On the first of October, four of the UK’s leading spoken word acts pair up with four groundbreaking visual artists for an evening of dynamic performance, live art and unstoppable energy. Part of a month-long series of events for Punch’s BASS 15 (punchbass.com), Diaspora Britain combines art, photography and poetry into a powerful testimony of the reality of black lives in Britain today.

Diaspora Britain takes place at 18:30 on 1st October 2015, in the Millennium Point Atrium (millenniumpoint.org.uk) at Eastside, Birmingham’s cultural quarter. DIASPORA BRITAIN takes art and photography of the Black experience as its starting point; inspiring and challenging poets AKALA, SOWETO KINCH,VANESSA KISUULE and UNHINDERED REIGN to personally interpret an image to create a new and unique performance for the audience. All four images - including a live art piece that will be created during the event by ABIAN RICHARDS - will remain on show to the public throughout October at Millennium Point, to celebrate Black History Month and the 50th anniversary of the UK’s pioneering Race Relations Act.

Spoken word artists featuring in DIASPORA BRITAIN are:

  •    AKALA; widely regarded as one of the brightest talents in UK Black music, a MOBO award winning rapper, poet and journalist who is taking spoken word in new directions. His fourth album, The Thieves Banquet, was released in 2013
  •    Birmingham stalwart SOWETO KINCH is one of the most exciting and versatile players on the Jazz, Hip Hop and Spoken Word scenes., with a Mercury Music Prize nomination, two UMA Awards and MOBOs in both 2003 and 2007.
  •    Bristol’s VANESSA KISUULE is the winner of several slam poetry titles including Roundhouse Slam 2014 and

Hammer and Tongue National Slam 2014. She has performed at Glastonbury and Shambala, and her debut poetry collection 'Joyriding The Storm' was published last year.

  •    Birmingham’s UNHINDERED REIGN is a duo made up of two locally-based artists; Luci and Sipho. Together

they bring together an amalgamation of culture and stories told through spoken word poetry.

Visual artists include the ‘Godfather of Black British Photography’, VANLEY BURKE who has exhibited widely in the United Kingdom, and as far afield as New York, South Africa and China, OLIVIA TWIST who is a part of the SXWKS collective, with work featuring in the 2015 Southbank Africa Utopia programme, documentary photographer INESELSA DALAL and muralist ABIAN RICHARDS.

DIASPORA BRITAIN is curated by award-winning music development agency PUNCH (wearepunch.co.uk) and co-produced by Beatfreeks. Punch’s CEO, AMMO TALWAR MBE said; “DIASPORA BRITAIN is an example of the striking collaborations that we are happy to see more and more of in Birmingham, which is quickly becoming an open city for young artists. We are proud to commission this work as part of BASS 15.”

Tickets for DIASPORA BRITAIN are free but limited in number, and places can be reserved via Eventbrite: http://bit.ly/1J9SBAR For more information, contact Shekayla Maragh on 0121 224 7444 orThis email address is being protected from spambots. You need JavaScript enabled to view it.   .