Author: Nkenna Akunna

Skin Deep Meets

Centering Black life in a time of Black social death – Barry Jenkins’ The Underground Railroad

Director Barry Jenkins tells Skin Deep he wanted to show "not what was done to them, but what they did."
Centering Black life in a time of Black social death – Barry Jenkins’ The Underground Railroad
Art

a moment of silence

"What might we hear when our ears are open to the silence?" Reflections on how we can find power in lockdown isolation.
a moment of silence
Art, People, Skin Deep Meets

Skin Deep meets Rebekah Murrell

Culture Editor Nkenna Akunna caught up with friend of the Skin Deep fam, Rebekah Murrell.
Skin Deep meets Rebekah Murrell
Art, People, Skin Deep Meets

Skin Deep meets Alfie Enoch

Towards the end of his run in Tree at the Young Vic, Skin Deep caught up with Alfie Enoch to talk about the importance of Black British storytelling.
Skin Deep meets Alfie Enoch
Art

BBZ BLK BK: Alternative Graduate Show 2019

BBZ’s Alternative Graduate show opened at the Copeland Gallery in Peckham last Wednesday, featuring ten early career artists practising in a range of mediums.
BBZ BLK BK: Alternative Graduate Show 2019
Art, Skin Deep Meets

Skin Deep Meets: Small Island

Skin Deep Meets the cast of Small Island to talk about the importance of representing the Windrush generation on stage, and why they think art and creativity remains significant in moments of immense political and social threat.
Skin Deep Meets: Small Island
Skin Deep Meets

Sheila Atim Takes Her Play, Anguis, To Edinburgh

Nkenna Akunna caught up with the rising star to talk about her new role as a playwright.
Sheila Atim Takes Her Play, Anguis, To Edinburgh
Art, Skin Deep Meets

Bronx Gothic: An exploration of freedom, trauma, and the limits of black girlhood

Bronx Gothic is turbulent, vulnerable, and its structural lines do not slot tidily in the mental spaces we are used to making as audience members.
Bronx Gothic: An exploration of freedom, trauma, and the limits of black girlhood
Activism, Art

Jay Bernard’s Surge, the process of documenting overlooked Black British history, and the struggles we are yet to overcome

Paying homage to the victims of the New Cross fire in 1981.
Jay Bernard’s Surge, the process of documenting overlooked Black British history, and the struggles we are yet to overcome
Art, People, Skin Deep Meets

Skin Deep meets Yrsa Daley-Ward

The Terrible is a different thing for everybody. It is a shape-shifting thing, it can be whatever the thing is in you that trips you up again and again and again.
Skin Deep meets Yrsa Daley-Ward
Art, People, Skin Deep Meets

On Loneliness and Finding Ourselves in Each Other, with Fatimah Asghar

Diasporic loneliness is distinct. It's an ever-present vibration under the skin, in some moments unremarkable and in others turbulent.
On Loneliness and Finding Ourselves in Each Other, with Fatimah Asghar
Art, People

Hoard, Bim Adewunmi’s love letter to the Black British experience

Bim Adewunmi's debut play, exploring the contours of a multi-generational British Nigerian family.
Hoard, Bim Adewunmi’s love letter to the Black British experience