Colin Grant: What We Leave We Carry at Southbank Centre
With Colin Grant, Suzanne Harrington, Maria Jastrzębska, Amanda Vilanova and Clementine Burnley.
Event / Panel
Southbank Centre, August 2026
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What do we leave behind when we move to a new place – and what do we carry with us, physically and emotionally, wherever we land?
Grant has travelled the country with writers from WritersMosaic, listening to stories of migration – foundational tales of arriving in a new land, along with rarely spoken tales of love and loss.
What We Leave We Carry is a chance to listen to Britain – in all its richness and complexity.
Grant was joined by storytellers from this oral history who shared the secrets of their migrant songs and objects: Suzanne Harrington, an Irish writer who travelled with an ‘introductory’ sick note from her psychiatrist; Maria Jastrzębska, a Polish poet recounting partisan songs that poked fun at Hitler; Amanda Vilanova, a Puerto Rican actor gifted her mother’s jewellery to sell in an emergency; and Clementine Burnley, a Cameroonian psychotherapist who arrived as a student in 1980s Glasgow inspired by ‘Kung Fu Fighting’.
The evening also featured live Afro-Colombian music and dance from Akolá Tambó.