CIRCA

CIRCA CIRCA is an art and culture platform with purpose.

20/08/2026

“When I [] read that this 1,200-year-old tree had died, I suddenly felt compelled to go there and make a sketch.

I am 69 years old, almost 70, and both my surroundings and I have undergone significant changes.

I do not think there is any difference between the death of a tree and the death of any other living being. They all complete the same cycle of life.

An optimist always believes another spring will come. Yet for this tree, there will be no further spring. It is simply tired.”

🌳 That drawing became A Tree, a limited-edition silkscreen created with CIRCA. Each edition is hand-signed by the artist and only available for £450 until 9 September 2026.

📺 Witness A Tree every evening at 20:26 BST on London’s

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London’s hot 🔥 What started as a phone call became something much bigger. From 180 Studios to Piccadilly Lights , thousa...
11/08/2026

London’s hot 🔥

What started as a phone call became something much bigger. From 180 Studios to Piccadilly Lights , thousands of people came together last week as Ms. Lauryn Hill and Wyclef Jean reunited in the heart of London for DIASPORA CALLING!, alongside the premiere of a major new CIRCA commission by Lauren Halsey, curated by Ms. Hill.

Thank you to Ms. Hill for welcoming us into the world of DIASPORA CALLING! and trusting us to help bring it to London. To Wyclef Jean for turning Piccadilly Circus into a stage. And to Lauren Halsey for creating an extraordinary work of art and letting us share it with the city.

Lisa Anderson for bringing us into the journey, and Jermaine, Afrikaa, Jude, Poetik, Autumn, Yusuf and the wider MLH team for trusting us to run with it.

Mark, Adam, Ernest, Mona, Sully, Riccardo and everyone at 180 Studios. Sophie McElligott and Dazed. Ghost Labs. Leroy Boateng. Every photographer, filmmaker, sound engineer, security team, producer and partner who helped make it happen.

And to everyone who travelled to 180 Studios, waited patiently in the queue, filled the streets, sang, danced and gathered beneath the Piccadilly Lights. We haven’t forgotten those of you who RSVP’d but didn’t get your moment with Ms. Hill. We’re working on something special for you. More soon.

📸 Leroy

06/08/2026

Ms. Lauryn Hill, Wyclef Jean and Lauren Halsey shut down Piccadilly Circus.

The CIRCA premiere of a new commission by Lauren Halsey, curated by Ms. Lauryn Hill, marked the beginning of a landmark week leading up to at Milton Keynes National Bowl tomorrow today (7 August), bringing together , , , , , , , , , and many more for a celebration of music, art and the global African diaspora.

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05/08/2026

8PM TONIGHT, PICCADILLY CIRCUS

CIRCA PRESENTS LAUREN HALSEY CURATED BY MS. LAURYN HILL

05/08/2026

Today is the day.

Join us for Ms. Lauryn Hill’s Diaspora Calling! Merch Pop Up & Signing at 180 Studios, London from 4pm to 7pm.

Doors are open from 4pm until 6:30pm. Please arrive early as entry is subject to capacity.

To make sure as many people as possible have the opportunity to meet Ms. Lauryn Hill, one item may be signed per person. Groups to be photographed together.

This special event is the beginning of an extraordinary week leading to Diaspora Calling! at the Milton Keynes National Bowl on Friday 7 August, where Ms. Lauryn Hill, Wyclef Jean, Erykah Badu, Giggs, Fireboy DML, YG Marley, Zion Marley and many more will come together for a landmark celebration of music, art and the global African diaspora.

If you haven’t already, secure your tickets for Friday now. We can’t wait to see you.

02/08/2026

Watching Button Up! come together at , we kept returning to one idea. This is an exhibition about what survives.

Across more than four decades of practice, Ai Weiwei brings together architecture, sculpture, photography and installation to examine memory, power, migration, conflict and freedom of expression. Yet beneath this extraordinary range of forms is a quieter thread that connects them all. Again and again, we encounter objects that have outlived the worlds that produced them.

The 400-year-old Wang Family Ancestral Hall, painstakingly reconstructed after surviving the Cultural Revolution, stands alongside works made from Lego, refugee boats, porcelain, wood and stone. Each carries the marks of another time. Similar to The Major Oak, each becomes a witness to histories that cannot be erased.

As Weiwei walks through the gallery in Manchester, he pauses beneath one of the hall’s ancient beams to show us something almost invisible. Protected beneath a large piece of glass is a handwritten note from his son, Ai Lao, written when he was four years old. It reads simply, “If your heart is calm, everything will be fine.”

It is a small gesture within an immense exhibition, but perhaps it says everything. Across Button Up!, history is not presented as something distant or complete. It lives on through objects, places and people, carrying memories from one generation to the next.

🪡 Button Up! at Factory International, Manchester until 6 September. Curated by

Link in bio to buy tickets.

Which tree has shaped your life?Inspired by Ai Weiwei’s latest CIRCA commission, A Tree, we’re inviting people around ...
31/07/2026

Which tree has shaped your life?

