Africa Utopia returns to the Southbank Centre: Everything to know about the arts festival

1/8
Zoe Paskett11 September 2019

The annual celebration of Africa and its diaspora returns for a seventh year this weekend.

Africa Utopia festival is back at the Southbank Centre with three days of talks, performances and workshops.

Highlights include Chibundu Onuzo’s performance of her autobiographical show 1991. The author of The Spider King’s Daughter tells a story of her 27 years living through two military dictatorships, two boarding schools, five grandmothers and a book deal, which she signed aged 19.

Live music and dance from The Kuti family brings Lagos’s New Afrika Shrine to the Royal Festival Hall with musician Femi Kuti, rapper Talib Kweli and rapper, writer and activist Akala.

Akala is also leading a series of talks at Africa Utopia. He is joined by Ed Emeka Keazor, Angelina Osbourne, Daivd Killingray and Professor Abosede George to discuss the preservation of black cultural memory.

Further talks include Beauty: It’s a Shady Business, with Candice Carty-Williams, Nao, Ray BLK, Funmi Feto and Clara Amfo, and The Black Film Renaissance, where filmmaker Simon Frederick is joined by screenwriter Noel Clarke, actor Nathalie Emmanuel and agent Femi Oguns to discuss whether being seen is enough to count as representation.

Workshops for all ages run throughout, with the opportunity to learn voguing from a true expert, Jay Jay Revlon, a creative writing workshop with Nina Reece and a live makeup tutorial with Mata, makeup artist to Skepta, Stormzy and IAMDDB. Brother and sister duo Bino and Fino are on hand for cartoons with the kids.

Africa Utopia runs from September 13-15 at the Southbank Centre, southbankcentre.co.uk

South Bank and Waterloo area guide: In pictures

1/11

Create a FREE account to continue reading

eros

Registration is a free and easy way to support our journalism.

Join our community where you can: comment on stories; sign up to newsletters; enter competitions and access content on our app.

Your email address

Must be at least 6 characters, include an upper and lower case character and a number

You must be at least 18 years old to create an account

* Required fields

Already have an account? SIGN IN

By clicking Create Account you confirm that your data has been entered correctly and you have read and agree to our Terms of use , Cookie policy and Privacy policy .

This site is protected by reCAPTCHA and the Google Privacy Policy and Terms of Service apply.

Thank you for registering

Please refresh the page or navigate to another page on the site to be automatically logged in