blaq Roots Housing Co-Op), Alex Augustin (Healing Justice London) Lateisha Davine Lovelace-Hanson | This session may be filmed. Amid labour and wage cuts and crumbling public infrastructure, come to learn about and radically imagine methods for maintaining strong care networks. | |
Martin Sostre, Islam and Prison Abolition [Workshop] | Raheel Mohammed (Maslaha), Tarek Younis | This session may be filmed. Muslims now make up 18% of the total prison population. Join Maslaha to discuss how Muslims are creating communities of care and resisting prison warfare. | |
Building Workplace Power [Workshop] | Grace Franklin-Brown, United Voices of the World Union (UVW) | This session may be filmed. Want to organise your workplace? This workshop will explore strategies for building power on the shop floor. | |
Reviving Black Arts Movements – Past, Present and Future [Workshop] | Zahra Dalilah, Danny Francis | This session may be filmed. This interactive workshop invites Black artists, organisers, curators, and cultural workers to engage with the history and future of Black arts movements in the UK. | |
The Dark Side of Digitality: How to Resist Techno-Imperialism [Workshop] | Gracie Mae Bradley, Khadija Diskin, Emeka Nwankwo | This session may be filmed. Under a digital system designed for surveillance, how do we safeguard ourselves and resist the repression and imperialism it enables? Join us to find out. | |
Creative Responses to the Archive [Workshop] | George Padmore Institute | This session may be filmed. Join the George Padmore Institute to explore creative responses to the archive, using materials from a range of collections of Black movement history | Library |
6pm Sessions
Closing Plenary – The Sahel States: A New Frontier for African Liberation
Room: The Light
Speakers: Kevin Ochieng Okoth, Lina Dohia, Nirad Abrol
Resistance to Western hegemony in the Sahel States has sent reverberations across the continent. How should anti-imperialists engage with this new frontier of African liberation?
Transforming Harm in Our Communities
Room: Benjamin Lay 1 + 2
Facilitators: Hope Chilokoa-Mullen, CRADLE
This participatory workshop is for groups and individuals interested in or already involved in creating and practising structures of handling harm and conflict.
A wellbeing practitioner is available to hold space for anyone as a form of aftercare following this session
19:15 – Closing Session
Spoken Word Performance: AWATE
Room: The Light
AWATE is a critically acclaimed rapper, producer, archivist and curator focused on stories at the intersection of race, class and surrealism – with a dose of humour.
Closing Comments by Host and BLMUK Team
8pm – Event Close