SANDON, UK – KADIATU – LECTURE

SPEAKER
Kadiatu Kanneh-Mason

VENUE NOTE
Music is our family’s most fundamental mode of expression and the language we use to establish connections and to understand ourselves.

Kadiatu Kanneh-Mason is a former university lecturer and mother of the seven musically gifted Kanneh-Mason siblings; including cellist Sheku who won BBC Young Musician of the Year in 2016 and played at the wedding of Prince Harry and Meghan Markle.
When Kadiatu’s eldest daughter, pianist Isata made her debut at the BBC Proms in 2023 she could not have been prouder. Days later however, one of her younger daughters was reduced to tears, having read online abuse to the effect that Isata did not deserve to be there. It prompted her to write “To Be Young, Gifted and Black”, an impassioned defence of Black excellence in the arts.
We are delighted to welcome Kadiatu to Sandon Literature Festival to discuss what it’s like to come of age in these turbulent times, Black artistic self-expression, and how we find a hopeful, powerful way through disparagement and online abuse.