Our hair tells stories - of roots, resilience, creativity and choice. Photographed by Bea Dalley, this barbering inspired project portrays the relationship between Black men, their hair and grooming. But what started as a conversation about self-care shortly turned into a diaspora discourse, the infamous ‘plantain’ vs ‘plantin’ debate.

For event entrepreneur DJ Buxley, what started as an early passion for DJing became the foundation for creating one of Birmingham’s valuable and culturally significant grassroots movements.

Habiba Katsha is an influential writer, journalist and book lover. She can be described as a voice of a generation, as she doesn’t shy away from tackling important topics around race, gender, beauty and internet culture ,always with impact and depth.

For both Paige Lewin and Kameese Davis, hair education is about repair and advocating for a generation of Black consumers as “educated buyers.” This piece honours our growth, and asks what responsibility looks like now that we know more, or very much should do.

The line in Renell Shaw's story is refusal to choose a single lane, refusal to separate performance from composition, refusal to treat history as something fixed behind glass. By the time he was in his mid-teens, theatre and music had stopped competing for his attention. They had fused into a single artistic language.