Barbican Centre to host pan-African arts, culture season in London

The season will feature more than 50 events spanning visual art, film, music, performance, talks and workshops, bringing together artists, scholars and cultural practitioners from Africa and its global diasporas.

Central to the programme is Project a Black Planet: The Art and Culture of pan-Africa, a large-scale international exhibition examining more than a century of artistic and cultural production shaped by pan-African ideas.

According to the Barbican, the exhibition will include more than 300 works from Africa, the Caribbean, Brazil, North America and Europe. The works explore how artists and activists have used visual art, performance, design and collective action to address themes of liberation, identity and political change.

Pan-Africanism emerged around the turn of the 20th century as a political and philosophical movement advocating self-determination, anti-colonial resistance and solidarity among people of African descent. The Barbican’s programme will examine how these ideas have influenced cultural expression across different regions and artistic disciplines.

The exhibition will be accompanied by a film programme featuring historical and contemporary works that trace the circulation of pan-African ideas across the 20th century and into the present day. Organisers say the screenings will explore the role of festivals, social movements and cultural networks in shaping global conversations around Black identity and solidarity.

A series of music events will also form part of the season, highlighting artistic traditions associated with activism, resistance and cultural exchange. The programme will open with an immersive spatial audio presentation of a collaborative project between the late Jamaican producer Lee ‘Scratch’ Perry and German electronic duo Mouse on Mars.

Other featured performers include Meshell Ndegeocello, Pat Thomas, Tyshawn Sorey, the Cesária Évora Orchestra with Mayra Andrade, and Congolese artist Sammy Baloji.

The programme will also include listening sessions, workshops, talks, performances and community gatherings curated around four themes: Rituals, Nationhood, Technology and Archive. These activities have been co-curated by the Barbican alongside cultural curators Tobi Kyeremateng and Jason “Scully” Kavuma.

Organisers said the season will conclude with the Sankofa Carnival Performance, inspired by the Akan concept of Sankofa, which encourages learning from the past to shape the future. The event will celebrate the transnational roots of carnival traditions and their connections to African and diasporic cultures.

The season is expected to run across multiple venues within the Barbican Centre between June and September 2026.