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On Vinyl: Summer Flowers closing party and listening session

23 May 2025, 6:30 pm–8:30 pm

Still from Summer Flowers exhibition film. A hand holds old film portrait photos over a wooden table

Join us at the UCL Urban Room on the 23rd May for the Summer Flowers exhibition closing party and listening session. We are inviting attendees to bring a vinyl record from the era of Bessie’s life that connects with joy, gardening, writing and liberation.

This event is free.

Event Information

Open to

All

Availability

Yes

Cost

Free

Organiser

UCL Urban Room

Location

UCL Urban Room
One Pool Street
London
E20 2AF
United Kingdom

The Summer Flowers exhibition combines sound, drawings, plant pressings and texts by the author Bessie Head to explore themes of belonging between apartheid-era South Africa and Serowe, Botswana. Created by Ilze Wolff of Wolff Architects, the exhibition is an immersive space to experience ‘liberation architecture’, where Bessie Head's words and her garden archive become tools to interrogate power dynamics.  

Join us on the 23rd of May from 6:30PM to 8:30 for a listening session to gather records and playback the sounds that Bessie Head was listening to during her life in South Africa and Botswana (1937 –1986).

We are inviting attendees to bring a vinyl record from the era of Bessie’s life that connects with joy, gardening, writing and liberation. We will play the vinyls on the Summer Flowers record player made by Dada Khanyisa. The event will be a  social space to celebrate the life of Bessie Head and her love of sound.


 About the exhibition

The Summer Flowers exhibition combines sound, drawings, plant pressings and texts by the author Bessie Head to explore themes of belonging between apartheid-era South Africa and Serowe, Botswana. Created by Ilze Wolff of Wolff Architects, the exhibition is an immersive space to experience ‘liberation architecture’, where Bessie Head's words and her garden archive become tools to interrogate power dynamics.  


Plan your visit

The exhibition is open to visit Monday – Saturday, 10-6pm, no need to book.

The exhibition space will occasionally be closed for workshops, please visit the Urban Room Instagram channel to find out more.