The Strength Between Us

12.00–14.15 & 15.30–17.00 | Reel News Presents…
Assembly Room

A looping selection of archival footage documenting historic struggles for justice, curated by Reel News, a London-based activist video collective, using film to help bring about social change.

12.05–12.45 | They Shall Not Pass: The Battle of Cable Street
Zilkha Auditorium

October 1936: three thousand fascists led by Oswald Mosley march on Cable Street in the heart of the Jewish East End. Six thousand Metropolitan Police officers are on hand to defend them. But London’s socialists, trade unionists, immigrants and dock workers are ready to repel the fascists – and their message is clear and united: ‘They shall not pass!’

This film features Steven Berkoff’s vivid reading of his own dramatic version of the Battle of Cable Street, accompanied by archive footage.

14.30–17.45 | Radical Film School Presents…
Zilkha Auditorium

A selection of films that reflect the anti-fascist legacy of Cable Street in contemporary, internationalist movements. Films by and curated by Radical Film School, a free programme for filmmakers dedicated to experimental, political cinema.

13.00–14.10 | Cursed Objects Live Podcast! Cable Street, Memory and Tat
Zilkha Auditorium

Podcast creators and hosts, historian Dr Kasia Tomasiewicz and writer Dan Hancox, are joined by guests Anindya Bhattacharyya and Ben Rogaly to discuss what happens when radical histories get commodified, how the Cable Street mural shapes memory in East London, and how the history of local grassroots resistance to Mosley and the BUF has been deployed in more recent anti-fascist struggles.

The podcast brings its motto – ‘what if cultural studies was more fun?’ – to bear on a Battle of Cable Street commemorative tea towel, exploring the relationship between radical history, memory and the objects through which we remember it.

14.15–15.30 | Panel Discussion: On Culture and Community
Assembly Room

A discussion on the new voices, movements, creative responses and forms of communication emerging to tackle injustice now. Chaired by K. Biswas, writer, critic and Chair of Resonance FM, and featuring contributions from Maxine Thomas-Asante, a lead for the Power of Pop Fund, and Yassmin Abdel-Magied, author, screenwriter and award-winning social advocate.

Please note, workshops have a limited capacity. We encourage participants to arrive early to secure a place.

12.30–14.00 | Advocacy Academy
Creative Studio

How do young people organise to shape the future of their communities? Led by young organisers from The Advocacy Academy, this interactive workshop explores how communities build power, imagine alternatives and turn ambitious ideas for a better world into action.

Drawing connections between the Battle of Cable Street and contemporary struggles for place and community, we’ll explore what it means to organise around the spaces that shape our lives. Through games, storytelling and participatory activities, facilitators will take you inside Buy Back Brixton, the live campaign to bring Brixton Village and Market Row into community ownership, and explore the tactics used to mobilise people, organise money and shape a shared vision for community-led stewardship of Brixton’s markets.

15.30–16.45 | Three Hijabis
Creative Studio

Join Football for the Future, a fanzine-making workshop led by Three Hijabis, an award-winning group of social justice entrepreneurs and anti-racism and equalities campaigners.

What would football look like if it was truly anti-racist and decolonised? We’ll discuss football, belonging, safety, decolonisation and anti-racism, exploring these themes through politic somatics and crafting. By the end of the session, participants will have the chance to create their own fanzine booklet.

17.00–17.45 | Performance: Poetic Unity
Assembly Room

A selection of contemporary poets lead a collective performance celebrating resistance and unity. Featuring performances by Lara Grace Ilori, Joshua Aketse-Entsie, and Mr Reed, organised in partnership with Poetic Unity – a Black-led charity tackling racism through poetry and social action.

16.00 | Anti-Fascist Pasta Party
Alba Caffè

As an act of joyful resistance against fascism, Alba Caffè will be bringing free pasta to the people. Inspired by the historic Anti-Fascist Pasta Party (pastasciutta antifascista) of 1943, when the partisan Cervi family served hundreds of kilos of forbidden pasta to their entire village to celebrate Mussolini’s downfall, Alba chefs and volunteers will be serving up the same democratic dish – steaming bowls of pasta with lashings of butter and parmesan – to East London’s diverse communities, with the simple goal of bringing people together in solidarity.

Served on a first-come, first-served basis and free while stocks last.

12.00–17.45 | Rest & Resources
Study Studio

Take a break in this quiet space and enjoy books and other resources related to the programme, including a specially curated selection from Lit in Colour, a programme started by Penguin Books and the Runnymede Trust to connect more children and young people with books by authors of colour. With special thanks to Penguin Books for generously providing copies of these titles for this weekend programme.

