Sound functions as an archive here. Early rehearsals moved to The Revolutionaries’ “Kunta Kinte Dub” (1976), a historic echo of resistance, before the team commissioned a bespoke score by musicians Stephen ‘Blaggy’ Blagrove, Richard Davis, Clive Smith, Alan May, Fitzroi Lake-Amatey, and music producer Yuseemi. Like any folk dance worth its salt, the music is made for learning and passing on; the choreography is designed to be taught, owned collectively, and performed again in moments of civic remembrance.

If the dance holds the body of the memorial, BÓLÁRÌNWÁ’s artwork gives it a face. His commissioned piece, The Pan African Descent Journey, maps a symbolic cosmology: the Ankh fused with Shango’s double-headed axe forms a feminine mask, Mother Africa, radiating vitality and justice. Around her, cowrie shells glint as both symbols of wealth and reminders of the extractive economies that built empires. Beneath the ship-like forms, haloed, faceless ancestors stand watch, an echo of the transatlantic slave trade in which Bristol played a defining part. At the base, a trace of the now highly topical Union Jack flag gestures toward a “flip side” of empire, inviting the city to confront its own entangled history.

For Cleo, now a Research Associate at the University of Bristol completing an MPhil on dance as memorialisation, the work is a reminder that research belongs in public. Across Bristol’s streets and billboards, Memorial Dance keeps remembrance moving, inviting people to step in, to feel, and to remember differently.

Cleo, you’ve moved between dance, politics and activism, from the Lord Mayor’s office to the studio floor. How did Memorial Dance emerge from that journey?

CL: At my core, I’m a creative, I’m an artist – it’s mainly been through dance and theatre, poetry etc, and that’s also my way of not only finding and understanding myself and my history as an African descent person, but it’s also my vehicle of choice in terms of activism. I’ve had that experience of trying to create change from inside a major institution, but through that journey I also embedded as much art and dance as I could. Dance has been something that has always been a part of myself, and because I don’t really have the knowledge of any of my Indigenous languages from my African heritage, dance has been the language that has communicated best to me.

You’ve worked across the cultural sector for more than two decades, as an artist, researcher and community leader. What first drew you to this field, and what keeps you inspired within it?

CL: This has just always been part of me. My experience really comes from the underground music scene in Bristol. In the mid 90s I would be attending all the jungle raves, and that was a time when, again, as people of African descent but within the Black community of Bristol really found ourselves on the dance floor. We found community, we found identity. We had through the music references to Jamaica and then further back through some of the sampling to Africa. It was an important time and through that I became a stage dancer. And although I pursued an academic career in law and French having attended Colston Girls, I was very much on that kind of trajectory that didn’t work out for me. So I deflected from law and French and went to study dance at Bath Spa. I think if you’re an artist and a creative person that’s something you can’t really repress, it’s something that’s always coming out.

BÓLÁRÌNWÁ, for those new to your work, how would you describe your wider artistic practice?

B: To be honest, I would like to say my form of art practice is revolutionary, which is the need for change or operating of a system that has made it. Its main aim is to trample upon people, and most of us seem to take our culture whenever they’re talking about politics and economics, which is a major factor in what determines the lives of people generally. My work is often very political.

BÓLÁRÌNWÁ, your work often explores ancestry and belonging through bold colour and symbolism. Your piece The Pan African Descent Journey, commissioned as part of Memorial Dance, is a powerful example. What was your starting point for this collaboration?

B: I met Cleo during a little exhibition I had at the end of May, and shortly after, Cleo reached out to me about a possible opening for a commission for an art project. So we met later to discuss it in a very lengthy fashion, and after we discussed it, I went back and made a sketch. I didn’t know the title was The Pan African Descent Journey yet, and I made the sketch and I felt like this was, in my own opinion, a little bit spiritual because I had literally no idea that that was going to be the title, but the sketch I made didn’t need any adjustments. The sketch I made correlated to what the title was, and I was like, I wouldn’t say it’s a coincidence, because there’s higher forces that govern our actions, you know?

