Home Is Not A Place

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The feeling of peace, the feeling that you aren’t meant to be anywhere else, or that no matter where else you go and what else you do, you’re meant to always find yourself there. The stories captured in the film and the book echo across centuries of the black experience, transforming and illuminating the history of Britain. A free country needs a free press, and the newspapers of our country are under significant financial pressure”. I could go on and on, but the long and short of it is, I believe home can be anywhere, even on the road, on your way to nowhere or to anywhere. S. Eliot Prize 2019, The RSL Ondaatje Prize 2020 and is a fellow of the Royal Society of Literature.

Invigorated by the quest to document Black Britain, Pitts presents a space that becomes pertinent at a global and diasporic level, what academic Michael Eric Dyson describes as being ‘rooted in, but not restricted by Blackness’. He is an alumnus of The Complete Works and was shortlisted for The OCM Bocas Poetry Prize, The Oxford Brookes Poetry Prize and the 2020 Derek Walcott Prize for Poetry, as well as being commended by the Forward Poetry Prize. There where your mind is free to wander or stay, there where your feet aren’t afraid to admit they are worn out. Their collaboration became Home is Not a Place which has now arrived at The Photographers’ Gallery in Ramillies Street, Oxford Circus. During their travels they uncovered hidden stories of black people living in the unlikeliest of places, from rundown seaside resorts to rural beach locations.When most people think of home, they envision a structure, a shelter from the elements, a place where they run to for comfort and safety.

PLEASE NOTE: Concessionary rates apply to under 21s, full time students, registered unemployed and registered disabled – just show us proof of status. For while roots are important and comforting, they do not always represent home, we aren’t meant to be rooted, we are not trees.Johny Pitts' Afropean: Notes from Black Europe was published last year to critical acclaim, and was recently awarded the 2020 Jhalak Prize. The Ampersand/Photoworks Fellowship is a collaboration between The Ampersand Foundation and Photoworks, supported by Arts Council England. His debut photographic exhibition, ‘Afropean: Travels in Black Europe’, was at Foam, Amsterdam in 2020. He currently presents Open Book for BBC Radio 4 and a forthcoming Afropean podcast funded by a grant from the National Geographic Society. Come and hear these tales, which echo across centuries of the black experience, transforming and illuminating the history of Britain.

What is it like to be black in Britain today, particularly if you live outside of the urban, metropolitan centres? If you can afford to do so, we would be so grateful if you can make a donation which will allow us to continue to bring stories to you, both in print and online. Because if it’s disrupting your peace, chances are your intuition might be trying to tell you something.

Find your true home, build your life around it and don’t settle for anything less than the life you feel you were meant to live. It fosters ideas of multicultural ‘conviviality’ as written about by Black British sociologist Paul Gilroy and presented by the works about Black British homes of artists such as Michael McMillan and Ronan Mckenzie. Too often, that is where the history told about Black Britain begins and ends – but Robinson and Pitts continued out of London, following the coast clockwise through Margate to Land’s End, Bristol to Blackpool, Glasgow to John O’Groats and Scarborough to Southend on Sea. Here, the authors found not only Black British culture long overlooked in official narratives of Britain, but also the history of Empire and transatlantic slavery to which every Briton is tethered.

His debut photographic exhibition will place his work alongside that of Vivian Meier and Alec Soth at Foam Amsterdam this September. Read more about the condition New: A new, unread, unused book in perfect condition with no missing or damaged pages.In 2020 the book won the Jhalak Prize and the Bread and Roses Award for Radical Publishing and is the recipient of the 2021 Leipzig Book Award for European Understanding. This exhibition is infused with the Japanese architectural ideas of the ‘personal utopia’; a haven where one seeks respite from the difficulties of the outside world.