Culture And Memory

Female Pioneers of Dancehall

Female Pioneers of Dancehall will unearth hidden Black British heritage - revealing and collating for the first time documentation of Black women artists’ contributions to UK music culture across the 1980s-90s. We will find and gather physical and ephemeral heritage from people who were there (while still in living memory), curate an exhibition and tour it to 3 cities across the UK - London, Leeds & Birmingham. The exhibition will run in tandem with a confirmed UK theatre tour of Sutara Gayle AKA Lorna Gee’s award-winning show The Legends of Them, supported by a grassroots audience development campaign and programme of local events to unlock hidden heritage from regional Black British communities across the UK. The heritage will be preserved in perpetuity with the Museum of Youth Culture, with a publicly accessible digital archive that honours women’s impact on this fundamental part of Black British culture and British music heritage.