You Are Here: Living In British Culture
Image courtesy of the Southbank Centre
You Are Here, unveiled by the Southbank Centre for its 75th year, takes place on 3 May 2026, this one-day, site-wide takeover—created by Gareth Pugh, Carson McColl, Danny Boyle, Paulette Randall, Sabrina Mahfouz and Natasha Chivers, project draws together theatre, dance, live music, fashion and visual art into a single, immersive experience that unfolds across the Southbank Centre.
Tracing a path from the Festival of Britain in 1951 to the present, You Are Here moves through decades defined not only by cultural output, but by cultural rupture. Moments where new forms, voices and identities reshaped the boundaries of what Britain is and could be. From Northern Soul dancefloors to acid house, from punk to Lovers Rock and the queer ballroom scene, these movements are positioned not as footnotes, but as central forces in the ongoing construction of national identity.
And crucially, they are not presented as the past. Throughout the experience, poets, MCs and rappers carry narrative threads across space, while dancers and choral voices translate them into rhythm, gesture and atmosphere. Audiences move through this environment without a fixed path—shifting between large-scale performances, installations, and more intimate, behind-the-scenes encounters. Each journey is partial, subjective, and entirely their own.
In this way, You Are Here mirrors the nature of culture itself: decentralised, participatory, and impossible to fully grasp from a single vantage point. The project’s collaborative structure reinforces this ethos. Contributors include Rambert, Boy Blue, Vogue Rites, Heart of Soul Lewisham and Deptford Northern Soul Club, alongside DJs, collectives and partners such as the BFI. Professional performers share space with students from conservatoires across the UK, creating an intergenerational exchange that reflects both inheritance and reinvention.
Alongside the main event, BFI Southbank’s Rip It Up extends the conversation—centring youth perspectives and the evolving nature of rebellion, with a UK-wide programme running from May to October through the BFI Film Audience Network.
If anniversaries often risk looking backward, You Are Here insists on something else: that culture is never complete. That it is built in real time—through communities, through honesty, through those willing to imagine beyond what already exists.
To step into it is not simply to witness 75 years of British culture. It is to recognise that ones is are already inside it.
You Are Here takes place on Sunday 3 May 2026. Tickets are on sale now at the Southbank Centre website.
