Portico Ubuntu: Diaspora Dine and Discussion - 100 years of Black History Month

The Portico Library is hosting its inaugural Diaspora Dine & Discussion on Thursday 29 October, from 6:00 pm to 8:30 pm. It's the first of its kind for the library, and the evening marks the centenary of Black History Month. The whole thing takes place in the library's Reading Room, so you'll be dining and talking right in the middle of the collections.

Carol Ann Whitehead, Chair of The Portico Library's Public Programme Committee, will open the evening by welcoming guests. From there, the night is built around dining, discussion and heritage, with the food and the conversation running side by side. It's part of the library's wider Black History Month programming, and it follows an earlier workshop, Crafting Your Own Book of Inspiration, which ran on 22 October.

The library itself is a good place for this. It's housed under a Georgian dome in Manchester and has a 220-year history, with a collection that feeds into free public exhibitions alongside talks, performances, workshops and awards. Its exhibition space shares room with The Portico Kitchen, so you can eat and drink while you look around. There's a direct Black history connection here, too: the formerly enslaved abolitionist Moses Roper visited on 21 October 1837, and his signature is still in the library's Strangers' Book.

So, the evening is a dinner and a discussion in the Reading Room, marking 100 years of Black History Month. It runs from 6:00 pm to 8:30 pm on Thursday 29 October at The Portico Library.