Black Girl Festival set to premiere its first celebration of black women

A new fes­ti­val cel­e­brat­ing black women and girls will take place for free at the end of this month, after rac­ing passed its crowd­ing fund­ing goal.

Black Girl Fes­ti­val is a one-day fes­ti­val cel­e­brat­ing black British women – past, present and future – with work­shops, pan­el dis­cus­sions, a mar­ket­place, and entertainment.

Tak­ing place at Kachette in Lon­don on Octo­ber 29, the inau­gur­al fes­ti­val will fea­ture dis­cus­sions and work­shops from cel­e­brat­ed black women, includ­ing exec­u­tive direc­tor and co-founder of UK Black Pride, Phyll Opoku-Gyimah, award-win­ning blog­ger The Slum­flower, BBC Radio 1Xtra DJ and music jour­nal­ist Sian Ander­son, founder of Black Bal­lad, Tobi Ore­dein, and more.

Top­ics include women in media, black girls and edu­ca­tion, an explo­ration of the nat­ur­al hair move­ment, men­tal health and self-care, a work­shop chal­leng­ing mis­con­cep­tions of black moth­er­hood, a live life art ses­sion, and a ses­sion by BBZ explor­ing indi­vid­ual gen­der expres­sions and what expe­ri­ences have defined them.

Along­side the talks, arts project Black in the Day, a sub­mis­sion-based pho­to archive doc­u­ment­ing the lives and expe­ri­ences of black British peo­ple, will be host­ing a live scan­ning social. The mar­ket­place will include zines, such as Sweet Thang, books from African pub­lish­er Cas­sa­va Repub­lic, as well as black art and beau­ty products.

Enter­tain­ment will be pro­vid­ed by pod­cast trio Sistren and Gal-dem music edi­tor DJ Tone.

Organ­is­ers Paula Akpan (co-founder of the ‘I’m Tired’ Project and social media coor­di­na­tor for Gal-dem) and Nicole Crentsil (founder of Unmasked Women) aim to cre­ate a fes­ti­val that show­cas­es London’s tal­ent­ed cre­ative com­mu­ni­ty of black British women with their new festival.

Their crowd­fund­ing cam­paign began in Sep­tem­ber 2016 with an ini­tial goal of £6,000. They reached that goal on Octo­ber 3, allow­ing them to “make the entire fes­ti­val free for all to attend”. They have now post­ed a stretch goal of a fur­ther £4,000 to help pay a team of event staff, as well as to finance a Christ­mas mar­ket with black busi­ness mar­ket traders and food vendors.

Black Girl Fes­ti­val will take place at Kachette, Lon­don, on Sun­day, Octo­ber 29, from 10am to 11pm.

Free tick­ets for the var­i­ous work­shops and events can be booked via the Black Girl Fes­ti­val tick­et page. Capac­i­ty is limited.

Image: cour­tesy of Black Girl Festival