Credit: John Akomfrah; Courtesy Smoking Dogs Films and Lisson Gallery
An award-winning documentary film about race and civil unrest in Handsworth, Birmingham and London in the 1980s features in a new installation which opens at Birmingham Museum & Art Gallery on Tuesday 13 October 2026 to mark the film’s 40th anniversary.
Handsworth is widely recognised as one of Britain’s earliest and most significant post-war multicultural communities. The installation, Handsworth Stories, explores the experiences, richness and diversity of the people that lived there.
Through a combination of documentary footage, archive material, interviews and music, the film Handsworth Songs by acclaimed director John Akomfrah captures the testimonies of Handsworth residents and explores some of the social, political and economic circumstances behind the unrest in September and October 1985.
The soundtrack to the film was composed by Trevor Mathison, a co-founder of the Black Audio Film Collective along with Akomfrah and others. Akomfrah received a knighthood for his services to the arts in 2023.
The film was created with the support of Birmingham-based artists and activists, including members of the Asian Youth Movement, with photography by Vanley Burke and voice-overs by Pervaiz Khan and Meera Syal.
Footage from the 1950s and 1960s provides a striking counterpoint, documenting the arrival and development of Birmingham’s African-Caribbean and South Asian communities and their hopes of building new lives for themselves and their families in Britain.
Originally commissioned by Channel 4, Handsworth Songs was released to critical acclaim and won several international awards, including the John Grierson Award for Best Documentary in 1986. Birmingham Museums Trust acquired a copy of the film in 2022, bringing an important piece of Birmingham’s cultural history into its collection.
The installation also includes a selection of photographs from Handsworth Self-Portrait, a project devised in 1979 by photographers Derek Bishton, John Reardon and the late Brian Homer.
Based in their office at 81 Grove Lane, Handsworth, they set up a backdrop outside the front of the building and invited passers-by to take their own photograph using a long cable release. The result was an extraordinary snapshot of one of Britain’s first multicultural communities.
The display has been made possible with support from the DCMS/Wolfson Museums and Galleries Improvement Fund, John Ellerman Foundation and John Feeney Charitable Trust.
It is part of a city-wide programme of events organised by Birmingham Museums Trust, Birmingham City University and University of Birmingham to explore the legacy and continuing relevance of Handsworth Songs, its themes and the communities represented within it.
Ian Sergeant, senior curator (global majority collections) at Birmingham Museums Trust, said:
“Handsworth Songs is an extraordinary work that speaks not only to the history of Handsworth and Birmingham, but to much wider questions about migration, belonging, inequality, memory and identity.
“It is particularly significant that we are able to show this work in the city and make it accessible to audiences here. Forty years on, its combination of archive, testimony, music and poetry remains as powerful and provocative as ever, and we hope the installation will encourage audiences to consider both the history it records and the questions it continues to ask us today.”
John Fagg, senior lecturer in American literature and culture at the University of Birmingham, added:
“Handsworth Songs works within a documentary tradition but also breaks from it. Juxtaposed and repeated imagery, the poetic register of the voiceovers, and the unsettling sound design all refuse to straightforwardly narrate the event or reproduce the form of the news programmes that the film quotes from. Black Audio’s innovations were developed through collective working methods and in the context of the wider 1980s film and video workshop movement.
“The community voices and street protest footage in Handsworth Songs open up a key period in Birmingham’s social history. The film also encourages audiences to reflect on the way that history is framed and represented and offers inspiration to contemporary documentary artists.”
Councillor Deborah Harries, cabinet member for culture, Birmingham City Council, said:
“Handsworth Stories is a thought-provoking exhibition which highlights local community stories from what was a turbulent time in Handsworth’s and the city’s history.”
Zak Menah and Sara Wajid, co-chief executives of Birmingham Museums Trust, said:
“We are proud to bring this important work to Birmingham Museum & Art Gallery, where it can be experienced by new audiences and become part of the conversations we have about our city, its history and its future.
“We are hugely grateful to the DCMS/Wolfson Museums and Galleries Improvement Fund, John Ellerman Foundation and John Feeney Charitable Trust for their generous support, which has helped make this installation possible and enables us to share more of Birmingham’s diverse stories with the public.”
The installation opens at Birmingham Museum & Art Gallery on 13 October 2026