Ajamu X (FRPS) is a darkroom/fine art photographic artist. His practice places the sensual-material attributes of production, making and process at the centre of the work and whose subject matter is similarly focused on sensuality.
His work has been exhibited in many prestigious museums, galleries and alternative spaces worldwide. In 2022, he was canonised by The Trans Pennine Travelling Sisters/Sisters of Perpetual indulgence as the Patron Saint of Darkrooms and received an honorary fellowship from the Royal Photographic Society.
Kolade T Ladipo is an actor, 2024 graduate of Liverpool Institute of Performing Arts and the recipient of the Lady Plowright (Lady Olivier) award, dancer, creative director and photographer. He is the founder of Noiregayze, a platform that centres black and POC queer people through community, club nights and magazine.
Joy and intention is at the forefront of Kolade鈥檚 work. Having started his journey just days after his last A Level exam, he hopes to continue to grow his community through his art and reach audiences across the board.
Valerie Mason-John aka Queenie has been named one of Britain's Black gay Icons, this year being named in a Black Lesbian Power List.
Mason-John ran the largest women鈥檚 club in Europe 'Queenies'. Their plays Sin Dykes, The Adventures of Snow Black and Rose Red聽received critical acclaim, and their one woman play claiming to be the queen of England, Brown Girl In The Ring toured internationally for several years.
They are the author of 11 books, including the first to ever聽document the lives of Black and Asian Lesbians living in Britain. This year, they published their most recent work A First Aid Kit For the Mind which outlines different art forms to work with habitual behaviours. Now living in Canada, their book I鈥檓 Still Your Negro, Homage to James Baldwin was shortlisted for two major Canadian awards.
Ella Frost is a mixed English and Bajan filmmaker, video editor and visual artist who has been creating work for the last ten years. Themes of their work include family, friends and community, queer nightlife and culture, bi-racial identity, grief, water, science fiction, the natural world and a morbid interest in vampires to explore ideas on mortality, power, race and sex.
Their work has been described as lo-fi, original, intimate and arresting.
In 2017 they co-founded the collective and publication, which centres on the experiences of marginalised communities and sexual health.
Zinzi Minott explores the relationship between bodies and politics. Her practice moves between film, sound, sculpture, prints, performance and object based work. She is interested in what it means to have a body, the disruption of lineages and employment of聽 the glitch as a tool to provoke critical reflections of Black Queer life.
She is curious about the study of movement, geographically, physically, politically and how this can equip us better to 鈥渂e together鈥.
Dorothea Smartt (FRSL) is a performance artist and poet.
She has taught in the United Kingdom, Bahrain, South Africa, Barbados and the U.S, after beginning her writing life in the Black/feminist co-operatives of the Eighties, and publishing her first work in anthologies. She plunges into a complex and diverse world which embraces Banjul, Barbados and her London base, Brixton.
Smartt鈥檚 unifying gift is her unfailing musical ear, which ensures strong thematic material is expressed in an appropriate tone and key, with powerful rhythmic effects, well judged climaxes and dying or open-ended cadences.
