East London

• Centerprise 136 Kingsland High Street, E8 2NS Centerprise was a ground-breaking community centre, publishing project, bookshop and café active between 1971 and 2012.
• The Four Aces Club 12 Dalston Lane, E8 2LX The Four Aces Club was a pioneering music space. Established in 1966, it was one of the first venues in the United Kingdom to play music by Black artists.
• Feminist Library Pamphlet Collection at Bishopsgate Institute 230 Bishopsgate, EC2M 4QH The Feminist Library Pamphlet Collection compiled over thirty-five years, offers insights to women’s lives across the world. The collection also gives a comprehensive view of the Women’s Liberation Movement. The collection’s diversity is not limited to the subject matter – material ranges from grey unpublished literature and official reports to campaign literature and ephemera.
• Theatre of Black Women 136 Kingsland High Street, E8 2NS Theatre of Black Women was Britain's first Black women's theatre company active in the 1980s. It was founded by Bernardine Evaristo, Patricia Hilaire and Paulette Randal.
• Cardinal Heenan Centre 326 High Road, IG1 1QP Cardinal Heenan Centre is a community centre in Ilford. It provides accommodation and facilities to community groups, who in turn offer services to and for the local population.
• Centre 151 – Vietnam, Laos & Cambodia supporting the community 151 Whiston Road, E2 8GU Centre 151 is an independent charity based in the heart of Hackney, promoting culture, arts and community integration at every level. The Centre offers a wide range of activities and amenities for the benefit of local and wider communities.
• East London Mosque 446-450 Commercial Road, E1 0JN 82-92 Whitechapel Road, E1 1JQ The East London Mosque was inaugurated in three adjacent houses on Commercial Road in 1940. Following successful fundraising, a purpose-built mosque was opened in 1985 on Whitechapel Road, which became home to the East London Mosque and later expanded to include the London Muslim Centre.
• Brick Lane Jamme Masjid 59 Brick Lane, E1 6QL The building now known as the Brick Lane Jamme Masjid was built in 1743-4 as the Neuve Eglise, a French Protestant chapel. In 1897 it was acquired by a Lithuanian Orthodox Jewish group known as the Mahzikei Hadas ('Strengtheners of the Faith') and converted to become the Spitalfields Great Synagogue. In the second half of the twentieth century the Jewish population dispersed to the suburbs, making way for a new wave of Muslim immigrants from eastern India and Bangladesh; the synagogue fell into disuse for a time before becoming a mosque in 1976.
• Rio Cinema 107 Kingsland High Street, E8 2PB The original building that houses the Rio was converted into one of London's very first cinemas in 1909 by Clara Ludski, who named it the Kingsland Palace of Animated Pictures. Over the years, the cinema expanded and changed owners several times. In April 1976 the Rio was established as an independent cooperative took over, and since 1979 it has been run as a notfor-profit registered charity with an elected board of local people who act as volunteer trustees.
• Tower Hamlets Local History Library and Archives 277 Bancroft Road, E1 4DQ Tower Hamlets Local History Library and Archives holds unique resources on the history of the London Borough of Tower Hamlets created from the former Metropolitan Boroughs of Bethnal Green, Poplar and Stepney.
• Ridley Road Market Ridley Road, E8 2NP Ridley Road has been home to the market in the heart of Dalston since the end of 1880s. The market consists of around 150 stalls offering a diverse range of international produce.
• Valence Library Becontree Avenue, RM8 3HT Valence library is a local library located in Barking and Dagenham. In 2021, it will turn into a Becontree Centenary Arts and Culture Hub to bring together a series of performances, workshops, commissions, courses and family activities in partnership with local organisations.
• Jagonari Women's Centre 183-185 Whitechapel Road, E1 1DN Over 30 years Jagonari Women's Centre offered crucial support and education for local women and represented part of the wider collective action of the Bengali community in Tower Hamlets. The building for the Centre was designed by London-based feminist architects’ practice Matrix
• Island Social Club 258 Kingsland Road, E8 4DG Island Social Club was founded in 2016 by Joseph Pilgrim and Marie Mitchell. It aims to fill the void left by the erosion of London’s once thriving Caribbean social scene through re-rooting British Caribbean culture. Together they produce undiluted and exciting encounters between food, drink and people to give a modern, diverse London community license to experience contemporary Caribbean culture and diversify London’s social scene.

