It's still a while until the V&A East — a new museum on Stratford's burgeoning 'East Bank' — opens for business, but we already know what its first exhibition will be.
The Music Is Black: A British Story will chart the massive contribution Black British music has made to the country's culture. Spanning jazz, reggae, two-tone, drum & bass, trip hop, UK garage and grime, the exhibition will dig into the extensive archives of the BBC, bringing stories of Carnival, club nights, soundsystems, record shops and MC battles.
Rewinding all the way to 1900, The Music Is Black will cover early pioneers like Samuel Coleridge-Taylor and Winifred Atwell, through to contemporary stars including Little Simz and Ezra Collective. Other new East Bank tenants, including Sadler's Wells East, UAL's London College of Fashion, and UCL East will have coinciding collaborative events — and various activities, events and live performances will unfold around the Olympic Park and beyond.
Music broadcaster and presenter Trevor Nelson said: "There are so many different colours and shades of Black music, and so many eclectic styles that have emerged from the UK. The fact that we haven’t had a national exhibition on Black British music is quite surprising to me. I feel it needs to be documented. But more importantly, to tell the stories that are untold."
General entry to V&A East will be free, although it's likely that temporary exhibitions like The Music Is Black will be pay-to-enter.
These are busy times for the V&A; a second East Bank building, V&A East Storehouse, will open in 2025, bringing public behind-the-scenes access to some of the V&A's vast collections. The V&A also reopened the Museum of Childhood in Bethnal Green as the Young V&A earlier this year, following an extensive revamp.
