From the Editor
* Pooja Ghai has taken over as Artistic Director and Chief Executive Officer of Tamasha Theatre Company: organisational model - “building a clear pipeline from writer development to mid-scale production and placing Global Majority artists at the centre of British theatre”.
Daniel Nelson london.globalevents@gmail.com
TALKS AND DISCUSSIONS
Saturday 16 May
* Nakbar March for Palestine, 12-4pm. Info: Palestine Solidarity Campaign
Saturday 16-Sunday 17 May
* European Writers Festival, Nino Haratischwili, Vincenzo Latronico, Gonçalo M. Tavares, Sara Stridsberg, Christy Lefteri, Jáchym Topol, Fiston Mwanza Mujila, Wendy Erskine, Artem Chapeye,Saturday £20, Sunday £15, online tickets from £10, British Library, 96 Euston Road NW1. Info: Library
Monday 18 May
* Surviving the new Geography of Climate Change, Arthur Snell and Peter Frankopan, 6.15-7.30pm, £16.80/ livestream £6.50, The Conduit, 6 Langley Street, WC2H 9JA. Info: The Conduit
* German Development Minister’s Talk, Reem Alabai-Radovan, 6-7pm, SOAS. Info: Booking essential
Wednesday 20 May
* The 2026 Colombian General Elections, Nestor Castaneda, Catalina Ortiz, Ana Maria Otero-Cleves, Jennifer Scotland, 2-4.30pm, London University College London, 51 Gordon Square, WC1H OPN. Info: UCH
* Humanitarian Efforts in Ukraine, Oleksandr Tolokonnikov, Maria Botcharova, Luke Harding, Harry Blakiston Houston, 7pm, from £5.94, FrontlineClub, 13 Norfolk Place W2. Info: Frontline
Thursday 21 May
* Net Migration Figures - Policy, Politics and Public Attitudes, Madeleine Sumption, Sunder Catwalk, Heather Roof, 12-1pm, Info: British Futures
* The Observer Book Club: Braver New World, John Kampfner, David Miliband, James Harding on a new book on building a better society by learning from others, such as Japan’s inter-generational care system to Moroccan solar panels, 6-7pm, in-person and online, Royal Society of Arts, 8 John Adam Street, WC2N 6EZ. Info: RSA
* Agriculture for Development in a Changing World, panel discussion, 2-4pm, online. Info: Institute of Development Studies
* Tangerinn Emanuela Anechoum in conversation with Saleem Haddad, Haddad discusses her prize-winning debut, described as “the novel for a displaced generation”, 7-8.30pm, £10, Foyles, 107 Charing Cross Road. Info: Foyles
EXHIBITIONS
* Hawai’i: A Kingdom Crossing Oceans, a celebration of art and history, £18/£14, British Museum, iGreat Russell Street WC1 until 25 May. Info::Hawai’i
* A Greenland shadow over a wonderful Hawai’i exhibition
*Mil Veces uminstante (A thousand times in an instant), Mexican artist Teresa Maregoles’ cuboid on the Fourth Plinth in Trafalgar Square is a memorial to trans people worldwide.
