Busy Being Black with Joshua Rivers

A conversation with Mojisola Adebayo about the marvellous audacity that animates Black art, the prophetic power of artists to open space for what needs to come through and the freedom of going to the edge of what feels possible. We are in dialogue with What Is Black Art? , edited by Dr Alice Correia, In View of the Tradition by Roderick A. Ferguson and Reframing Blackness by Alayo Akinkugbe, as we...

A conversation with Alayo Akinkugbe, an art historian and curator on why it's important to call attention to and appreciate the diversity of Black figures in the margins and major works of Western of art history. 'Major museums are supposed to be a document of the nation's identity through history. It's seen as a reflection of the nation. If you're a Black British person and all you see is caricat...

Dr Ajamu X explores taking responsibility for what we create, and the punk-radical necessity of tending to archives that reflect and honour the complex and pleasureful lives of queer Black folk—now and in the so-called past. Regular Listeners have access to the full and ad-free conversation on Busy Being Black's Patreon . This conversation was recorded at the 2025 Kinfolk Convening in Manchester....

Dr Ajamu X explores taking responsibility for what we create, and the punk-radical necessity of tending to archives that reflect and honour the complex and pleasureful lives of queer Black folk—now and in the so-called past. Regular Listeners have access to the full and ad-free conversation on Busy Being Black's Patreon. This conversation was recorded at the 2025 Kinfolk Convening in Manchester. '...

There is perhaps no better person to speak to about Black creative expression and excellence through art than Kadiatu Kanneh-Mason—the matriarch, mother and woman who makes possible the prodigious creativity of the seven Kanneh-Mason siblings.   In her book, To Be Young, Gifted and Black , Kadiatu shows that the key to a creatively fulfilling and purposeful life is in how we live in between the hi...

There is perhaps no better person to speak to about Black creative expression and excellence through art than Kadiatu Kanneh-Mason—the matriarch, mother and woman who makes possible the prodigious creativity of the seven Kanneh-Mason siblings.   In her book, To Be Young, Gifted and Black, Kadiatu shows that the key to a creatively fulfilling and purposeful life is in how we live in between the hig...

I sat down with award-winning author Brandon Taylor live at Brixton House Theatre to mark the UK launch of his latest novel, Minor Black Figures . Our conversation explores what happens when Black artists resist the demands of the always-on attention economy to instead embrace the archives, tend to our cultural inheritances and allow ourselves—and the characters in our art—the messy complexities w...

I sat down with award-winning author Brandon Taylor live at Brixton House Theatre to mark the UK launch of his latest novel, Minor Black Figures. Our conversation explores what happens when Black artists resist the demands of the always-on attention economy to instead embrace the archives, tend to our cultural inheritances and allow ourselves—and the characters in our art—the messy complexities we...

As we bear witness to the destruction of our world and kin through handheld technologies designed as slot machines, and increasingly disoriented by the hourly oscillations between the cannibal horror and unutterable awe of being human in 2026, Minna Salami reminds us that we won’t build new worlds with the same words that built this one. Read that again, friends. With her full-bodied philosophy, s...

As we bear witness to the destruction of our world and kin through handheld technologies designed as slot machines, and increasingly disoriented by the hourly oscillations between the cannibal horror and unutterable awe of being human in 2026, Minna Salami reminds us that we won’t build new worlds with the same words that built this one. Read that again, friends. With her full-bodied philosophy, s...

My bodacious conversation with theatre-maker and cosmological enchantress Candice D'Meza opens with my poem, Our Life Together. Inspired by an exchange between Nikki Giovanni and James Baldwin, the poem is a fitting expression of the ways Black artists think, feel and create across time and space to build the worlds we need now. Candice D'Meza builds liberated worlds through art, cosmology and the...

My bodacious conversation with theatre-maker and cosmological enchantress Candice D'Meza opens with my poem, Our Life Together. Inspired by an exchange between Nikki Giovanni and James Baldwin, the poem is a fitting expression of the ways Black artists think, feel and create across time and space to build the worlds we need now. Candice D'Meza builds liberated worlds through art, cosmology and the...

Poet and author Dean Atta returns to Busy Being Black to share how therapy, memoir-writing and entering into his "big man stage" have transformed his relationship with his mental health, creativity and self-acceptance. The episode opens with a joint reading of Dean's poem "Two Black Boys in Paradise"—the poem that inspired the BAFTA-winning animation of the same name—and closes with Dean reading "...

