Free entry
Sat, 21 Feb 2026 11.30am - 2.30pm
Gallery 5
| 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
Join Xenia for a conversation and mapping workshop exploring welcome – where we feel it, how we create it, and what it means politically to welcome and be welcomed.
We’ll share stories of hospitality and solidarity, map our experiences and resources of welcome in London, and imagine together what a truly welcoming city could look like.
Using Xenia’s practice of conversation as a means to learn and organise across difference, alongside feminist counter-mapping, we’ll make visible where welcome exists and where it’s absent – in our daily lives, across London’s streets and through national borders.
This workshop revisits the theme of the very first Xenia session in 2016, held at the Anti-University Festival, as a challenge to both the inaccessibility of ESOL classes for women in London and a state-sanctioned hostile environment to migrants in the UK. Ten years later, we’re still asking how we create and practise welcome.
Xenia has been in residence at Whitechapel Gallery since October 2025, alongside Joy Gregory’s exhibition Catching Flies with Honey. Join us for our final, celebratory Saturday workshop inside the Fierce and Fearless installation.
Free, with no booking required.
The workshop takes place from 11.30am to 2pm with a refreshments break around 1pm.
Xenia workshops are informal but they do have a beginning, middle and end. So please join in the conversation for as long or as little as you like. No booking required.
Xenia provides childcare and travel support for those who need it.
Xenia workshops welcome all women, we are trans+ inclusive and celebratory.
Xenia workshops are primarily held in English, providing space for women, of all levels, to practice and speak in English. We are also a multi-lingual space where conversation happens in many languages.
Xenia is a migrant-centred women’s organisation, based in London and Sheffield, organising through conversation. Xenia brings together women from different backgrounds to connect, share and learn. In particular we welcome women learning English to participate alongside women who speak fluent English, using Xenia sessions as a time to connect with people you wouldn’t otherwise meet and learn about each other’s perspectives through friendship and shared learning. Each Saturday morning from 10am to 12pm, Xenia gather in Fierce and Fearless at Whitechapel Gallery to meet, exchange stories and learn English, using objects and stories from our shared histories. We welcome all women who want to drop in and join the session: https://www.xenia.org.uk/about
