Culture&

[email protected] Opening up who makes and enjoys arts and heritage.

Culture& is an independent London-based arts & education charity with an unparalleled 20-year track record of promoting cross-cultural contact, dialogue and understanding.

22/08/2026

An afternoon at the groundbreaking Museum of Homeless in London’s Finsbury Park

From left: Culture& Director Dr Errol Francis, Museum X Founder Sandra Shakespeare, Co-Founders of the Museum of Homelessness Jessica and Matt Turtle and Nick Schlittner Red Earth Collective
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31/07/2026

From left: Keith Piper, renowned artist, curator, academic and founding member of the BLK Art Movement; the brilliant Victoria Lane, Curator of Art and Identity at Royal Museums Greenwich (RMG) and Culture& Artistic Director Dr Errol Francis

We are super excited to be supporting Keith’s Caird Fellowship at RMG where he will be researching the financial impulse behind the Longitude Act of 1714 that provided a UK government reward of up to £20,000 (worth millions today) for anyone who could devise a practical, accurate method for ships to determine their longitudinal position at sea

The person who eventually solved the problem and claimed the prize was John Harrison, who invented the marine chronometer, a precision timepiece used to determine longitude by comparing Greenwich Mean Time and the time of a ship’s current location from observations of celestial bodies

Keith Piper is looking into how this navigational science was linked to the demands of the Atlantic Trade in Enslaved Africans and the West Indian plantocracy for whom safety and successful voyages on the high seas was a commercial imperative

27/07/2026

From left Culture& curatorial consultant Kymara Akinpelumi with Holly Nancarrow-Hassal, course leader and senior lecturer on the Fashion BA (Hons) and our director Dr Errol Francis at the University of Staffordshire University of Staffordshire where we are based. They are standing in front of some of the wonderful creations that the students have made in response to our upcoming The Unhomely programme at the Brampton Museum in Newcastle-under-Lyme. We are delighted to be working with the fashion department and the Fashion Uni of Staffordshire students who have engaged with our programme with such passion

19/07/2026

Our wonderful outgoing Chair and leading natural history curator, Miranda Lowe CBE, who has headed up the Culture& board for the past five years. Miranda took up her role in the wake of the Black Lives Matter Movement and the Covid-19 Pandemic and led our organsiation through that challenging period to emerge stronger and more embedded in the UK arts and heritage sectors. Heartfelt thanks to Miranda who will remain as a trustee and will be succeded by vice Chair Svetlana Sanbe who brings her own considerable skills as a communications specialist with over 10 years of experience in the art and design sector.

30/06/2026

Culture& artistic director Dr Errol Francis with associate artist Dr David Önaç who was giving us a preview of his Atlantic Requiem - a magisterial new music composition commissioned by Culture& in response to the archives of the Lloyd's insurance market that underwrote ships involved in the Transatlantic Trade in Enslaved Africans

David’s new requiem mass is the first of its kind in the European classical music repertoire and was inspired by research by Prof Alexandre White of Johns Hopkins University in Baltimore. In the aftermath of the 2020 Black Lives Matter movement, Prof White gained access to the Lloyd’s archives to reveal the extent of the involvement of the company in the enslavement of Africans

The requiem is not only a repose for lost souls but a celebration of survival and renewal

Culture& is excited that the the world premiere of the Atlantic Requiem will be a truly transatlantic event performed London Symphony Orchestra and BBC Singers LSO St Luke's conducted by LA maestro Anthony Parnther on 11 October 2026…with soprano Brittany Renee BRITTANY RENEE mezzo soprano J’Nai Bridges
J'Nai Bridges and tenor Orson van Gay II O r s o n V a n G a y I I

A recording will also be released on the LSO Live music label and other streaming platforms
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25/06/2026

‘Jason and the Adventure of 254’

Attenborough Arts Centre, Leicester
Open until 30 Aug 2026

As part of the NMSAP Inclusive Transformation Network Symposium 2026: Ethics and the Role of Replicas in Socially Engaged Practice, the cohort of students visited ‘Jason and the Adventure of 254’ at the Attenborough Arts Centre

The gallery space is reimagined as a hospital ward, Wilsher-Mills presents us with a series of sculptures, illustrations and interactive dioramas