South London

• West Indian Gazette 250 Brixton Road, SW9 6AQ West Indian Gazette was a newspaper founded by Claudia Jones in Brixton and widely considered to have been Britain's first major black newspaper. It operated between 1958-1965.
• 198 Contemporary Arts and Learning 198 Railton Road, SE24 0JT Founded in 1988 as Roots Community, 198 is a contemporary art space dedicated to nurturing and supporting the careers of emerging, under-represented artists and to the advancement of public interest in the visual arts.
• Chaconia 26 Deptford High Street, SE8 4AF Chaconia is a take-away in London that offers traditional Caribbean cuisine, specialising in roti from Trinidad & Tobago.
• Umana Yana 294 Croxted Road, SE24 9DA Umana Yana is a restaurant that specialises in Guyanese food prepared daily by the owner. Blueprint for All 39 Brookmill Road, SE8 4HU
• Blueprint for All 39 Brookmill Road, SE8 4HU Established in 1998 as The Stephen Lawrence Charitable Trust, after the murder of Stephen Lawrence in 1993, Blueprint for All is a centre for community learning and social research inspiring and motivating young people. It also acts as a hub where industry, community organisations and educational institutions can exchange information on urban design and regeneration.
• The Young Vic 66 The Cut, SE1 8LZ The Young Vic is a performing arts venue, established in 1970 as an offshoot of the Old Vic. It is dedicated to supporting new directors and artists working in theatre and performance today.
• Brixton Market Electric Avenue, SW9 8JX Brixton Market is an undercover market, which in the twentieth century became a thriving hub for the local Caribbean community. The Market began on Atlantic Road in the 1870s and subsequently spread to Brixton Road. Electric Avenue built in the 1880s was one of the first streets to have electric lights.
• Fazl Mosque 16 Gressenhall Road, SW18 5QL The Fazl Mosque also known as The London Mosque, is the first purpose-built mosque in London opened in 1926.
• The Albany Douglas Way, SE8 4AG The Albany is an arts centre in the heart of Deptford, which houses two studio theatres, a performance café, rehearsal and meeting rooms and a bar. It was originally established in 1894 as The Deptford Fund to improve the plight of local people and opened its first building, the Albany Institute in 1899. It became the Albany Empire in the 1970s, renowned as a pioneering home for radical community arts. The building was destroyed by fire in 1978, leading to its purpose-built new building in 1982.
• The Feminist Library at Sojourner Truth Community Centre 161 Sumner Road, SE15 6JL Originally known as the Women’s Research and Resources Centre, the Feminist Library was set up in 1975, at the height of the Women’s Liberation Movement, a time of intense political campaigning and lively collective organising. It houses a large archive collection of feminist literature, particularly Women’s Liberation Movement materials dating from the late 1960s to the 1990s. The Library is also an autonomous feminist community space.
• Esu Hair Salon 72 Atlantic Road, SW9 8PX E su Hair Salon is a hair and beauty salon in Brixton that specialises in Afro and European hair.
• Dominican Hair Republic 86 Brixton Road, SW9 6BH Dominican Hair Republic was established in London in 2012. It offers professional hair care services specialising in Afro hair and curly textured hair.
• Black Cultural Archives 1 Windrush Square, SW2 1EF Black Cultural Archives is the only national heritage centre dedicated to collecting, preserving and celebrating the histories of African and Caribbean people in Britain.
• Railton Road Railton Road, SE24 Railton Road runs between Brixton and Herne Hill in the London Borough of Lambeth. The 1981 Brixton riot started on this street. The George public house was burnt down, and a number of other buildings were damaged. The George was replaced with a Caribbean bar called Mingles in 1981, which lasted in one form or another until the 2000s. It served as an important hub for local African and Caribbean diasporic communities for radical political activity and working-class community.
• Buster Mantis 3-4 Resolution Way, SE8 4NT Buster Mantis is an independent family-run bar, eatery and creative space whose owners have lived between Jamaica and London for the last 60 years. It takes its name from the first prime minister of Jamaica, Sir Alexander Bustamante, who was instrumental in establishing the country's independence.
• Roti Joupa 12 Clapham High Street, SW4 7UT Roti Joupa is a family-run take away restaurant that serves traditional Trinidadian cuisine