* Hurvin Anderason, 80 works by the British-Jamaican artist, Tate Britain, Millbank, SW1P 4RG until 23 August. Info: Tate
* The Land Carries, work by Ahmed Akas (UK), Dina Nur Satti (US) and Yasmin Elnour (Bahrain), responding to material in the Petrie Museum of Egyptian and Sudanese Archaeology,1 - 5pm, Petrie Museum, University College London, Malet Place, WC1E 6BT until 16 May. Info: Sudan exhibition
* Collecting and Empire, trail making connections between archaeology, anthropology and the British Empire, British Museum, Great Russell Street, WC1. Info: British Museum
* British Library, installation of 6,328 books marks the contributions of migrants to UK, Tate Modern, Bankside, SE1. Info: Installation/ 7887 8888
* Target Queen, large-scale commission by British-Indian artist Bharti Kher, Hayward Gallery, Southbank Centre
* Water Pantanal Fire, photography exhibition revealing the fragile beauty of the Pantanal, the world’s largest wetland that sprawls across Brazil, Bolivia and Paraguay, free, Natural History Museum, Cromwell Road, SW7 2DD until 31 May. Info: Museum
* Bouchra Khalili: Circles and Storytellers, the culmination of the French-Moroccan artist and educator’s exploration of the Mouvement des Travailleurs Arabes and its theatre groups, Al Assifa and Al Halaka, free, Mosaic Rooms, 226 Cromwell Road, SW5 0SW, until 14 June. Info: Mosaic
* The Land Carries, exploration of Sudanese history, culture and nationhood through contemporary art, free, 1-5pm, University College London Petrie Museum, Gower Street, WC1E 6BT. Info: Petrie
* Moved to Care: Stories of Health and Migration, explores the contributions of migrants from across the globe to healthcare over the last 150 years, from the 19th century colonial legacy of missionary nurses to the Windrush Generation, free, 20 Cavendish Square, W1G OR until 2 November. Info: Royal College of Nursing
+ Migrant nurses: Looking after Britain’s health
* Deutsche Börse Photography Foundation Prize, shortlist includes Amak Mahmoodian (Iran) on the effects of exile on memory and identity, imagining a world without borders, £10/£7, Photographer’s Gallery, 16-18 Ramillies Street W1 until 7 June. Info: Prize
* The Arab Hall: Past and Present, the Hall in the 100-year-old Leighton House is a blend of 13th-century Damascus tiles and Victorian architecture. A new exhibition features contemporary art and a dedicated film, offering a deeper look at how Islamic art has influenced British spaces, £14, Leighton House, 12 Holland Park Road, W14 8LZ until 4 October. Info: Leighton House
* Donald Locke:Resistant Forms, works by Guyanese-British ceramicist, sculptor and painter, free, Camden Art Centre, Arkwright Road NW3 until 30 August. Info: Art Centre
* Nhu Xuan Hua: Of Walking on Fire, reimagines archival photographs from her family’s time in Vietnam and Europe, building visual reconstructions that echo how memory in the diaspora can blur and slip from view, free, Autograph, Rivington Place, EC2A 3BA until 19 September. Info: Autograph
* The Lost Paintings: A Prelude to Return, 53 artists from Palestine and the diaspora in London, P21, 21-27 Chalton Street, NW1 1JD, until 29 May. Info: P21
* The Music is Black: A British Story, how Black British music has shaped British culture from 1900 to today through objects like Joan Armatrading’s childhood guitar, fashion worn by Little Simz and photographs, £22.50 weekdays, £24.40, V&A East, Queen Elizabeth Park, Olympic Park. Info: V&A East Museum
* Learning in Exile: Stories of Displacement and Education in the Rohingya Community, centred on the experiences of Rohingya children and youth since 1982, Wiener Holocaust Library, 29 Russell Square
WC1B 5DP until 30 May. Info: Holocaust Library
* Hidden: Photography and displacement under the Khmer Rouge, follows a journey by Prim Sisaphantha during the 1975-79 regime in Cambodia, Wiener Holocaust Library, 29 Russell Square, WC1B 5DP, until 15 May. Info: Holocaust Library
* Ain Bailey: The Jamaica Project, films and compositions, free, Camden Arts Centre, Arkwright Road NW3, until 14 June. Info: Arts Centre
* When words fall silent, cinema speaks: Zineb Sedira’s installation on Algeria’s key role in African cinema in the 1960s and ‘70s, Tate Britain, Millbank, SW1P 4RG until 17 January. Info: Tate Commission
from Saturday 16 May
* Rising Voices: Contemporary Art from Asia, Australia and the Pacific, work by more than 40 artists from 25 countries,V&A South Kensington until 10 January. Info: Vam.ac.uk
+ Striking voices in the Asia-Pacific region
OPPORTUNITIES
* Making It Work, an initiative aiming at building support networks with and for new migrant artists, is holding a panel discussion on 21 May on the main challenges and opportunities available to migrant artists, as well as offering practical advice.
* Applications for Projekt Empower’s Practice Lab workshops for international theatre makers are invited, and a new Immersion Lab aimed at translating documentary material into performance is underway.
* The Film Fund offers financial and professional support for Palestinian filmmakers, regardless of where they live or what passport they carry. Apply by 24 May.
