Afro-Futuring: Radical Black Imaginations
A conversation between:
Yomi Sode
Melz Owusu
Marai Larsai
Josh Rivers
09/11/2023
19:00 – 21:00
HJL Dream Space
Resource for London
352 Holloway Road
London
N7 6PA
Description
This is a conversation between Yomi Sode, Melz Owusu, Marai Larasi and Josh Rivers on how Black radical traditions provide the groundwork for liberatory futures. The conversation will explore a variety of cultural practices and work present in the Black imagination that shift us out of oppressive landscapes and times, towards just and dignifying worlds that affirm Black life and aliveness.
This event will be BSL interpreted.
Biographies
Josh Rivers is the creator and host of the award-winning podcast Busy Being Black, which centres the lives, stories and experiences of queer Black people from across the world. He’s the Head of Cultural Partnerships for UK Black Pride and a freelance communications consultant, committed to working with LGBTQ, social justice and human rights organisations.
Yomi Ṣode is a Nigerian British writer. His debut collection, Manorism, published by Penguin in October 2022 alongside a stage adaptation at the Southbank Centre, is shortlisted for the Rathbones Folio Prize 2023 and the T S Eliot Prize 2022. He was shortlisted for the Brunel International African Poetry Prize 2021, and received the Jerwood Compton Poetry Fellowship in 2019. Yomi’s acclaimed one-man show COAT toured nationally to sold-out audiences, including at the Brighton Festival, Roundhouse Camden and the Battersea Arts Centre. In 2020 his libretto Remnants, written in collaboration with award-winning composer James B. Wilson and performed with Chineke! Orchestra, premiered on BBC Radio 3. In 2021, his play, and breathe… premiered at the Almeida Theatre to rave reviews. Yomi is a Complete Works alumnus and a member of Malika’s Poetry Kitchen. He is the founder of BoxedIn, First Five, The Daddy Diaries, and mentorship programme, 12 in 12.
Marai Larasi is a Black, African-Caribbean-British feminist advocate, community organiser and consultant who has worked in social justice for over 27 years. Much of her work has focused on ending violence against Black / Global Majority women and girls. She was the Executive Director of Imkaan (UK) until May 2019, and she also served as Co-chair of the End Violence Against Women Coalition (UK). Her work has included, and been framed, by alliances with other Black/global majority and Indigenous feminist activists and practitioners in diverse contexts. In her current practice she works across a number of spheres/sectors (women’s sector, international “development”, donors and foundations, regional government, and intergovernmental bodies), providing strategic, policy, practice and training support around decoloniality, intersectionality, racial justice and ending violence against women and girls among other areas. She is also a member of an emerging Black feminist collective that is reimagining and building a resourcing and community initiative.
Melz Owusu is a queer, transmasculine and non-binary activist, scholar, consultant and spiritualist. They are the founder of the Free Black University (@freeblackuni) and a PhD researcher at the University of Cambridge. They have organised in a number of spaces such as Black Lives Matter UK, decolonising education and trans visibility. Their work explores decolonisation, the radical Black imagination and building transformative worlds. Melz has explored the topic of decolonisation with hundreds of audiences across the world and has also tackled the topic on the popular TEDx platform. Their passion is research, and they are currently undertaking a PhD exploring visions for collective liberation. Melz always endeavours to take this radical, decolonial, Black feminist analysis forward in all aspects of their life and work.