The exhibition revisits the moment of Wilsher-Mills’ diagnosis of an autoimmune condition, triggered by contracting chickenpox at the age of eleven. Paralysed from the neck down until the age of sixteen, and unable to physically explore the wider world around him, the artist was forced to inhabit an interior world filled with action heroes, TV shows, films, comics, books and his own vivid imagination. The exhibition’s title alludes to the time of 2.54pm at Pinderfields Hospital, Wakefield, on 1 August 1980 when he witnessed his parents being told of his diagnosis at the end of his hospital bed; coincidentally, British athlete Sebastian Sebastian Coe was crossing the finish line to win the gold medal in the 1500m race at the 1980 Moscow Olympic Games. Coe was wearing the race bib number 254, a detail that gave Wilsher-Mills a powerful symbol of pop culture, escapism, and personal triumph

The show challenges the cultural and societal perceptions surrounding disability, medicine and the human body. Through a kaleidoscope of colours and magic realism, and the exhibition is also a celebration of the artist’s family, working-class background and the opportunities he received through hospital education, inviting audiences to explore childhood memories through creativity and humour

Stay tuned for the post-event recap of this year’s symposium.

AttenboroughArtsCentre

03/06/2026

Open Call - Oral Histories in North Staffordshire

Share your story of how you or your family came to live in North Staffordshire and become part of this growing archive.

We are offering an £85 fee for one hour of your time. Travel expenses will also be covered.

🖊If you are interested, please complete the Expression of Interest form linked in bio. Submit by 9 June 2026.

You might speak about a journey across continents, countries, or regions or a more recent move. These stories will become part of the Unhomely at the Museum of the Home and the Brampton Museum. The Unhomely will bring these stories into public space – creating a conversation across cities about what it means to feel at home.

About ‘The Unhomely’
Culture& presents The Unhomely, a new public programme and exhibition series taking place in Stoke-on-Trent and London. Working with the Brampton Museum and Museum of the Home , these dual locations will create a conversation across cities, inviting audiences to reflect on the tensions of belonging and the persistence of memory, longing, and identity. The Unhomely explores experience of migration, cultural displacement, and belonging. Through stories, objects, and creative commissions, the programme asks: what does it mean to feel at home, and what happens when home becomes unhomely?

Lead image credit:

23/05/2026

We congratulate the brilliant scholars on our Sotheby’s Institute of Art x Culture& Cultural Leaders Programme who graduated yesterday at St James’s Church Piccadilly

From left: Joanna Mills-Foy registrar and Dr Jonathan Woolfson director (both from Sotheby’s Institute of Art) and the two scholars: Tobi Alexandra Falade MA Contemporary Art, Helena Opuama MA Historic Art and Design and Dr Errol Francis director of Culture&.

Second photo is Dr Errol Francis with Annette Fernando MA Contemporary Art, Dr Jonathan Woolfson and Joanna Mills-Foy at the graduation reception at the Royal Society of. Chemistry

15/05/2026

Share your story about your journey to North Staffordshire

🔈We are looking for people to share their story of how they or their family came to live in North Staffordshire and become part of this growing archive.

We are offering an £85 fee for one hour of your time. Travel expenses will also be covered.

🖊If you are interested, please complete the Expression of Interest form. Submit by 5 June 2026.

You might speak about a journey across continents, countries, or regions or a more recent move. These stories will become part of the Unhomely at the Museum of the Home and the Brampton Museum. The Unhomely will bring these stories into public space – creating a conversation across cities about what it means to feel at home.

About ‘The Unhomely’
Culture& presents The Unhomely, a new public programme and exhibition series taking place in Stoke-on-Trent and London. Working with the Brampton Museum and Museum of the Home , these dual locations will create a conversation across cities, inviting audiences to reflect on the tensions of belonging and the persistence of memory, longing, and identity. The Unhomely explores experience of migration, cultural displacement, and unbelonging. Through stories, objects, and creative commissions, the programme asks: what does it mean to feel at home, and what happens when home becomes unhomely?

Lead image credit: Leonardo Zorzi on Unsplash.

07/05/2026

💻New Museum School Advanced Programme Information Webinar | 13:00 - 14:00 20 May 2026

Booking link in bio.

Are you interested in the NMSAP?
We are hosting an online info session for you to find out more about the Programme. In this webinar you will:

> Meet the Culture& team and colleagues from Museum Studies at the University of Leicester
> Find out more about the Programme
> Ask questions
> Find out how to apply.

Please let us know how we can support you with any access requirements (for example, BSL interpretation, visual descriptions).

For enquiries please contact the Research Centre for Museums and Galleries (RCMG) team at [email protected]

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Stoke-on-Trent
ST

Website

http://www.cultureand.org/

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