North London

• Shishawi 51-53 Edgware Road, W2 2HZ Shishawi is an Egyptian restaurant and shisha lounge. It operates in a building that housed a Royal Cinema from 1938. In 1961 it was overtaken by Jacey Cinemas and Gala Film Distributers, who focused on continental and art house films and screened erotic films towards the end of its operations. After closing in 1979, the building briefly reopened showing Arabic films and shut in 1981.
• New Beacon Books 76 Stroud Green Road, N4 3EN New Beacon Books was founded in 1966 by John La Rose as one of the UK's first Black publishing houses, specialist bookshop and international book distributor. For over 50 years New Beacon Books has made available to Britain and its communities, poetry, literature, nonfiction, history and children’s books from Africa, Caribbean, Asia, Black America, Europe, South America and Black Britain.
• George Padmore Institute 76 Stroud Green Road, N4 3EN The George Padmore Institute set up in 1991 grew out of a community of people connected with New Beacon Books. The Institute is an archive, educational research and information centre housing materials and documents relating mainly to Black communities of Caribbean, African and Asian descent in post-war Britain and continental Europe. The Institute organises and preserves the archival materials in its care to ensure they are available to individuals, researchers, students, schools and anyone interested in the social, economic and cultural history of black British communities.
• The Showroom 63 Penfold Street, NW8 8PQ The Showroom is a contemporary art space focused on collaborative approaches to cultural production within its locality and beyond. The Showroom was established in 1983 in East London but moved from its Bonner Road site in Bethnal Green to Penfold Street near Edgware Road in 2009.
• Portman Early Childhood Centre 4 Lilestone Street, NW8 8SU The Portman Early Childhood Centre provides education, care and family support services for young children and their families living in the Church Street area of Westminster, North London. These include a nursery school, adult education classes, family support, employment services, parenting groups and workshops.
• Horizon Foods Unit 8, 14 Bull Lane, N18 1SX Horizon Foods creates and supplies authentic Trinidadian products, specialising in roti.
• Trinidad Roti Shop 27 Craven Park Road, NW10 8SE Trinidad Roti Shop is a restaurant specialising in Trinidadian roti and traditional Caribbean cuisine. PEER Gallery 97-99 Hoxton Street, N1 6QL PEER is an independent arts organisation, putting down deep roots within the socially, culturally and economically diverse area of Hoxton. PEER’s core ethos is to embed its activities into the local community and to offer and promote the highest quality art as being part of daily life.
• Khadija's Garden 71 Fanshaw Street, N1 6LA In 2016, PEER fundraised to redesign the corner of Hoxton Street and Fanshaw Street on the Arden Estate. The project involved planting flowers, Silver Birch trees, adding seating, bins and bike parking to create a pocket park and community hub for local people to enjoy. The garden was renamed Khadija’s Garden in 2017, in memory of artist Khadija Saye, who was killed in the Grenfell Tower fire on 14 June 2017.
• The Islamic Cultural Centre and The London Central Mosque Mosque Tower, Outer Circle, NW8 7RG The London Central Mosque, also known as the Regent's Park Mosque, is an Islamic place of worship located on the edge of Regent's Park. It was designed by Sir Frederick Gibberd and completed in 1977.

