Below is a selection of activities that centre, feature, are led or created by persons of Caribbean descent.
Workshops
Unveiling Ecologies: Cassava Stories
- Saturday 17 October
- 12:00 – 3:00pm
- £30 – book your ticket
- granton: hub Madelvic House
- Granton Park Avenue, Edinburgh EH5 1HS
This workshop, lead by Haitian writer and multi-disciplinary artist, Leilani Taneus-Millar, repositions cassava as valuable on multiple levels, in its climate resilience, its nutritional value worldwide, community culture and sustainable material design.
Our cassava stories will be complied into a zine for publication by an Edinburgh based press. Each participant will receive one copy of our zine.
Sitting together in a circle with graters, a basket full of this tuberous brown root in the middle, each participant will learn about this staple food indigenous to South America, the Caribbean, Southeast Asia and Africa, including its present day extraction to make tapioca pearls in bubble tea or the recycling of the pulp to make paper, bioplastics, and Cardbond (a sustainable, low-energy material used in homeware).
Celebrations
🛍️ Haitian Marketplace
Support an artist collective from St Marc, Haiti. For one day only, Haitian curator, Pierre Guirand, will be showcasing and selling paintings, clothing, jewellery and mixed-media art from Haiti.
- Saturday 17 October
- 10am-12pm and 3pm-5pm
- Free, no booking required
- granton: hub Madelvic House
- Granton Park Avenue, Edinburgh EH5 1HS
- Enquiries: leilani.taneusmiller@yahoo.co.uk
Tours
Black History Walking Tours of Edinburgh
- Thursday 1 (5pm), Saturday 3 (2pm), Monday 5 (4:30pm)
- Saturday 10 (11am), Sunday 25 (2pm)
- £20 per adult, discounts for children, students, retired and unwaged
- 13yrs+
Hear inspirational stories of the long Black presence in Edinburgh from the 16th century to the present day. Expect to hear about women, men and children from Africa, the Caribbean and African Americans and the liberation movements in Edinburgh and all over the world. With Edinburgh Caribbean Association Founder, Lisa Williams.
- Saturdays 3 and 17 October, Friday 30 October
- 14:30-16:00
- Free
- Kelvingrove Art Gallery and Museum
- Argyle Street, Glasgow, G3 8AG
Kelvingrove Art Gallery and Museum celebrates its 125 anniversary this year. Opened with the 1901 International Exhibition and funded with profits from the 1888 international exhibition, Glasgow’s connections to colonialism played a key role in both exhibitions. Empire has played a key role in Kelvingrove’s foundation and history. This tour led by Nelson Cummins, Senior Curator will explore this history in the present day Kelvingrove through a tour of some of the current galleries and displays.
Glasgow Black History Walking Tour
- Every Sunday in October and Wednesday 28 October
- 1pm – 3pm
- Free
- David Livingstone Memorial Statue
- Castle Street Glasgow G4 0UZ
This year, tours will be led by CRER’s Lucien Staddon Foster, with fortnightly contributions from Amy Rich (Museums Galleries Edinburgh) and Nelson Cummins
(Glasgow Museums)
Glasgow Green, Empire and the Clyde
- Wednesday 14 October
- 12:30pm-2:00pm
- Free
- Doulton Fountain (Front of The People’s Palace)
- Glasgow Green, Glasgow G40 1AT
This walking tour will explore the ways Glasgow Green and it’s surrounding
areas have been impacted by Glasgow’s links to slavery and empire. Led by
Nelson Cummins, Senior Curator. This tour will take place outside and the
route has minimal shelter so please come prepared for Glasgow weather.
Perspectives: Black History Month Tour | National Museums Scotland
- Friday 16 October
- 16:00 – 17:00 and 17:30 – 18:30
- Free – ticketed
- National Museum of Scotland, Lothian Street
Specialist Tour | Aubrey Williams Centenary & collecting – Glasgow Life
- Tuesday 20th Oct 2026
- 2:30pm
- Free
- Glasgow Museums Resource Centre
- 200 Woodhead Rd, Glasgow G53 7NN
- This tour will look at two key paintings by the Guyanese painter Aubrey Williams as part of his centenary year celebrations.
