Getty Images Partners with Radiate Festival on Exhibition Honouring Windrush 75

Getty Images, a preeminent global visual content creator and marketplace, is proud to announce its collaboration with Radiate Festival ahead of the 75th Windrush anniversary on the 22nd June 2023. A special walk-through open-air gallery titled Empire Windrush to Empire Black, sourced from Getty Images’ Black History & Culture Collection (BHCC), will be available to view at Radiate Festival, running 24-25 June in Burgess Park London.

Curated by the festival organisers in partnership with Getty Images, the gallery will feature rarely seen images representing the following themes: Resistance & Protest, Fashion & Beauty, Celebration & Joy, Carnival & Dance, Family & Life Photos, Early Labour & Service, and the Windrush Arrival. A festival created to celebrate Caribbean & Creole culture, the sixth annual Radiate Festival will mark the Windrush anniversary through the celebration of Black culture with music, food, art, fashion, hair and dance.

"Delving into the Black History & Culture Collection has been exciting for us as curators,” said Wendy Cummins, Founder & Director of Radiate Festival. “To have unlimited access has presented us with a chance to tell a story through some important and relevant themes. The chosen themes and the images curated within them tell a part of that journey, this history and those lives. We have been able to honour those photographic memories with our exhibition."

In addition to the physical exhibition of photographic prints, Radiate Festival’s Creative Lead Quincy Logie will be using the images to create large-scale mural prints and digital media displayed on digital screens. A word wall is also being created in collaboration with students from University of the Arts London who will respond to letters spelling ‘RADIATE WINDRUSH’ using imagery from the BHCC, along with textiles and personal images.

“The Getty Images Black History & Culture Collection exists to support the education and reflection of important histories related to the UK’s Black community and we are therefore proud to be partnering with the Radiate Festival to present this exhibition,” said Kwame Asiedu, Project Manager of the BHCC at Getty Images. “Visitors to the festival can look forward to viewing and engaging with rarely seen images which showcase and celebrate the multifaceted lives of the Windrush Generation and their community.”

The Black History & Culture Collection (BHCC) is a not-for-profit initiative launched by Getty Images last year that provides access free-of-charge to historical and cultural images of the African/Black Diaspora in the US and the UK for educational and other non-commercial purposes. The archive ranges from the 19th-century to the present-day and was curated in partnership with internationally-recognised researchers, historians and educators. Through providing access to rarely seen images to educators, academics, researchers and content creators, the Black History & Culture Collection aims to educate on untold stories around Black culture.

“To me, images create a really powerful opportunity to reconnect with special moments in history,” continues Cummins. “Access to collections like the BHCC will definitely enable communities to feel inspired to share more iconic and interesting moments of unseen Black History in different ways."

Since the Black History & Culture Collection launched, Getty Images has partnered with many organisations and educational institutions, including Ohio State University, Black Archives, Radiate Festival, Black History Walks, and others who have already used the collection as part of educational curriculum, exhibitions, and dialogues surrounding vital events from the past, from well-known to previously unseen or untold.

Tickets to Radiate Windrush Festival are available for both adults and children they are available to purchase here.