Further resources on programme partners and The Strength Between Us campaign are available from stalls in the foyer, with a wide range of titles for sale at Koenig Books, Whitechapel Gallery’s onsite shop.

12.00–14.15 & 15.30–17.00 | Reel News Presents…
Assembly Room

A looping selection of archival footage documenting historic struggles for justice, curated by Reel News, a London-based activist video collective, using film to help bring about social change.

12.15–12.55 | They Shall Not Pass: The Battle of Cable Street
Zilkha Auditorium

October 1936: three thousand fascists led by Oswald Mosley march on Cable Street in the heart of the Jewish East End. Six thousand Metropolitan Police officers are on hand to defend them. But London’s socialists, trade unionists, immigrants and dock workers are ready to repel the fascists – and their message is clear and united: ‘They shall not pass!’

This film features Steven Berkoff’s vivid reading of his own dramatic version of the Battle of Cable Street, accompanied by archive footage.

13.00–17.45 | Radical Film School Presents…
Zilkha Auditorium

A selection of films that reflect the anti-fascist legacy of Cable Street in contemporary, internationalist movements. Films by and curated by Radical Film School, a free programme for filmmakers dedicated to experimental, political cinema.

14.15–15.30 | Panel Discussion: On Communities and Collaboration
Assembly Room

A discussion on how communities can come together for racial and social justice, the conditions needed for successful alliances, and inspiring examples from the past that can help shape our futures. Chaired by Shabna Begum, CEO of the Runnymede Trust, and featuring contributions from journalist and author Taj Ali, artist, writer and political organiser Joshua Virasami, and Samira Ali, a member of Together Alliance and founder of Women Against The Far Right.

Please note, workshops have a limited capacity. We encourage participants to arrive early to secure a place.

12.30–14.00 | Harm to Healing
Creative Studio

An interactive workshop led by Harm to Healing, a community-led organisation run by members impacted by racialised criminalisation.

In this workshop, we’ll explore how we currently respond to harm – in our workplaces, schools, healthcare settings and communities – and what these approaches make possible. From there, we’ll create space to reimagine these systems by drawing on transformative justice approaches and principles, and think through what justice could look like if we started by centring healing, repair and collective power.

15.30–16.45 | Healing Justice London
Creative Studio

An interactive workshop on collective care and political organising, led by Dr. Tarek Younis from Healing Justice Ldn, which builds community-led health and healing to create capacity for personal and structural transformation.

12.00–18.00 | East Mend banner by Aya Haider
Assembly Room

East Mend is one of five banners created through ‘Material Histories’, a project by Oxford House in Bethnal Green, supported by The National Lottery Heritage Fund as part of ‘Made in the East End’. The banner was created by an intergenerational community group at Oxford House in collaboration with commissioned artist Aya Haidar. Together, they explored the East End’s rich textile heritage, connecting its history of making and mending with the experiences and creativity of communities living in the area today.

17.00–17.45 | Listening Session: Linett Kamala
Assembly Room

A final session bringing everyone together through the collective power of music, with a performance by the acclaimed interdisciplinary artist, educator and carnivalist Linett Kamala. Be prepared to be taken on an empowering and uplifting sonic journey through specially selected tracks from across genres.

12.00–17.45 | Rest & Resources
Study Studio

Take a break in this quiet space and enjoy books and other resources related to the programme, including a specially curated selection from Lit in Colour, a programme started by Penguin Books and the Runnymede Trust to connect more children and young people with books by authors of colour. With special thanks to Penguin Books for generously providing copies of these titles for this weekend programme.

Further resources on programme partners and The Strength Between Us campaign are available from stalls in the foyer, with a wide range of titles for sale at Koenig Books, Whitechapel Gallery’s onsite shop.

We believe that young people should have the power to lead change on the issues shaping their lives. That’s why The Advocacy Academy (TAA) is a home for youth organising in the UK: building the power of young people with lived experience of injustice to organise, build community and take collective action. Over our 11-year legacy, we have supported young people to build campaigns driving systemic change. These include The Halo Collective, challenging afro hair discrimination; Choked Up, fighting for the right to breathe clean air; and Buy Back Brixton, organising alongside local traders to bring Brixton Village and Market Row into community ownership. Now, we’re building on that legacy to grow a movement of youth organising across the UK: digging deep through place-based and intergenerational organising in Brixton; going big through national campaigns; and bedding in the infrastructure, resources and hubs needed for youth organising to flourish nationwide. https://theadvocacyacademy.com/

Anindya Bhattacharyya is a former UAF and ANL press officer and activist, journalist and Whitechapel resident. You can read his essay ‘What is Fascism?’ on rs21 here.

