Somewhere in London: The Archive Begins

Somewhere in London.

Somewhere, slow jams, both old and new, are turning strangers into duet partners.

Somewhere, Afrobeats is meeting Amapiano is meeting Dancehall.

Somewhere, the night feels endless, and the rhythm holds us together.

This archive begins there, in the sweat, the laughter, the joy, and the pull of a hook you haven’t heard in years but somehow still remember every word to.

We start with a simple question: what does a Black British summer feel like to you?

Not just a recap of parties, not just a list of who was there or what was played, but a way of holding onto the feeling and retelling the stories. A cultural memory in motion.

This is Somewhere in London.

A living record of our summers, our nights, our music, and our culture.

Captured by Shelley Paterson

Each entry is a station, a stop along the journey, a fleeting party that lingers in memory as vividly as it did in the moment. These aren’t recaps or reviews; they are waypoints of experience, moments where emotion, connection, and memory converge, carrying the rhythm forward toward the next destination.

Because summer lived far beyond the nights themselves. It spilled into after-parties we knew we should turn down after the day party but didn’t. It echoed in the scroll of camera rolls the next morning, in the songs we sent to friends as a way of saying, 'Remember this?' It was the echo of laughter on street corners, the playlists shared through DMs, and the hum of music in gardens, flats, and rooftops across London.

These were the nights we captured and the moments we documented, but summer went far beyond the selected events. Somewhere in London is about just that, and these events were only the beginning.

Captured by Shelley Paterson

Summer 2025 was more than just a series of events.

And boy, what a summer 2025 was. It was the way music pulled us together, the way moments lingered after the DJ stopped. It was collective memory in action, and boy, what a summer it was.

Somewhere in London is about preserving that feeling. It is about capturing and mapping the emotional geography of our summers, connecting the dots between spaces, sounds, nights, and the people who made them unforgettable.

Some nights are remembered in detail, with visuals, with stories. Others survive through fragments: the bassline you can’t shake, the stranger who felt like family for a moment, the way the air shifted when the DJ pulled the track back.

The archive is modular but unified, a living map of Black British summer, shaped as much by the people living it as by the sounds that define it.

So this is where it begins.

Somewhere in London, the archive is alive.

Somewhere in London, the nights you remember are just as important as the ones you lived.

Somewhere in London, this is what Black British summers feel like.

Somewhere in London, this is what we sound like.

Somewhere in London, this is what we remember.