Inspired by Ai Weiwei’s latest CIRCA commission, A Tree, we’re inviting people around the world to share the story of the tree that has stayed with them. Not because it is famous or extraordinary, but because it became part of their own story.

Share a photograph, drawing or video of your favourite tree as an Instagram grid post, tell us why it matters, tag CIRCA and Ai Weiwei, and include

Throughout the project, CIRCA and Ai Weiwei will reshare a selection of favourite submissions. On 9 September, the closing day of A Tree, nine participants selected by Ai Weiwei will each receive a complimentary signed copy of his new limited-edition print.

Link in bio.

Created beneath the Major Oak on the Summer Solstice, A Tree marks Ai Weiwei’s first drawing in more than fifty years. D...
17/07/2026

Created beneath the Major Oak on the Summer Solstice, A Tree marks Ai Weiwei’s first drawing in more than fifty years. Days earlier, the approximately 1,200 year old oak had been declared dead.

Throughout his career, Weiwei has returned to objects that have endured history. Ancient architecture, archaeological artefacts, twisted steel, industrial buttons and refugee vessels recur within his work, not because they function as symbols, but because they carry within them the traces of human experience. They have survived long enough to become witnesses.

The Major Oak belongs to that lineage. Long before it became associated with the legend of Robin Hood, it had already taken root. Over the course of twelve centuries it stood through the rise and fall of kingdoms, religious reformations, plague, industrialisation and war, while countless generations passed beneath its branches. Its significance lies not only in its age, but in the accumulation of lives, memories and histories that gathered around it.

Drawn in the blank pages of a catalogue for Button Up!, his major new exhibition at Factory International, the sketch is understated. It neither monumentalises the tree or mourns its passing. Instead, it records a meeting between an artist and one of Britain’s oldest witnesses, preserving an encounter that now becomes part of the tree’s own long history.

🔗 Link in bio to collect Ai Weiwei’s signed edition of A Tree, available until 9 September.

11/07/2026

Throughout his career, Ai Weiwei has returned repeatedly to objects that outlive the worlds that produced them. Ancient architecture, archaeological artefacts, twisted steel recovered from the aftermath of the 2008 Sichuan earthquake, industrial buttons, refugee vessels and fragments of cultural history all occupy a central place within his practice. Rather than functioning as symbols, they become witnesses, carrying within them the traces of political upheaval, displacement, memory and survival. His work asks how history is preserved, not only through archives and institutions, but through the material things that endure.

These ideas converge in Button Up!, Ai Weiwei’s major exhibition commissioned by Factory International in Manchester. Spanning centuries of history, the exhibition brings together works that reflect on continuity in the face of profound social and political change. At its centre stands the reconstruction of the 500-year-old Wang Family Ancestral Hall, painstakingly rebuilt by Chinese craftspeople using traditional techniques. Elsewhere, monumental sculptures examine migration, conflict and mortality, while thousands of salvaged buttons, once ordinary objects of industry, become carriers of personal and collective memory. Throughout the exhibition, Weiwei reveals how objects continue to bear witness long after the circumstances that created them have disappeared.

Just days before the exhibition opened, news broke that the Major Oak in Sherwood Forest, believed to be approximately 1,200 years old, had been declared dead. On the Summer Solstice, Ai Weiwei travelled to the ancient tree, where he sat beneath its branches and produced his first drawing in fifty years.

🎥

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“This pen, like this 1,200-year-old tree, has run out of ink.”Ai WeiweiLast night, CIRCA, in collaboration with Factory ...
10/07/2026

“This pen, like this 1,200-year-old tree, has run out of ink.”
Ai Weiwei

Last night, CIRCA, in collaboration with Factory International, premiered A Tree by Ai Weiwei on Piccadilly Lights, a new video animation created from the artist’s first drawing in more than 50 years.

The evening opened with Sewing a Button, Weiwei’s 24-hour performance commissioned by Factory International to mark 15 years since his 81-day secret detention in China, before transitioning to A Tree, a new animation inspired by a drawing made beneath the 1,200-year-old Major Oak in Sherwood Forest on the summer solstice, only days after the ancient tree had been declared to have reached the end of its life.

Opening with Trees, a poem written by Weiwei’s father, Ai Qing, in 1940, the work connects generations through a meditation on memory, resilience and the passage of time.

Presented on what would have been David Hockney’s 89th birthday, A Tree concludes with the words, “The spring will not come for her.” The line reflects on a conversation Hockney once recalled, in which a philosopher was asked, amid a world consumed by conflict, “What is the good news?” The reply was simple: “The arrival of spring.” Weiwei returns to that exchange through the Major Oak, observing that while nature renews itself each year, this ancient tree has reached the end of its life. In doing so, the work becomes both an elegy for one of Britain’s oldest trees and a meditation on mortality, renewal and hope.

🌳 A Tree will be presented daily at 20:26 BST on Piccadilly Lights until 9 September 2026.

🖼️ Collect a hand-signed print of Ai Weiwei’s first drawing in more than 50 years, published exclusively by CIRCA. Available for £450 until 9 September 2026.

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