Aya Haider is an artist whose international solo and group exhibitions include The Whitworth (Manchester), Kettle’s Yard (Cambridge), Cromwell Place (London), Cubitt (London), Art Berlin Contemporary (Germany), Athr Gallery (Jeddah), Bischoff Weiss (London), New Art Exchange (Nottingham), Jeddah 21,39 (KSA), Mosaic Rooms (London), Casa Arabe (Madrid), Beirut Art Week (Beirut), FIAC (Paris), Frieze Art Fair (London), Art Dubai (UAE), Abu Dhabi Art (UAE), Art Istanbul (Turkey). Aya has been involved in numerous social engagement projects, including Kettle’s Yard, PEER, The Camden Arts Center, Shubbak Festival, Mosaic Rooms’ Together Apart: Lockdown Diaries, INIVA’s A Place for Conversation, V&A’s Stitching Borders and Record, Resist, Reframe, Tate’s Illuminating Cultures program and INIVA’s Emotional Learning Cards, as well as being selected for Hans Ulrich Obrist and Hoor Al Qasemi’s Do It Arab project (2016). https://www.instagram.com/iamayahaidar/

Ben Rogaly writes on Yiddish songs as a source of hope and solidarity and a resource for resistance in a time of genocide. His current project (with Samuel Solomon) is called ‘Facing the trouble: cultural workers in Yiddishland, political Zionism, and the movement for Palestinian liberation’. His books include Stories from a Migrant City: Living and Working Together in the Shadow of Brexit.

The Cursed Objects podcast has been running since 2021. Since then, it has racked up over 150,000 downloads, 100 episodes, and a hit exhibition at the Peltz Gallery in Bloomsbury. There are no witches, cauldrons or spells on Cursed Objects – the objects are ‘cursed’ in the sense that they are shaped by the politics, society and culture around them – and they tell fascinating stories about the world we live in.

Dan Hancox is a journalist, writing and editing for the Guardian and others. His latest book is Multitudes: How Crowds Made the Modern World.

Harm to Healing is growing an ecosystem that builds power for communities impacted by racialised criminalisation to create systems of healing, safety and justice. https://www.harmtohealing.org/

Healing Justice Ldn is building towards a world with abundant and accessible community health and healing. This vision for the future includes liberation from structural and systemic oppressions including carceral systems and securitisation with freedom from intimate, intergenerational, and interpersonal violence.

Joshua Aketse-Entsie, known on stage as Jae Poetry, is a dynamic poet and actor, deeply engaged in using the power of words to uplift and inspire communities. Jae Poetry has hosted, performed, and directed numerous poetry events. His work has connected art, heritage, and social advocacy, including collaborations with the Black Cultural Archives to explore and celebrate Black British history. Through his poetry, Jae Poetry has amplified voices and stories from the community, including leading discussions with local councils on behalf of marginalized groups.

Joshua Virasami is an artist, writer and political organiser whose work intersects across political struggles and whose campaigning sits in a variety of organisations. He has been involved in various movements including Occupy and Black Lives Matter. Joshua uses writing, film, music and direct action to educate, agitate and organise toward social change. As well as being a political activist in the UK, Virasami has spent time studying and travelling in Balochistan, Kurdistan, Mauritius and over eighteen countries around the world.

K. Biswas is a critic who has written for the New Statesman, The Observer, New York Times, The Nation, Le Monde Diplomatique, The Baffler, and the Times Literary Supplement. He is the Editor of Representology: The Journal of Media and Diversity, and Director of Europe’s largest community radio station, Resonance FM.

Dr Kasia Tomasciewicz is a cultural historian focusing on museums, memory studies and modern British history. She teaches at King’s College London.

Lara Grace Ilori, a born and raised South Londoner from Streatham, has headlined at venues across the UK, including Brixton House, Bush Theatre, and Empower Poetry, and has developed her craft in New York, South Carolina, and Nigeria. A Cultural Leader at Poetic Unity and a Soho Theatre Writer’s Lab alumna, she also facilitates poetry workshops for all ages, enjoys performing with music, and has created work for campaigns and film screenings, including Cuckoo Broadband and We Are Parable.

