HOUSE OF DREAD
HOUSE OF DREAD was founded in response to the failure of traditional heritage spaces to serve African and Caribbean communities. These spaces have often erased, misrepresented, or controlled stories without centering the voices of the people they represent. Following the completion of the PhD research project BUN BABYLON: A Community History of Rastafari in Britain, the founder was driven to create an affirming space where African and Caribbean epistemologies thrive.
At HOUSE OF DREAD, African and Caribbean ways of knowing, remembering, and storytelling are not both included and lead the conversation. The organisation takes pride in its anti-disciplinary approach—a model that opts out of rigid academic and institutional boundaries and instead embraces a boundary-breaking, dynamic, and community-led practice.
HOUSE OF DREAD does not just document history. It redistributes knowledge, challenges dominant narratives, and creates platforms where African and Caribbean voices shape their own stories. The methodology is rooted in disrupting and innovating historical research to challenge colonial frameworks, fostering intergenerational connections to ensure knowledge is passed down and built upon, and being unapologetically led by African and Caribbean epistemologies that value lived experience as expertise.
The organisation has built a growing community of educators, memory workers, curators, and activists. This community demonstrates the urgent need for spaces that centre African and Caribbean ways of knowing. Unlike traditional heritage models, HOUSE OF DREAD believes communities should not only be subjects of history but also narrators, archivists, and decision-makers.
HOUSE OF DREAD is not about preserving history for institutions. It is about mobilising a liberatory heritage practice that helps, rather than harms, African and Caribbean communities. The organisation is not just remembering the past—it is reclaiming it, reshaping it, and ensuring it fuels a collective future.
“We are asking ourselves, what might be possible in this moment?”
