About this Event
"It’s all right to be silent inside a library but never about a library”. —Ngũgĩ wa Thiong’o, in his Foreword to by Shiraz Duranni, 2014.
“The technology of the word, both oral and scribal—those noises in the blood and the reverberating echoes in the bone—facilitates dialogue within a rehumanised community”. —Carolyn Cooper, , 1993.
“It is time to recognize the noises in the Archives as knowledge.” —Stanley Griffin, , 2021.
What, who, and indeed for whom is a library? What kind of noises do libraries make and how do they live, thrive, reverberate, and endure beyond mere survival? How can we understand and animate the vitality and power dynamics of libraries and archives beyond bricks and mortar, books and records, bits and bytes? What is at stake in these questions?
Join us in May 2026 for an exciting in-person public film and discussion series, which addresses these questions and more, showcasing how the vehicle of film can mobilise decolonial and racialised struggles for knowledge justice via the spaces, practices, and people that constitute libraries.
Featuring four films across three events, including dialogues with directors, librarians, and cultural heritage practitioners, this series exposes and animates the hidden histories, contemporary challenges, and reparative futures of libraries and archives in a range of local and global contexts.
At a time when the vital connections between collections of knowledge and people are under serious threat, we invite you to engage in these films and conversations to address the urgent challenge of preserving, sustaining, and transforming living libraries into spaces of liberatory learning.
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This programme of events is funded by the University College London (UCL) Arts and Humanities Dean’s Strategic Development Fund, and is part of the UCL200 bicentenary programme. It co-organised and co-hosted by a collective of scholar-activists and librarians based at UCL (Departments of Information Studies and Anthropology), the Institute of Advanced Legal Studies Library (IALS), and Kings College London Library.
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Soon after the three evening screening events, we aim to host a follow-up workshop for audiences who have attended any or all of the events to participate in a co-creative session that reflects on our collective learning from the films, discussions, and their reverberations (further details and sign-up options to follow). Here we will gather and ground ourselves through resounding themes connecting each event and discuss how to weave, store, and make accessible knowledges that are all-too-often gatekept by institutions that are—in the words of a narrator in iwoyi: within the echo—“confined by rules that never acknowledged [y]our existence”. Indeed, as another narrator in the same film puts it: “the only way we can regenerate is in community”.
The aim of this follow-up session is to collectively document our reflections, hopes, and calls to action, thereby planting seedlings towards a legacy blueprint for how institutions such as UCL and research libraries (and attendant big tech corporations) can work for us without exploiting and co-opting the core of what we share and who we are.
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Film Screening 1: Are You a Librarian: The Untold Story of Black Librarians
When: Tuesday 12th May 18:00 – 21:00
Where: Sir David Davies Lecture Theatre, Roberts Building, University College London (enter from Malet Place)
What: Please join us for a free screening of the award-winning, Are You a Librarian: The Untold Story of Black Librarians (Directed and Produced by Rodney E. Feeman, Written by Asia Haris).
This recently-released documentary uncovers the hidden legacy of Black librarians—from the era of slavery and segregation to today’s battles over book bans and intellectual freedom. Through powerful interviews, archival footage, and expert insights, the film tells the story of how Black librarians transformed underfunded and segregated spaces into vital cultural and educational hubs for their communities. The screening will be followed by a discussion between UK-based Black librarians about the insights, memories and absences provoked by this documentary.
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Film Screening 2: How to Build a Library
When: Tuesday 19th May 18:30 – 21:30
Where: Institute of Advanced Legal Studies Lecture Theatre, Charles Clore House, 17 Russell Square, London, WC1B 5DR
What: All welcome for a free screening of How to Build a Library (Circle and Square Productions), a feature documentary following Shiro and Wachuka as they set out to transform Nairobi’s McMillan Memorial Library – once a whites-only colonial institution – into a vibrant, inclusive cultural commons. As they navigate political constraints, funding challenges, and competing public expectations, their work reveals the complexities of remaking a cultural institution shaped by colonial histories. Blending intimate, character-driven storytelling with archival material, directors Maia Lekow and Christopher King explore how libraries function as sites of memory, de/coloniality, power, and knowledge production. The film offers a nuanced reflection on what it means to reclaim, repair, reinterpret, and rebuild shared cultural heritage in the present.
The screening will be followed by a conversation with the film’s directors, alongside invited speakers, reflecting on libraries, decolonisation, and the role of cultural institutions in shaping more just and inclusive futures.
Please note: This event is the evening component of the (Tuesday 19th May 09:30 – 17:30) taking place the same day, which is open to all.
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Film Screening 3: Blackness in the Library: Changes in Light & iwoyi: within the echo (double bill)
When: Thursday 28th May 18:30 - 21:00
Where: Institute of Advanced Legal Studies (IALS) Lecture Theatre, Charles Clore House, 17 Russell Square, London, WC1B 5DR
What: DREAMING, MOVING, TRANSGRESSING. Blackness in the Library invites the participants to dynamically co-create an inspiring, immersive space of knowledges and practices within, across, and beyond the boundaries of libraries. It is a film evening for us all to pursue reparative futures envisioned by the Black radical imagination.
During the event, two short films emerging from London library cultural programmes will be shown – Changes in Light (2024: commissioned by the Institute of Advanced Legal Studies) and iwoyi: within the echo (2024: commissioned by Dr Aleema Gray and the British Library). The screenings will be followed by dialogue between librarians, filmmakers, performers, and curators.
ABOUT THE FILMS
Changes in Light (Moving image, 2024, 18m 32s) Created by screendance artist Anna Macdonald during her residency at the Institute of Advanced Legal Studies Library, this short film explores staff-led decolonising work to reposition Commonwealth law collections within the library. Developed through movement workshops with library staff, the film captures embodied experiences of space, change, and institutional transformation, asking how libraries might be reimagined through both physical and affective shifts.
iwoyi: within the echo (Moving image, 2024, 9m 19s) This short film by Rohan Ayinde and Tayo Rapoport draws on Black British music to create an Afro-surrealist journey across past, present, and speculative futures. Developed from a multi-channel installation commissioned for the British Library’s Beyond the Bassline exhibition, the film constructs a multisensory exploration of memory, sound, and the reparative possibilities of Black cultural expression.
Event Venue & Nearby Stays
UCL Bloomsbury Campus, Gower Street, London, United Kingdom
GBP 0.00