* 30 Black UK-based filmmakers and content creators are wanted for Momentum - a free, nine-month professional development programme supported by Channel 4 and Sony Pictures Television. To register your interest, email: momentum@weareparable.com. with the subject line: Registering interest for Momentum 2026
* Entries for the London Palestine Film Festival must be submitted by 30 June. contact@palestinefilm.org.uk
* Wanted: poems and short prose on the tragedy of refugee deaths in the Channel.
* the other side of hope: journeys in refugee and immigration literature invites submissions for its next issue, “other tongue, mother tongue.” It seeks poetry by migrants in any language except English. Guidelines.
* The Royal Court Theatre’s Writers’ Card aims to help playwrights through mentoring, networking, funding opportunities, events, subsidised meals and free script printing.
* The Climate Migration Collaborative seeks contributors to its Climate Migration Storytelling. initiative.
* Comedian Munya Chawawa has launched Black Boys Theatre Club “to give young men access to a world of theatre”.
* The BFI is to invest £150m over the next three years under six headings: audiences, education & heritage, filmmaking & talent development, skills & workforce development, international, and insight & industry.
* Good Chance, formed in the Calais Jungle refugee camp, is launching Stage Door 10 - a national programme placing 10 creatives from refugee backgrounds in paid roles across 10 UK theatres and arts organisations.
* Theatro Technis and Hyphen Artist Collective’s offer free in-person & online writing sessions + community chats for hyphenated & global majority creatives.
* Applications for the next round of Artist Surgeries at the Gate Theatre will be invited soon.
* As Yet Unscene, year-round initiative to find and develop scripts in early stages of development. it includes workshops, rehearsed readings and fully-rehearsed performances of longer extracts. Details here
* The Cockpit Theatre offers classes, workshops, readings, advice sessions, support & performance opportunities.
* Papatango hopes its new Playwrights’ Studio will be a home for playwrights of all levels of experience. Its advantages include digital workshops, lone-to-one, and thousands of pounds in open-access funding.
* If you are a refugee, immigrant or asylum-seeking writer interested in exploring your own poetry and prose, Exiled Writers Ink offers classes.
FILM
*.Do You Love Me, personal journey through Lebanon’s audiovisual memory, composed entirely of archival footage, spanning 70 years of film, TV, home videos and photography, Cine Lumiere, 17 Queensberry Place SW7 2DT until 30 May
* Queer East Festival, East and Southeast Asia’s queer landscape. Films include The Outsiders, Yu Kan-Ping’s ground-breaking Taiwanese drama; 3670, portraying the hidden codes of Seoul’s gay scene; A Useful Ghost, a wildly camp feature from Thailand skewering the establishment and cultural hypocrisy; Between Goodbyes, poignant documentary about queer adoption and the legacy of Korea’s overseas adoption programme; A Good Child, funny, moving drag comedy from Singapore; Johanna d’Arc of Mongolia; various London venues until 6 June. Info: Queer East
+Queer East Festival returns for its seventh edition
+ A love story about animated vacuum cleaners’
* Coup 53, the story of the Anglo-American coup that overthrew Iran's Prime Minister Mohammad Mossadegh and reinstalled the Shah, Curzon Bloomsbury + 18, 20 May
* The Stranger, Albert Camus’s classic of existential literature is brought to life in 1930s Algeria, where the life of an indifferent Frenchman is shaken by the death of his mother and an encounter on a beach,Cine Lumiere until 25 May
* Queer As Punk, defying their conservative society with every gig, Farts, Yon and Voyo are Malaysian LGBTQ+ punk band Shh…Diam! The bandmates bring humour, authenticity and punk spirit to their performances, travelling the country and refusing to be silenced by social pressures, Curzon Bloomsbury + 17, 19 May
Saturday 16 May
* Black God, White Devil, a restored landmark where faith, banditry and revolt collide, 4pm, National Film Theatre
* Cinema Novo, an archival immersion into the ideas, images and urgency of Cinema Novo, 6.40pm, National Film Theatre
Sunday 17 May
* Kwesi Awotwi: Tree of Roots, a British-Ghanaian artist returns to Ghana following the death of his maternal grandfather, reconnects him with his roots and inspires a new artwork, shaped by memory, loss, and a renewed sense of identity + talk, 11.30am and 2.30pm, Dulwich Picture Gallery, College Road, SE21 7AD. Part of Dulwich Festival.
