Brixton House launches UPRISING, a festival of work marking the 40th anniversary of the Brixton Uprising

Brixton House has announced the launch of UPRISING, a festival season from June 2025 – October 2025. The festival commemorates and reflects on 40 years since the 1985 Brixton Uprising and explores contemporary Black British life and culture in Brixton and South London. Taking place across Brixton House’s new multi-artform venue, UPRISING includes a series of events and productions that amplify the stories of people who continue to shape Brixton. Outside of theatre, the South London hub is an essential location for cultural events that serve the local community and beyond.  

UPRISING starts with Bringing Brixton Inside for Windrush an event on Sunday 22 June honouring the Windrush generation and bringing people together through culture, play and community. Expect a steel pan band, dominoes games and a writing workshop, partners include Metronomes, Queer Dominoes Project and Cold Islanders. The season culminates with House of Pearl, a night to celebrate Brixton icon Pearl Alcock – a pioneer in curating safe spaces for the Black Queer communities during the 80’s, the ball takes place on Saturday 25 October.

This season will see the launch of a new podcast, Coldharbour Talks. Hosted by Danny Bailey, the podcast invites guests to explore music, art, activism and healing through intimate and cross-generational conversation. Guests include actor, writer, public speaker and director Kelechi Okafor and Cherry Groce’s sister, singer, actor and playwright Sutara Gayle.  

In collaboration with creative technologist Valeria Toro, multidisciplinary artist Itonisha Rowe and Brixton House’s new young associate programme, the DISRUPTORS, Brixton House will be creating a moving art installation in honour of Brixton’s legacy.

Curated by multi-disciplinary artist, creative director and performer Danny Bailey and BAFTA award winning producer Tobi Kyeremateng , the programme has been developed to honour and celebrate Brixton’s legacy, culture and community. Whether it’s the strength of the Windrush Generation or the resilience of Queer communities, UPRISING festival celebrates activism, impact and resistance. 

Tobi Kyeremateng said: “Co-curating the UPRISING festival with Danny Bailey has been an amazing experience. We wanted to explore sub-themes of uprising that invited play, intersectionality and intergenerationality, knowledge-sharing and global explorations of defiance.

We have partnered with incredible artists, collectives and community organisations to explore these themes with us through workshops, film, conversations and performance, and we are excited to welcome audiences into Brixton House throughout the rest of this year to experience the season.” 

Danny Bailey says: “Commemorating 40 years since the 1985 Brixton Uprising alongside Tobi Kyeremateng is a real honour. The spirit of collective resistance from that time still reverberates through every corner of Brixton, and we walk in the legacy of that activism every day — breathing in the art, culture, and community as our lifeblood.  

With the UPRISING festival, our aim is to celebrate the history, reflect on our present, and build a vision for our futures — using the same tools the original Brixtonians wielded in the 1980s. 

To Brixton!!!!” 

Brixton House is a cultural hub known for its impactful theatre productions that are often inspired by the different Black British narratives that exist within London and the UK. Recent productions include the Brixton House premiere MILLENNIUM GIRLS, a sold-out show run that brought together an all-female cast against a musical backdrop of UK Garage and 90s classics in an honest coming-of-age story exploring identity, girlhood and consent. New theatre productions set to take the stage during this season include STARS: An Afrofuturist Space Odyssey, One Way Out, Lil.Miss.Lady, The Legends of Them and Brixton House’s biggest ever musical theatre show, Black Power Desk.