Thu, 2 Apr 2026 6:00pm - 8:00pm
Assembly-room
| Monday | Closed |
| Tuesday | 11am–6pm |
| Wednesday | 11am–6pm |
| Thursday | 11am–9pm |
| Friday | 11am–6pm |
| Saturday | 11am–6pm |
| Sunday | 11am–6pm |
The Whitechapel Gallery is committed to making all of our events as accessible as possible for every audience member. Please contact access@whitechapelgallery.org if you would like to discuss a particular request and we will gladly discuss with you the best way to accommodate it.
– Information about access on site at the gallery is available here.
– This includes information about Lift access; Borrowing wheelchairs & seating; Assistance Animals; Parking; Toilets and baby care facilities; Blind & Partially Sighted Visitors; Subtitles and transcripts; British Sign Language (BSL) and hearing induction loops; Deaf Messaging Service (DMS).
Transport
– To the best of our knowledge, there are no planned disruptions to local transport on the date of the event.
– Our nearest train station – Aldgate East Underground (1 min) is not wheelchair accessible. The closest wheelchair accessible stations are Whitechapel (15 min), Shoreditch High Street (15 min) or Liverpool Street (15 min).
– Free parking for Blue Badge holders is available at the top of Osborn Street in the pay and display booths for an unlimited period.
– Spaces are available on a first come, first served basis
This participatory workshop draws from South African storytelling traditions of Call & Response, where language is embodied, reciprocal, and collective. Through ukuzimamela — listening to the body as an archive of memory and language — participants will explore the words, proverbs, and wisdoms carried through families, elders, and nature. South African beadwork offers another poetic entry point, where beads, like words, are codes, messages, and carriers of memory. Together the group will turn towards the materiality of home and heritage, imagining the languages they hold. The workshop culminates in praise poetry, honouring tongues and traditions while re-threading our own histories into poetic form.
Participants are encouraged to bring an object that reminds them of home, family and heritage or have an image of the object to refer to.
Babel’s Blessing has been hosting ESOL and Spanish Classes at Whitechapel Gallery since November 2025. Join this workshop to celebrate the end of term with us.
Free, pre-booking required.
Nomakhwezi Becker is a South African–German performer, writer, and facilitator working through poetry, theatre, and storytelling. Her work explores memory, language, and belonging across diasporic lineages. A Barbican Young Poet (24 & 25) and 2025 Starting Blocks artist, her recent works include Holding Ground and Waiting for Lift Off. She has performed internationally and been published in several anthologies.
Babel’s Blessing are a grassroot language school set up in summer 2015. They run affordable language classes for adults in a number of languages that are politically relevant for our communities. The income generated helps them to run a programme of free English classes for migrants, refugees and asylum seekers.
Babel’s Blessing see language learning as being about cultural exchange, community building, and a way for members of diaspora communities to reconnect with their/our heritage.
In their classes, they talk about politics, culture, art and history through language as it is spoken – valuing street language and varied accents rather than one ‘correct’ version.
