Episode 29 of IN invites a group of artists, historians and curators to recapture and analyse circumstances preceding and following the Black Arts Movement of Britain's 1980s creative landscape. How did the movement begin and how has the movement evolved to exist in this contemporary moment and what has effected its traces in the present day? Our conversation approached this theme from several angles. What is the relationship of the British Black Arts Movement to these transnational relationships defined largely by the conditions of empire? Points of discussion included the movement in the context of the Commonwealth, a post-independence evolutionary outgrowth of the British Empire-- purported to facilitate transnationalism through social and economic mutuality, yet being called into question with the recent attention the conditions of the Windrush generation and their offspring have experienced.

The 2017 Tate Modern exhibition titled Soul of a Nation: Art in the Age of Black Power, centers on and re-presents works produced in 1963 America in response to activities surrounding civil rights movements against statutes which had long permitted racial misappropriation and segregation. Did this exhibition speak to or echo in anyway Black activism and artistic output in the UK? Have spaces outside of the UK, such as the Caribbean, impacted or influenced black consciousness and output in the UK and if so how? What are the ripple effects of the Black Arts Movement in the UK and how have these legacies influenced the development of particular forms of consciousness/influenced the development of
particular modes of art making/political movements/ in/ amongst/ within non-black communities in the UK and the Commonwealth?