Poet and author Dean Atta returns to Busy Being Black to share how therapy, memoir-writing and entering into his "big man stage" have transformed his relationship with his mental health, creativity and self-acceptance. The episode opens with a joint reading of Dean's poem "Two Black Boys in Paradise"—the poem that inspired the BAFTA-winning animation of the same name—and closes with Dean reading "...

Busy Being Black returns on Tuesday 24 March 2026 with a new conversation between me Dean Atta, who recently won a BAFTA for Two Black Boys in Paradise. Today, in honour of World Poetry Day, I’m resurfacing our 2018 conversation in which we explore recovery and intimacy, desire and vulnerability and the role of poetry in bringing us closer to ourselves, to each other and to people who are no longe...

Art is a vital mechanism through which we process grief and sustain life. In times of intense discord, denying our impulse to create often results in destructive behaviours. Artist and writer Rosel Jackson Stern offers a gentle provocation to anyone feeling paralysed by the current geopolitical climate: find and nurture even the tiniest moments of joy. By anchoring life in joy, Rosel has built an...

Art is a vital mechanism through which we process grief and sustain life. In times of intense discord, denying our impulse to create often results in destructive behaviours. Artist and writer Rosel Jackson Stern offers a gentle provocation to anyone feeling paralysed by the current geopolitical climate: find and nurture even the tiniest moments of joy. By anchoring life in joy, Rosel has built an...

Today marks eight years since Busy Being Black first came to life: on 21 October 2017, I produced and hosted an event called Forbidden Fruits, anchored by a conversation about love, intimacy and belonging among queer Black men. I couldn't have known in that moment how much I would need this space. Ben Ellis is a poet—and a poet in the way James Baldwin, Toni Morrison and René Ménil meant it: one o...

Today marks eight years since Busy Being Black first came to life: on 21 October 2017, I produced and hosted an event called Forbidden Fruits, anchored by a conversation about love, intimacy and belonging among queer Black men. I couldn't have known in that moment how much I would need this space. Ben Ellis is a poet—and a poet in the way James Baldwin, Toni Morrison and René Ménil meant it: one o...

A tender meditation on grief, healing and courage with multidisciplinary artist Phoebe Boswell , who creates portals that return us to our miraculous hearts. If you'd like to see the art we discuss in this conversation, you can watch this episode on @busybeingblacktube . The ⁠⁠Black Marvellous⁠⁠ : a growing collection of conversations that adventure into Black imaginative vigour—in art, attitude &...

A tender meditation on grief, healing and courage with multidisciplinary artist Phoebe Boswell, who creates portals that return us to our miraculous hearts. If you'd like to see the art we discuss in this conversation, you can watch this episode on @busybeingblacktube. The ⁠⁠Black Marvellous⁠⁠: a growing collection of conversations that adventure into Black imaginative vigour—in art, attitude & li...

Inspired by Afrosurrealism, surrealist philosophy and the archetypal imagination, the Black Marvellous is a growing collection of conversations that adventure into Black imaginative vigour—in art, attitude and life. Who better than Mojisola Adebayo to remind us of the adventure and irreverence of Black artistry, during and beyond times of crisis? In this conversation, which originally aired in Feb...

Inspired by Afrosurrealism, surrealist philosophy and the archetypal imagination, the Black Marvellous is a growing collection of conversations that adventure into Black imaginative vigour—in art, attitude and life. Who better than Mojisola Adebayo to remind us of the adventure and irreverence of Black artistry, during and beyond times of crisis? In this conversation, which originally aired in Feb...

You’ll no doubt have heard of and read Kuchenga Shenjé's debut novel, The Library Thief , which brings together her passions for history, mystery and rebels; and you’re likely to have felt the warmth and humour of her writing in publications like British Vogue and Stylist. In our conversation, we explore how she came to the transformative decision to pursue sobriety, her hodgepodge approach to her...

You’ll no doubt have heard of and read Kuchenga Shenjé's debut novel, The Library Thief, which brings together her passions for history, mystery and rebels; and you’re likely to have felt the warmth and humour of her writing in publications like British Vogue and Stylist. In our conversation, we explore how she came to the transformative decision to pursue sobriety, her hodgepodge approach to her...