A deep exploration of North African migration, heritage, and identity, centering the voices of Algerian, Moroccan, Tunisian, Egyptian, Sudanese, and Libyan communities in Leeds and beyond.

This event will serve as a powerful platform for cultural expression, cross-community dialogue, and historical reflection, celebrating North African heritage and its impact on contemporary diaspora identities in the UK.

Programme Highlights:

Traditional & Contemporary North African Dance

Live Music & Spoken Word Performances

Esther's Revenge play:
Written and Directed by Kenneth Uphopho

Get ready for a gripping theatrical experience as Esther's Revenge takes the stage at the HEART Centre as part of the 3rd edition of the Leeds International African Arts Festival LIAAF 2025!

As part of the 3rd edition of the Leeds International African Arts Festival LIAAF 2025! Leeds has untold stories waiting for you to find them.

Walk through the city’s past and see Leeds in a way you never have before. Led by Leeds Black History Walk (LBHW), this experience pulls back the curtain on hidden Black histories, from ancient African legacies to forgotten landmarks that shaped the city. This is history that demands to be seen, heard, and felt.

What’s waiting for you:

Stories that challenge everything you thought you knew about Leeds

Please come and join us at Bowers Allerton Hall for our first open mic night. We are hoping that this will be a monthly event. We will be running the evening as a fundraiser for our beautiful building that is in desperate need of repair and refurbished in order to keep it open for the use of our local community.

Learn the art of lino printing with multidisciplinary artist and experienced tutor Annie Cunniffe.

This workshop will introduce you to safely using the various tools needed to produce stunning prints.  No experience of drawing, painting or printing is needed and this workshop is suitable for all abilities to just experiment and play. Learn how to successfully turn your lino cuts into beautiful prints using a printing press or brayer.

All materials, including paint, lino and cutting tools are provided at no additional cost.

We are thrilled to be bringing this follow up to the popular Painting with Knives workshop with professional artist Heather Burton.

Heather will guide you through the process of making a bold and expressive painting from beginning to end and ensure you create a magnificent painting to take home. Using the palette knife you will learn how to correctly apply and layer colour to a canvas to give you a strong composition and tonal value.
 
This event is for both experienced and beginner artists who want to try something bold and new.  

Blues Like Showers of Rain (1970) provides an unflinching insight into the conditions that gave birth to the blues in America, charting the evolving sound of the blues as musicians moved from rural areas into the cities. As both director and editor Jeremy deftly combines the field recordings and still photographs of the British blues historian Paul Oliver (1927 – 2017) gathered on a trip through the United States in 1960.

Set during World War II, the Story focuses on the seductive Carmen Jones (Dorothy Dandridge) who works in a parachute factory in North Carolina. She lures handsome GI Joe (Harry Belafonte) away from his sweetheart Cindy Lou (Olga James) when he is assigned to escort her to court after she's involved in a brawl in her factory.

Dorothy Dandridge became the first black woman to receive a Best Actress Oscar nomination for her performance in this critically acclaimed and popular adaptation of Bizet’s opera.