British Empire Exhibition: Call for Participation

The London School of Architecture is excited to share that it has partnered with the British Council to deliver a conference that will mark and critically reflect upon the centenary of the British Empire Exhibition. 

The conference will be held on 12-13 September 2024, to be hosted at the Victoria & Albert Museum, South Kensington. The conference will launch a two-year programme of academic and public events which will examine the BEE and its legacies both in the United Kingdom and across the globe. In academic year 2024-25, the London School of Architecture will make Brent and the site of the Empire Exhibition a special focus, exploring how contemporary design can be more deeply and critically informed by the persistent themes of decoloniality, restorative justice, and equity.

A call to participation has been launched, inviting proposals from global diaspora to challenge the nostalgic framing of much of the commemorations of the Exhibition. We are supporting proposals from all disciplines and a variety of media. As part of a decolonial approach to the BEE, non-Eurocentric thinking, media, and narratives of the BEE are actively encouraged. You can read more detail on the call to participation here.

The conference is a part of the LSA’s growing research practice, and the British Empire Exhibition is a long standing research interest of LSA head of school Neal Shasore. Neal was recently interviewed for a BBC article which explored the exhibition, which can be read here.