Linett Kamala is widely recognised as the ‘Sound System Queen’, being credited as one of the first female DJs to perform on a sound system at Notting Hill Carnival. She now serves as a Board Director, and hosts a new wellness space within the festival. Her creative practice centres on amplifying wellness through a range of roles including DJ, artist, academic, community organiser, creative producer and Founding Director of LIN KAM ART. Each year, her work annually engages with thousands of people, such as her innovative light and sonic installations which reimagine sound system as a tool for wellness. https://www.instagram.com/linett_kamala

Maxine Thomas-Asante is a thought leader in the UK cultural strategy field. She drives the Power of Pop Fund, a pooled fund supporting organisations who use arts, creativity and entertainment to advance justice. Maxine’s work is in service to the power of art and entertainment to mobilise mass audiences towards hopeful futures. Her work advancing justice has engaged both the education and funding sectors, as a researcher, consultant, facilitator, grant maker and, currently, fund lead. Her work proactively centres the voices of communities, from her earliest days in student politics to, now, championing community voices through pop culture and narrative shift.

Mr Reed started writing poetry as a therapeutic hobby to help him deal with the pressures of adult life, it wasn’t long after that he fell in love with the open mic poetry scene that London had to offer with Poetic Unity being one of the earliest places he honed his talent. Mr Reed went on to win “Best Poet” at the 2020 UK Entertainment awards, has built up a creative portfolio online with thought provoking poetry releases, and has been performing at various events since 2018, including the MOBO awards 2020.

Poetic Unity is a Black-led charity tackling racism through poetry and social action. Since 2015 Poetic Unity has created spaces of joy, connection and empowerment for over 60,000 young people from Brixton to the world.

Find out more about Poetic Unity:

@PoeticUnity

www.PoeticUnity.org.uk

Reel News is a London-based activist video collective, using film to help bring about social change. In a world where everyone is increasingly affected by pandemics, climate change, austerity and war, we work with the growing number of campaigns (often ignored by mainstream media) which are not only fighting back, but winning too – not just in the UK, but across the world. Reel News is completely independent and non-aligned. We are against sectarianism in all its forms, anti-capitalist in outlook, against the anti-trade union laws and in favour of mass collective action in the workplace and on the streets to change society. https://reelnews.co.uk/

Samira Ali is a member of Together Alliance and founder of Women Against The Far Right.

Dr Shabna Begum is CEO of the Runnymede Trust. She joined the Runnymede Trust in 2021 as a Senior Researcher and worked her way up to become Director of Research before being appointed as CEO in May 2024. Her work has been at the heart of all the Runnymede Trust’s recent projects, including research on police in schools, art curriculum, the cost-of-living crisis, the experiences of women of colour in the workplace, and racism in migration debates. Before Runnymede, she was a teacher for over two decades, teaching Politics and Sociology in London secondary comprehensive schools. She completed her PhD at Queen Mary University London, School of Geography where she remains an Honorary Research Fellow. She is also author of From Sylhet to Spitalfields: Bengali Squatters in 1970s East London (2023).

Taj Ali is a journalist and historian. He is the former editor of Tribune Magazine and author of the new book, Come What May, We’re Here to Stay: The Story of South Asian Resistance in Britain

Dr Tarek Younis is the Racial Justice Researcher at Healing Justice London and Clinical Director of the Coming Home project. His teaching, writings and clinical work centre on state violence, liberal racism and Islamophobia in mental health, collective care in movements, as well as the politics of psychology. He is the author of the book The Muslim, State and Mind: Psychology in Times of Islamophobia.

Three Hijabis is an award-winning group of social justice entrepreneurs and anti-racism and equalities campaigners. We are focused on making change in the sports and culture space – because this space is owned by the people and it is accessible to everyone. It’s the space where everyday lives play out Where culture and attitudes are both reflected and formed. Where culture and attitudes are both reflected and formed. Football, in particular, is a microcosm of what’s happening in wider society, the good, the bad and the ugly, racism, misogyny, and gender based violence. Football, sports and cultural spaces, connect us to each other, the wider world and enable us to create communities. It’s a space where social transformation can take place – and lasting attitudinal change can happen. https://threehijabis.com

Yassmin Abdel-Magied is a Sudanese diaspora author, screenwriter and award-winning social advocate. A former mechanical engineer, Abdel-Magied’s debut literary novel At Sea was a Dua Lipa Service95 ‘must read’ for 2026. Previous titles include action-packed teen fantasy Silverbrook: Yumna and the Golden Horse, essay collection Talking About a Revolution and two novels for younger readers, You Must Be Layla and the award-winning Listen, Layla. Yassmin is currently a writer on British continuing drama Emmerdale and her original drama series Cruise Control is in development with the BBC. The creator of eyesonsudan.net and adviser on the sudandigitalarchive.com, Yassmin is dedicated to the civilian movement in Sudan and the celebration and amplification of Sudanese culture. In all her work, Yassmin is an advocate for transformative justice and a fairer, safer world for all.