West London

• Club Eleven 41 Great Windmill Street, W1D 7LU 50 Carnaby Street, W1F 9QA Club Eleven was a nightclub operating between 1948 and 1950 which played a significant role in the emergence of the bebop jazz movement in Britain.
• The Mosaic Rooms 226 Cromwell Road, SW5 0SW A leading London based non-profit cultural organisation dedicated to supporting and promoting contemporary culture from and about the Arab world.
• Stuart Hall Library 16 John Islip Street, SW1P 4JU The Stuart Hall Library is the intellectual and social hub of Iniva, providing a context for Iniva’s archive and the opportunity to study the institution’s legacy, preserving and promoting the work of artists of African and Asian descent born or based in the UK. The library offers a specialist collection of over 10,000 volumes on the history of contemporary visual art and culture within an international and transnational context, as well as providing critical material on issues of cultural identity. It also runs talks, workshops and events including the Research Network Programme.
• Notting Hill Carnival Notting Hill, Ladbroke Grove and Westbourne Park, W10 The Notting Hill Carnival is an annual carnival taking place on the streets of Notting Hill since 1966 over the late August bank holiday weekend. It is led by Caribbean communities and attracts around two and a half million people annually, making it one of the world's largest street festivals, and a significant event in Black British culture.
• Electric Cinema 191 Portobello Road, W11 2ED The Electric Cinema is one of the oldest working cinemas in Britain. It opened in 1910 as one of the first buildings in Britain to be designed specifically for motion picture exhibition, and in the vicinity to be supplied with electricity. Throughout the years the cinema changed ownership several times and in 1993 became Britain's first Black cinema for a brief time. Today it is operated by Soho House.
• The Gate Picturehouse 87 Notting Hill Gate, W11 3JZ The Gate Picturehouse is a cinema, which first opened in 1911 as the Electric Palace. Since the 1950s the venue has steadily built a reputation as the place to see avant-garde and experimental cinema alongside repertory art-house programmes. With new ownership in 1974 came the change of name to The Gate. In 2003 the cinema joined the Picturehouse family and in 2004 it received a full refurbishment.
• Islamic Centre of England 140 Maida Vale, W9 1QB The Islamic Centre of England was founded in 1995 and opened officially in 1998. It provides spiritual guidance for the Muslim community at large, and also caters for the social, cultural, educational and recreational needs of members of the community – especially women and the next generation. It also focuses on disseminating authentic knowledge about Islam and to providing non-Muslims with a better and clearer understanding of Islam.
• The Mangrove 8 All Saints Road, W11 1HA The Mangrove was a Caribbean restaurant which opened in 1968 by Trinidadian community activist and civil rights campaigner Frank Crichlow. It was a meeting place for the Black community in the area, as well as for white radicals, artists, authors, and musicians. It functioned as the unofficial headquarters for the Notting Hill Carnival. It was repeatedly raided by the police on grounds of drug possession, despite a lack of evidence.
• The Tabernacle 34-35 Powis Square, W11 2AY The Tabernacle is a multi-purpose venue and community centre in the heart of Notting Hill and is the home to Notting Hill Carnival. Originally the building was founded as an Evangelical Christian church in 1869. In 1975 The Tabernacle closed as a church and was taken over by the Council and later became the Tabernacle Arts and Community Centre.
• Hilltop Roti 46 Drayton Green Road, W13 8RY Hilltop Roti was a Caribbean restaurant specialising in roti. After operating for over 5 years, it closed in 2020.
• Roti Kitchen 6 Leeland Road, W13 9HH Roti Kitchen is a restaurant in West London specialising in Caribbean and Indian roti.
• Wall of Truth Maxilla Space Westway Flyover, W10 5XL The Maxilla memorial and healing space, incorporating the Wall of Truth, was created by and for members of the community in response to the great suffering after the fire at Grenfell Tower on 14 June 2017. The Wall of Truth is situated underneath the Westway flyover in direct line of sight to nearby Grenfell Tower.

