With Sankofa Stages – Amplifying African and Black Voices, a new cultural series started at Berlin Global Village this fall. Our goal: to create an intergenerational and artistic space for encounter and exchange. To this end, we invited a diverse range of guests from the arts and culture.

We kicked off in October with the exhibition opening Resilience in Exile and an energetic concert by Batila & The DreamBus. In this first edition, artistic forms of expression of the Congolese diaspora were in focus. Their diversity, expressive power and presence made the evening a very special starting point.

Together with the city partnership project Sister Cities in Action, we designed the second Sankofa Stages evening around the theme of revisiting film. Filmmakers Markus Spitta and Noemi Beukes Meyer showed their short films Princess Amakoe and The Wind on Your Skin to a Berlin audience for the first time. In the subsequent conversation, the focus was on challenges, obstacles, but also inspiring moments in their artistic work.

A highlight of the series was the reading by Sharon Dodua Otoo from her short story Mahlerstraße 8 – followed by a concert by singer and composer MFA Kera, accompanied by The Black Heritage. Afro-feminist storytelling was clearly at the center here and provided a powerful closing.

Sankofa Stages has shown how diverse African and Black art and cultural production in Berlin is, and was celebrated with great interest, good conversations, laughter, dancing and new encounters.

And the best part: we’ll be back next fall!

In Cooperation with Afrika-Rat Berlin Brandenburg e.V., ANEE e.V., Initiative Perspektivwechsel e.V. and Sister Cities in Action

More information to follow.