Film Screenings
- Thursday 15 October
- 7.40pm
- Glasgow Film Theatre
- 12 Rose Street Glasgow G3 6RB
- 15yrs+
Horace Ové’s pioneering drama, Pressure (1975) follows a Trinidadian family living with British racism in London. The film will be followed by a discussion about director Horace Ové’s seminal work and its relevance today.
HANDSWORTH SONGS + Short — Jali Collective
- Friday 30 October 2026
- 14:30 – 15:50
- Filmhouse Edinburgh
- 88 Lothian Road, Edinburgh, EH3 9BZ
Handsworth Songs
John Akomfrah | UK | 1986 | English & Jamaican Patois | 58m
40th Anniversary
Forty years since its release the Black Audio Film Collective’s Handsworth Songs feels poignant and viscerally relevant. In honour of its anniversary, we revisit John Akomfrah’s groundbreaking experimental documentary essay on race, protest and belonging in 80s Britain.
Part of the Jali Film Weekender.
Exhibitions
Veronica Ryan: The Weather Inside II | Mount Stuart
- 3rd, 8th, 12th, 15th, 17th, 18th October
- 11.30am – 3pm
- Free
- Mount Stuart, Isle of Bute, PA20 9LR
- 9th-22nd October 2026
- The Alchemy Experiment
- 157 Byres rd, Glasgow, G12 8TS
An Exhibition from Artists of the Black Scottish Diaspora, with Ese Johnson, Philip Morrell and Carla Angus. Instagram
Caribbean Connections, Slavery, and Paxton House
- Throughout October
- 10:00 – 15:00
- Free, drop-in (unticketed)
- Paxton House
- Paxton, Near Berwick-Upon-Tweed, Scottish Borders, TD15 1SZ
Literary events
- Friday 30th October
- PWYC
- Ticketed (includes refreshments)
- Kinning Park Complex
- 43 Cornwall St, Kinning Park, Glasgow G41 1BA
The SBWN Writers Summit for Black & PoC writers and literary professionals includes panels, workshops, informal facilitated networking, plus freelancer and creative drop-ins.
Scottish BPOC Writers Network celebrates Black futures year-round. Black History Month Blog Post Roundup – SBWN
Talks
Public lecture by Jean-François Manicom
Public lecture by Guadeloupean artist photographer, director, and
Senior Curator at the Museum of London Docklands, Jean-François Manicom.
- Wednesday 7 October
- 4:00-5:00pm, followed by drinks until about 6:00 pm
- Free, no booking required
- University of St Andrews
Radio
Jambo! Radio Scotland — African & Caribbean Voices, Music & News
More BHM activities
Many more BHM event listings can be found on:
Notes
Black History Month is observed in Scotland and the UK in October.
Many Black History Month Scotland events are listed by Coalition for Racial Equality and Rights (CRER), established in 2001. CRER adopts ‘political blackness’ which has roots in 1970s British trade union movement and includes all persons who are not white and experience racism due to skin colour.
Black History Month was first celebrated in the UK in October 1987, introduced by Akimbo (Akyaaba) Addai-Sebo, a Ghanaian-born activist, writer, and coordinator of special projects for the Greater London Council (GLC). The first celebration coinciding with the 150th anniversary of the abolition of slavery in the British Empire and the African Jubilee Year.
Black History Month in the USA is observed in February, with the first one occuring in 1970, and grew from ‘Negro History Week’ which began in 1926.
References:
- Political Blackness | The Anti-Racist Educator
- Bookmark this for the next time somebody asks you what political blackness is | gal-dem
- About BHM — BLACK HISTORY MONTH SCOTLAND
- Black History Month – Wikipedia
- Black History Month in Britain | Black History and Heritage
- Origins of Black History Month | Black History and Heritage