Courttia Newland has published eight works of fiction including his debut, The Scholar. His latest novel, A River Called Time, was published in 2021 by Canongate (UK) and Akashic Books (US). Newland’s short stories have appeared in many anthologies, broadcast on BBC Radio 4 and included in Best of British Short Stories 2017. He has been awarded the Tayner Barbers Award for science fiction writing and the Roland Rees Bursary for playwriting. He was previously associate lecturer in creative writing at the University of Westminster and is completing a PhD in creative writing. As a screenwriter he has co-written two feature length films for the Steve McQueen BBC series Small Axe, of which Lovers Rock was jury selected for Cannes, and opened New York Film Fest 2020. Small Axe won the LA Critics Circle award 2020 for Best Picture. Impact, an original feature, and The Future Isn’t What It Used to Be, a science fiction short, are currently in development with Film Four. His forthcoming collection of speculative fiction stories, Cosmogramma, will be published this year.

Margaret Busby CBE, Hon. FRSL (Nana Akua Ackon) is a major cultural figure in Britain and around the world. Born in Ghana and educated in the UK, she graduated from Bedford College, London University, before becoming Britain’s youngest and first black woman publisher when she co-founded Allison & Busby in the late 1960s. At Allison & Busby, she published notable authors including Buchi Emecheta, Nuruddin Farah, Rosa Guy, C. L. R. James, Michael Moorcock, Jill Murphy Sam Greenlee, Roy Heath, George Lamming, Andrew Salkey, Ishmael Reed and John Edgar Wideman.

A writer, editor, broadcaster and literary critic, she has written drama for BBC radio and the stage, with radio abridgements and dramatisations encompassing work by Henry Louis Gates, Timothy Mo, Walter Mosley, Jean Rhys, Sam Selvon and Wole Soyinka. She has interviewed high-profile writers including Toni Morrison, Ngũgĩ wa Thiong’o and Ben Okri, judged the Booker Prize among others, and served on the boards of such organisations as the Royal Literary Fund, Wasafiri magazine, Tomorrow’s Warriors, Nubian Jak Community Trust and the Africa Centre in London.

A long-time campaigner for diversity in publishing, she is an Honorary Fellow of the Royal Society of Literature and recipient of several honorary doctorates and awards, including the Bocas Henry Swanzy Award, the Royal Society of Literature’s Benson Medal, and the Royal African Society’s inaugural Africa Writes Lifetime Achievement Award.

Tice Cin is an interdisciplinary artist from Tottenham. A recipient of a London Writers Award for Literary Fiction, Cin’s debut novel Keeping the House has just been published; a story set around the north London heroin trade. It explores glitched modernity and isolation, and heavily features cabbages. She has been published by places such as Skin Deep, and Mixmag, and commissioned by venues including Battersea Arts Centre and Edinburgh International Book Festival. She creates digital art as part of Design Yourself – a collective based at Barbican Centre – exploring what it means to be human when technology is changing everything. A producer and DJ, she also hosts a regular radio show Homing Tunes w/ Tice.

Professor Augustine “Gus” John was born in Grenada, Eastern Caribbean and has lived mainly in the UK since 1964. He was a member of the Campaign Against Racial Discrimination (CARD) in the middle to late 1960s and a member of the Council of the Institute of Race Relations in the early 1970s. He is a scholar/activist and social analyst who has done notable work in the fields of education policy; children’s rights and the role of schooling and education in promoting social justice; school improvement; management and international development. In 1991, together with John La Rose and cultural activists, he founded the George Padmore Institute archive and library and remained a founder trustee. In 1999, Gus John co-founded the Communities Empowerment Network (CEN), a charitable organisation providing advocacy and representation for excluded school students and their parents/carers. He is now its Patron and Interim Chair. In 2019, he was awarded the honorary degree of ‘Doctor of the University’ by Birmingham City University (BCU) and is currently advising them on their Strategic Plan: BCU 2019 – 2029.