from Sunday 17 May
* Our Planet, The People, My Blood, exposé of communities devastated by the more than 2,000 nuclear weapons tests that have been conducted worldwide, 6.20pm, Curzon Bloomsbury + 19, 21 May
Tuesday 19 May
* Queer As Punk, defying their conservative society with every gig, Farts, Yon and Voyo are Malaysian LGBTQ+ punk band Shh…Diam! The bandmates bring humour and punk spirit to performances, travelling the country and refusing to be silenced by social pressures, Curzon Bloomsbury, + 21 May'; Picturehouses Hackney and Ritzy
* My Favourite Cake, 70-year-old Mahin has been living alone in Tehran for decades but decides to revitalise her love life, Lexi + 21 May
PERFORMANCE
* The Boy Who Harnessed the Wind, musical based on a book, and a Netflix film by Chiweteln Ejiofor. It tells the true true story of 13-year-old William Kamkwamba who dreams of saving his Malawian village — but no one believes he can; frm £25 @SohoPlace, 4 Soho Place, W1D 3BG until 18 July. Info: @SohoPlace
* Assata Taught Me, fictional two-hander based on Assata Shakur, former Black Panther turned FBI’s Most Wanted Woman in 2016 Cuba, Riverside, Queen Caroline Street W6 9BN until 24 May. Info: Riverside
* Noughts and Crosses, a segregated society teeters on a volatile knife edge and a romance lead a young couple into danger in this gripping Romeo and Juliet story by Malorie Blackman adapted by Sabrina Mahfouz, £18-£46, Hackney Empire, 291 Mare Street E8 1E3 until 24 May. Info: Empire
* Second Class Queer, solo showwritten, performed and produced by Kumar Muniandy, a gay Tamil-Malaysian man, in which five different dates brings him closer to confronting love, identity, loss and the truth he never shared with his mother, £16, conc £12, Riverside, 101 Queen Caroline Street, W6 9BN, until 30 May. Info: Riverside
* Work While They Sleep, Brazilian sci-fi play about the working lives of women in late capitalism and the relentless pressure to increase productivity, 7.15pm; part of the UK/Brazil Season of Culture, Camden Peoples Theatre, 58-60 Hampstead Road, NW1 2PY until 18 May. Info: CPT
from Saturday 16 May
* The Harder They Fall, based on the cult classic film that brought reggae to the world, tells the story of Ivan, an aspiring singer who arrives in Kingston, Jamaica, determined to live out his dreams on his own terms and make it as a music superstar, £10-£53, Stratford East, until 4 July. Info: Stratford East
+ “What’s this groove becoming? How The Harder They Come captured Jamaice and blazed on to stage
from Tuesday 19 May
* kaddish (how to be a sanctuary), a reckoning between a Jewish grandson going to do solidarity work in Palestine and his long-dead grandfather who fought the Nazis in World War II, using the real archival journals of playwright/performer Sam Sherman’s grandpa, £19.50 / £17.50, Old Red Lion pub and playhouse, 418 St John Street, EC1V 4NJ, until 23 May. Info: Kaddish
TV & RADIO
Tuesday 12 May
* Great Central Asian Railway Journeys, 6.30pm, BBC2
* Takeover, last in drama series by Ayeesha Menon and Matthew Solon ,2.15pm, BBC2
* History’s Heroes, sisters who rebelled against a Dominican Republic dictator, 3pm, Radio
Wednesday 13 May
* Asian Railway Journeys, 6.30pm, BBC2
* To Catch a King, series about tracking down a people smuggler, 9.30am, Radio4
Thursday 14 May
* The Mughal Empire, 8.20pm, PBS America
* Great Central Asian Railway Journeys, 6.30pm, BBC2
Friday 15 May
* Great Central Asian Railway Journeys, 6.30pm, BBC2
* Unreported World, unscientific health treatments in The Philippines, 7.30pm, Channel4
* The Mughal Empire, 8pm, PBS America