Lights, Echoes, Libraries! Moving Images of Global Knowledge Justice
About this Event
Programme Overview. Scroll further down below for full updated programme, including recently-added workshop on 25 June.
"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-June 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 in May, including dialogues with directors, librarians, and cultural heritage practitioners; followed by a collaborative workshop in June; 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. The event series is free and open to all.
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UPDATED FULL PROGRAMME DETAILS BELOW
PROGRAMME UPDATE: FOLLOW-UP WORKSHOP SCHEDULED (25 JUNE, 12-2pm)!
Image credit: 'Study' Screenprint by Pete Railand, April 2018 via the Just Seeds Liberating Learning portfolio.
Event 4: Lights, Echoes Libraries! Regenerative Community Workshop
This workshop invitation is for anyone who attended one or more of the recent Lights, Echoes, Libraries! Moving Images of Global Knowledge Justice film and discussion series hosted throughout May 2026 via UCL and IALS. As previously outlined in the event programme, we have been planning a follow-up in-person workshop for those who attended or engaged with these films and discussions. With apologies for the delay in communications, this is now scheduled to take place next week on Thursday 25th June, 12-2pm, at The Institute of Advanced Legal Studies (IALS), Room L103-104 (lower ground floor. Charles Clore House, 17 Russell Square, London, WC1B 5DR, United Kingdom. Accessibility information here: https://www.london.ac.uk/sites/default/files/governance/institute-of-advanced-legal-studies.pdf
The plan for this co-creative discursive session is to reflect on our collective learning from the films, discussions, and their reverberations together. Please note that there will not be any films screened at this workshop, as it is based on your experience(s) of having already watched one or more of the films. 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”.
With this in mind, at this workshop would like to collectively document our reflections, frustrations, radical hopes, and calls to action. In so doing, we aim to plant seedlings towards more liberatory landscapes of what living libraries and archives are and can be, articulating and demanding abolitionist and fugitive futures for collective global knowledge justice.
To sign up, please register by selecting the booking link via this Eventbrite page.
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MAY PROGRAMME
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 Marilyn Clarke, Zoey Dixon and Toivo Agana Williams, three UK-based Black librarians, about the insights, memories and absences provoked by this documentary.
Bios
Zoey Dixon works for Lambeth Libraries combining her strategic and management roles, with the planning and delivery of quality frontline services to children and young people. She has sat on the judging panels for The Carnegies, The Branford Boase, The British Book Awards, Polari Children’s and YA Prize. In 2020 she was one of The Bookseller’s Rising Stars and in the same year awarded YLG Librarian of the Year in 2020. In 2023 she was awarded the CILIP Presidential Citation. Instagram: @Zoey_Dixon84
Toivo Agana Williams is an experienced information professional and librarian with over a decade in public libraries, leading work in community learning, digital inclusion and cultural representation. Toivo is the Director of AWT2Train, and delivers training in employability, entrepreneurship, and business skills within the adult education sector. His work is focused on representation, innovation, and expanding access to learning and opportunity through libraries and information organisations.
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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.
Where is it happening?
Event Location & Nearby Stays:
GBP 0.00