Irfan Master is a novelist and poet. His work has been translated into ten languages. His first novel for younger readers, A Beautiful Lie, was shortlisted for the Waterstones Book Award and he was longlisted for the Carnegie Medal with his second novel, Out of Heart, making him the first British born author of South Asian heritage to be longlisted. He has lead workshops at Arvon and for the British Council in the UK, Europe and Australia. He has contributed numerous short stories to anthologies, collaborated with artists and photographers, contributing poems and prose for books and exhibitions and worked on stage adaptations of his own work. Irfan is Associate Lecturer on the Creative Writing & English Literature Undergraduate programme at London Metropolitan University. He is a mentor to a number of younger writers and a passionate advocate for creative projects in the community. Irfan currently lives and works in London.

Derek Owusu is a writer, poet and podcaster from north London. He discovered his passion for literature at the age of twenty-three while studying exercise science at university. Unable to afford a change of degree, Derek began reading voraciously and sneaking into English Literature lectures at the University of Manchester. Derek edited and contributed to Safe: On Black British Men Reclaiming Space. That Reminds Me, his first solo work, won the Desmond Elliott Prize 2020.

Brian Eno is a musician, producer, visual artist and activist, who first came to prominence as co-founder of Roxy Music before releasing solo works and collaborating with the likes of Harold Budd, David Byrne, David Bowie, U2, Laurie Anderson & Coldplay among others. His visual experiments with light and video have been seen in installations all over the globe. He is a founding member of the Long Now Foundation, trustee of Client Earth and patron of Videre est Credere.

Joe Namy is an artist, educator, and composer, often working collaboratively and across mediums to expose the social constructs of music and organized sound. Through his work, Namy continues to explore the politics and gender dynamics of bass, the color and tones of militarization, the migration patterns of instruments and songs, and the complexities of translation – from language to language, from score to sound, from drum to dance. Joe Namy is the inaugural artist in residence for Becontree Broadcasting Station at Valence Library in Dagenham.

About Becontree Broadcasting Station

Since 2019 Serpentine has partnered with New Town Culture on Radio Ballads, a series of collaborative artist residencies and commissions in Barking and Dagenham (LBBD) that examine the histories and future of care and work. New Town Culture is a pioneering project led by LBBD which explores how artistic and cultural experiences can reframe the work of social care to support adults and children using social care services. From 2021 to 2022, Serpentine and LBBD’s inaugural Artist in Residence Joe Namy, will be facilitating workshops with local communities to design and create the Becontree Broadcasting Station for Valence Library. This project is supported by Barking and Dagenham Council for Becontree Forever, a programme marking the centenary year of the UK’s largest social housing estate.

Becontree Broadcasting Station is being established as part of the 2021 Serpentine Pavilion and the accompanying programme Listening to the City. Pavilion architect, Sumayya Vally, has placed fragments of the Pavilion at sites across London that influenced her design. The fragments sited in Barking and Dagenham draws on and honours the legacy of Radio Ballads and the Serpentine Civic team’s legacy of collaboration in Barking and Dagenham. Made for the radio station (a very important form of public space), the podium will support the daily operations of the Becontree Broadcasting Station, and create a place for gathering and sharing of stories. The fragment was constructed to be used flexibly, as a single piece or divided into smaller elements. It honours the histories of places and people in the neighbourhood with its design and programming that engages with the communities in the surrounding area.

The radio equipment for the station is being donated to Barking and Dagenham Council, where they will remain as a legacy of the 2021 Serpentine Pavilion and Radio Ballads.

About Listening to the City

Listening to the City engages with a set of sonic landscapes from selected London neighbourhoods, paying attention to existing and lost spaces of gathering and belonging across the city. The programme was conceived and developed by Serpentine Education and Civic Projects for the Serpentine Pavilion 2021 designed by Sumayya Vally, Counterspace.