Free off charge – every first Thursday of the month at Berlin Global Village!

Starting in October 2025, Sankofa Stages launches a new cultural series at Berlin Global Village, centering African and Afro-diasporic perspectives. Over the course of three evenings, the series will create a space that celebrates the creativity, diversity, and vitality of African and Black art and cultural production in Berlin. Each evening combines two artistic forms, creating new connections – for example, between an exhibition and a concert, a reading and a performance, or a film screening and a DJ set.

🎤 Look forward to: Batila & The Dreambus, Sharon Dodua Otoo, MFA Kera & The Black Heritage, and many more.

The events bring together established, emerging, and experimental artists, musicians, filmmakers, and other cultural practitioners. At the heart of the series lies the meaning of Sankofa – a symbol from the West African Adinkra tradition that stands for learning from the past in order to consciously shape the present and the future. Sankofa invites us to look back in remembrance, bringing impulses, practices, and narratives from history into the present — not as a nostalgic glance backward, but as an active, transformative process.

🤝🏿 A cooperation between Afrika-Rat Berlin Brandenburg e.V., ANEE e.V., Initiative Perspektivwechsel e.V., Sister Cities in Action, and Berlin Global Village.

🎥 You can find recaps of the event on our Instagram channel.

📅 When: Thu, October 2, 2025 

👉🏾 We kicked off the series on October 2 with a concert by none other than Batila Sound & The DreamBus. The seven-piece band brought an electrifying mix of Afrobeat, Soul, Reggae, and Congolese rhythms to the stage – music that moves both heart and body.

👉🏾 At the same time, the exhibition “Resilience in Exile” opened. It features four Congolese artists living in the diaspora and sheds light on experiences of resistance and belonging. Curated by Isabella and Victoria Seibt (BellArt Gallery). The exhibition will be on view until the end of December 2025.

🗓️ WHEN: November 6th, start: 7pm, doors open: 6pm
📍 WHERE: Miriam Makeba Saal, Berlin Global Village, Am Sudhaus 2, 12053 Berlin 

German and English.

In collaboration with Sister Cities on Screen, we presented two powerful films that explore memory, identity, and belonging in very different ways.

Following the screenings of The Wind on Your Skin and Princess Amakhoe, we were joined by the filmmakers Naomi Beukes-Meyer and Markus Spitta, who both draw on their biographical connections to Namibia and reflect on them through their artistic practice. Beukes award-winning films explore migration, resilience, and the experiences of African women. She was recognized among the 100 Most Influential Africans in Europe.

The evening was closed with a DJ set by DJ Morenga.

🗓️ WHEN: November 6th, start: 7pm, doors open: 6pm
📍 WHERE: Miriam Makeba Saal, Berlin Global Village, Am Sudhaus 2, 12053 Berlin 

The event is free of charge and will take place in German and English.

Look forward to a book reading with Sharon Dodua Otoo and a lively concert by MFA Kera. 

FOCUS: AFRO-FEMINIST STORYTELLING

This evening centers on Afro-feminist forms of storytelling — narratives that resist, keep memory alive, and imagine futures. We’ll open the night with drinks and snacks in the Makeba Hall, before author and activist Sharon Dodua Otoo reads from her new work Mahlerstraße 8. Otoo’s literary practice intertwines personal perspective with political awareness and asks: Who owns remembrance?

The reading will be followed by a concert with MFA Kera and her band The Black Heritage. Their performances create a poetic space where African cosmologies, personal memory, and sonic transformation merge.
An evening between word and sound.