The Serendipity Institute for Black Arts and Heritage will host a one-day conference centering on the following theme: “Mapping Creole Worlds, Diasporic Futures and the Stories Britain Forgot.” This conference will take place at the institute on Thursday, November 5, 2026, from 10:00am to 7:00pm (£120.00 – £135.00; early bird tickets are available until 30 June). The speakers slated for 2026 are Verene A Shepherd, Bob Ramdhanie MBE, Stephen Small, Stella Dadzie, Michael McMillan, and Roshini Kempadoo. The Serendipity Institute for Black Arts and Heritage is located at 8 Bowling Green Street, Leicester, UK.
Description: Black Heritage Voices is a conference dedicated to uniting professionals from Black communities working across the heritage sector, including archivists, researchers, audience engagement practitioners, community historians, heritage programmers and those in leadership roles.
This year’s theme centres on creole identities, hidden heritage and the after lives of empire, the stories that shaped Britain yet remain marginal, obscured, or selectively omitted from the national record. By mapping creole worlds and the complex cultural exchanges that define African and Caribbean Diasporic experience, the conference interrogates how contemporary Britain continues to negotiate visibility, belonging and power.
We explore how these narratives intersect with neo-colonial realities, where old hierarchies reappear in new forms from funding structures to museological practices and how they shape whose histories are elevated, whose are overlooked and how heritage is framed for public consumption. This lens opens critical conversations about cultural authorship, archival responsibility and the need to reimagine the structures that hold our histories.
Through sessions focusing on creativity, digital innovation, community-led practice and the politics of historical interpretation, Black Heritage Voices invites delegates to challenge dominant perspectives and contribute to a broader shift towards narratives that honour complexity, hybridity and lived experience. The aim is not only to recover what has been forgotten, but to change the gaze, asserting Diasporic stories as central, not peripheral, to Britain’s past, present and future.
Speakers for Black Heritage Voices 2026:
Professor Verene A Shepherd, world-renowned historian and one of the Caribbean’s pre-eminent scholars and advocates for gender justice, racial equality and non-discrimination and reparations. She is currently one of the three vice-chairs of the CARICOM Reparations Commission.
Dr Stella Dazie, Black British feminist and activist. She is a founding member of the Organisation of Women of African and Asian Descent (OWAAD) and co-author of The Heart of the Race: Black Women’s Lives in Britain.
Dr Michael McMillan, playwright, artist, curator and scholar. Known for the critically acclaimed The Front Room, his interdisciplinary practice centres around the praxis of ‘the creative process, ethnography, oral histories, material culture and performativity’.
Professor Stephen Small, a Professor in the Department of African Diaspora Studies at the University of California, Berkeley, where he has taught since 1995; and he is Director of the Institute for the Study of Societal Issues. He is a faculty member of the Black Europe Summer School – a two-week programme in Amsterdam, founded and directed for Dr Kwame Nimako. He earned his PhD in Sociology at the University of California, Berkeley (1989). His most recent book is In the Shadows of the Big House. Twenty-First Century Antebellum Slave Cabins and Heritage Tourism in Louisiana, published by University Press of Mississippi, in June 2023.
Dr Bob Ramdhanie, festival director for Rapununi Music & Arts Festival. He has worked in the UK arts for over 40 years, where he established the Handsworth Cultural Centre, the CAVE Arts Centre, Kakuma Dance Company and the cappella quintet Black Voices. In 2011, Ramdhanie was awarded the 1st Arts and Cultural Entrepreneur Lifetime Achievement Award by the Drum Arts Centre and he was awarded an MBE in 2018 for his contribution to dance in the UK.
Professor Roshini Kempadoo, media artist, photographer and scholar. She is Reader with CREAM (Centre for Research and Education in Arts and Media) at Westminster School of Arts, University of Westminster and is represented by Autograph ABP, London.
For more information, and to book, go to https://www.serendipity-uk.com/event/black-heritage-voices-2026/; Email: info@serendipity-uk.com
The Serendipity Institute for Black Arts and Heritage will host a one-day conference centering on the following theme: “Mapping Creole Worlds, Diasporic Futures and the Stories Britain Forgot.” This conference will take place at the institute on Thursday, November 5, 2026, from 10:00am to 7:00pm (£120.00 – £135.00; early bird tickets are available until 30
