About this event
Hosted by CUBE in collaboration with CREATURE (London Metropolitan University) and the Africa Centre, this was the fourth and final event in the London Afropolitan.
This interactive evening event, featured world-renowned fashion designer Laduma Ngxokolo, while celebrating the global impact of design from the African continent in the year of the thirtieth anniversary of South African democracy. It was the final event at the heart of London Afropolitan, a research and knowledge exchange project hosted by the Africa Centre in partnership with London Metropolitan University.
Award-winning at home, having shown his MaXhosa Africa collections in London and Paris, and with a concept store in New York due to launch this year, Ngxokolo’s brand has gone global while remaining rooted in Africa. “Fashioning the Afropolitan Future” opened with a student-focussed ‘meet and greet’, leading thereafter to a ‘show and tell’ display of selected garments. The event offered an opportunity to consider the concept of London Afropolitan as an interface between diasporic belonging, design innovation, and urban culture.
By providing an informative and vibrant space for discussion across design disciplines, this event saw Ngxokolo ‘in conversation’, exchanging ideas with fashion students, industry commentators and high-profile guests. Following the formal proceedings, there was an opportunity to ‘chill and chat’ for networking drinks sponsored by Kromanti Fine Rum in the Africa Centre’s Malangatana Bar, accompanied by the sounds of a curated playlist celebrating #30YearsOfFreedom.
This unique moment acclaimed joyful belief in Africa’s bright future – a spirit of optimism and creativity experienced both on the continent and in the UK. This spirit was echoed by the Africa Centre during its 60-year anniversary season of celebration.
The London Metropolitan University project team included Mavernie Cunningham, Matthew Barac, Harriet McKay, Adeyemi Akande, Wally Mbassi, Ricardo Eversley, Tunmiji Osibodu, and Emma Carpenter.
Keynote Speaker
Laduma Ngxokolo is the CEO and founder of world-renowned fashion brand MaXhosa Africa. Established in 2012, MaXhosa designs showcase the beauty, culture, language and aspiration of the Xhosa people of South Africa. Translated into a contemporary design context, Ngxokolo’s use of Xhosa motifs has created an award-winning brand that has gained a worldwide following, and is at the forefront of bringing African design to the attention of global markets.
Discussants
Caroline Kamana is Director of the Liliesleaf Trust UK and is creating the Anti-Apartheid Legacy: Centre of Memory and Learning, Europe's first museum and community hub dedicated to the heritage of anti-apartheid and its contemporary resonances, opening in London in 2025. A curator and heritage education specialist, she has multiple years’ experience of teaching and curriculum innovation across primary, secondary and tertiary institutions and within cultural heritage sites. She facilitates community engagement through engagement with archives and collections and through participatory activity. Her practice has been set between South Africa and the UK, including at the Constitutional Court of South Africa and for St Paul’s Cathedral, London.
Chrissa Amuah is a British-Ghanaian designer, curator, editor and creative consultant. She is founder of the luxury homeware and interiors brand AMWA Designs, for which she draws inspiration from Ghanaian Adinkra symbols. Best described as a multi-disciplinary designer, she collaborates with world-leading multinational brands to bring a unique perspective informed by African sensibilities to their projects. Projects have included one-of-a-kind customisations for San Francisco-based sustainable footwear brand Allbirds; a 2022 commission by Diageo-owned whisky brand Mortlach to design the 2.81 light fixture; and ‘Freedom to Move’, her co-collaboration and conceptual design for luxury car brand Lexus, launched at Design Miami 2020. House & Garden magazine included her in their ‘Top 100 Designers’ shaping the world of contemporary design in 2021.
Foday Dumbuya is a Menswear Designer and Creative Director of LABRUM London, the fashion brand he launched in 2014. Born in Freetown, Sierra Leone, he grew up in Cyprus and London. Positioned at the intersection of Fashion, Culture and Art, his practice is driven by a desire to master his craft. This has taken him on an exploratory journey where he learned many ways to develop and create garments. He has incorporated techniques handed down generation by generation into his collections, fusing traditional West-African silhouettes with classic British tailoring to create signature styles unique to LABRUM. His ambition for the brand is to push a narrative of black joy to the forefront of the media and the public eye. Awards include the Queen Elizabeth II Award for British Design (2023), and the Best of Africa platform’s Outstanding Achievement Award (2023) which acknowledged his achievement in bringing African stories to a global audience.
Harriet McKay works in the Design subject area at the School of Art, Architecture and Design, London Metropolitan University, where she is a member of research centre CUBE: Centre for Urban & Built Ecologies. She has taught at the Royal College of Art, and on the Heritage Studies and Museology MA programmes at the School of World Art Studies, University of East Anglia. She retains a keen interest in the material and visual dimensions of culture across the African continent, a topic that informed her doctoral studies in Design History completed at Kingston University. Alongside the Londond Afropolitan project, she is currently working on a study of craft-design and women’s empowerment in the Global South, in collaboration with Anne Massey (UCA, Canterbury).
Chair
Matthew Barac is an architect, writer, and academic. He is Professor of Architecture and Urban Culture at London Metropolitan University where his roles include leading CUBE: Centre of Urban & Built Ecologies and the PhD programme in Art, Architecture & Design. He is Co-Investigator on the London Afropolitan project, and he leads Afropolitan Architecture: a research and knowledge exchange initiative developed in collaboration Mokena Makeka which was launched at the Venice Biennale 2023.
Image credits: Image courtesy of MaXhosa Africa (2024)