The Pan African Descent Journey, as a piece, is a very, very personal one, it tells a story of the past in relation to the present and the steps that will be needed to take to fix the future, or our reflection of what the future could look like. I infused different parts of the African belief system – we go to this spiritualism, ancestralism, and our relationship with nature where we talk about weather, we talk about the vegetation around us, we talk about respect for the water and bodies around us that move in such ways that we can’t explain, but they move the same we move anywhere we find ourselves.

Cleo, you were instrumental in passing a reparations and atonement motion at Bristol City Council. How does the creative process of Memorial Dance connect to that wider work of remembrance and repair?

CL: Reparations are a holistic journey, and it isn’t just about certain people getting a payout. How do we have restitution? How do the diaspora refine our authentic selves? We can’t be our authentic selves if we’ve had certain parts of our history and identity stolen, whether it’s language, whether it’s this, whether it’s that. It’s been a healing process, this whole project, and that is part of the purpose as well. If I’m dancing and moving with my peers or my community, then in that very moment I’m healing. All strategies are needed, but it definitely feels like it is part of the reparatory work, and I hope that more groups and institutions in the city embrace this and are able to champion what we’ve done.

The project extends into workshops, digital memorials, and now billboards across Bristol. Why was it important that this work lived in public space? Citizens Researching Together as part of that.

CL: I think the more people who are exposed to it by chance is important. Research should be, in my opinion, something that can be spread widely to inform everyday peoples’ lives. It shouldn’t be something that’s kept behind closed doors, it should be public, it should be shared. So most of this project has also been about challenging traditional academic methods, so the fact that this has stemmed from an academic project and is now going out on the streets via the artwork kind of keeps to that in many ways.

B: I think art is for me the biggest form of expression, and just understanding the role of art as a weapon inside the minds of people, to call for a change towards systems that have made it their major aim and role to subjugate them plays a major factor. So having this work in the public space is really bringing the traditional art world of private viewing public so everyone will feel the energy, I think that’s something that I’ve always been very consistent about when it comes to my practice – that emotion is needed, because people need to feel it. I don’t need to say much about this work, but the symbols that I’ve put down, the representations, the use of symbolism we pass the exact message that I think this project seemed to identify.

How do you both see Bristol’s arts and culture scene right now – what’s exciting you, what challenges remain, and what are your hopes for its future?

B: I would say the best thing that ever happened to me since I came to the UK at the age of 18 is Bristol. Bristol is such a grounded place full of young revolutionaries. There are creative events around to support different causes all over the world, be that of Palestine, Congo, Sudan and other war torn states. I tell people Bristol is a very good ground to prep yourself ideologically and artistically because there are opportunities that are very accessible compared to London.

CL: Coming from a slightly more activist and political background, I’d mention the distribution of resources. Within our broadly speaking Black community, some of our centres have been majorly underfunded and under supported by Bristol City Council or other institutions. Maybe there’s something about the self determination of these places that have managed to survive without relying on core funding, but in order for artists to thrive, there does need to be better investment. I feel that groups like Diverse Arts Network and maybe Spike Island, places like that, there is infrastructure that is developing and gives people a chance.

When people encounter the billboards or see Memorial Dance unfold, what do you hope stirs in them? What kind of remembering do you want Bristol to practice?

CL: Maybe you will be able to get a different type of understanding, or perhaps something within your subconscious is awakened, and that’s either through movement or seeing the art. The fact that melanated or African heritage people have been on the British Isles for thousands of years, we’re not just here from Windrush or a handful of us through enslavement times. It goes way back further than that. I’ve always felt that holding African descent people or African people back has held us all back. So we have to arrive at some truth, so that we can all try to go forward.

B: We need to see a reason for change. We live in a world now where people are locked in offices, they do a nine to five and get home tired. just giving them something to see, to actually understand that we all have a responsibility to change this world that we live in, and it’s not to a limited people or creatives, or a group of people. This work is for everybody to see that the responsibility of a free Africa is with all of us. Once Africa is free from the shackles of neo-colonialism or any other form of oppression, no African anywhere in the world will be free. These are the emotions we want people to feel with us – both Africans and non-Africans.