What is the Black Archive? Reparations and Transformation

Saturday 29 November 2025, 9.30 - 5pm
Eliot Room, Knowledge Centre, British Library, London, NW1 2DB
What is the Black Archive: Reparations and Transformation

What Is the Black Archive? Is a year-long series of discussions that have considered the ‘What’ of Black archives in two ways: what sites and spaces should we consider archives for Black Britons, and what can we do with those archives to transform our understanding of the communal lives they contain?

 

What is the Black Archive? Reparations and Transformation

Saturday 29 November, British Library

Bringing together artists in all media, researchers,  heritage professionals and the general public, this all-day event explores how Black archives shape—and are shaped by—their readers and act as spaces of creativity, confrontation, and repair. It is the final event in the What Is the Black Archive? series and seeks to strengthen and expand networks, enhancing understanding of Black study in a time when it is, again, under threat.

Featuring a mix of panels, presentations, and a participatory roundtable, the day is divided into five parts:

  1. On Presenting the Past: Black Archives in Britain Today (featuring representatives from Nottingham Black Archive, the Stuart Hall Archive, British Film Institute, and the George Padmore Institute Archive)
  2. Archival Reassembly: The Case of David Oluwale (Professor Kennetta Hammond-Perry, Northwestern University; Chaired by Nicole-Rachelle Moore)
  3. After Effects: Archival Space and Artistic Transformation (featuring Hannah Lowe, Jay Bernard, Kabe Wilson, Peter Brathwaite and Tia Bannon)
  4. From the Black Archive (reading, featuring Jay Bernard)
  5. Reparations and Transformation: Archival Futures (long table).

The British Library are delighted to be collaborating with the FHALMA Foundation at The London Archives who is organising a sister event on the 29th of November on The Power of Black African Caribbean Archives. Marking 20 years of the Huntley Archives and 50 years of the pioneering Bogle-L’Ouverture Bookshop, this one-day festival will feature panels, performances, archive tours, conversations, and opportunities for heritage professionals, educators, and community groups to connect, share learning, and explore the living legacy of Black archival work and the Huntleys’ early radical leadership in this space. 

 

Please click here to register