What we do
Skin Deep makes culture in service of racial justice and liberation. Working across editorial and events, we produce and facilitate creative work that informs, motivates and nourishes people in the fight against racial capitalism.
We operate at the intersection of culture and politics, bringing together artists and organisers, writers and community leaders, performers and activists. We work collectively to weave an alternative cultural ecosystem that is able to generate the kinds of stories, images and sounds that can show us the way to liberation, and bring us closer to it. Our work is fearless, beautiful and overflowing with life.
Read our full mission statement here.
The Skin Deep core team is Hannah Azuonye, Anu Henriques, Sylvia Hong, Georgie Johnson, Isabella Kajiwara and Jöelle Packer-Hall.
Want to support our work? Become a Skin Deep member.
Want to stay in touch? Sign up to our free monthly newsletter, and follow us on Twitter and Instagram.
Say hi! Email team at skindeepmag dot com.
Discover more
How we’re funded
As of 2021, Skin Deep Media CIC is a Community Interest Company (CIC). That means all our efforts – and any profits we might make – are spent benefiting our community, not shareholders.
Some of our income comes from selling magazines and event tickets, and some from our magical Skin Deep members. But largely we rely on grants and commissions from arts institutions, private foundations and public funding bodies. We have received core and project funding from Arts Council England, Necessity, Solberga Foundation, Climate Story Lab (Doc Society), Horniman Museum, John Ellerman Foundation, Stuart Hall Foundation, Serpentine’s Support Structures for Support Structures and Thirty Percy. We are grateful for current core funding from the Power of Pop Fund (Comic Relief, Unbound Philanthropy, Esmée Fairbairn Foundation, Paul Hamlyn Foundation, Oak Foundation), as well as Paul Hamlyn Foundation’s Arts Fund.
We’ve been commissioned to create work, run workshops and facilitate creative spaces by Bush Theatre, ICA, Roundhouse, Southbank Centre, Autograph ABP, Counterpoints Arts / OKRE, Barbican, Tate Modern, Free Word Centre, Doc Martens, Toynbee Hall and Channel 4, Stuart Hall Foundation.
If you’d like to find out more about funding Skin Deep – either a particular project or our organisation as a whole – please get in touch with team@skindeepmag.com. We’d love to chat.
Our method / What we actually do
We seek out creative collaborators who have an idea they want to explore – a story, a vision, a sound – that serves, in some way, the process of liberation. Then we work together to develop, materialise and share that idea.
Our role is to facilitate, which can look like editing, producing, convening or any other process needed to do the thing. We share this creation with audiences in engaging and accessible ways, bringing it to life in different formats and across different geographies, making sure it takes root where it is needed.
Mostly our work takes the form of either live events and gatherings, or editorial work in print and online. But we’re open to working in any medium or format our collaborators can dream up – whatever best serves the message.
How does culture serve liberation?
We believe art, culture and media are critical components in the fight against racial capitalism, a term we use to represent intersecting oppressive systems including imperialism, colonialism and occupation, extractivism and environmental destruction, fascism and authoritarianism, and the oppression of all those who resist, trouble or do not serve the endless pursuit of capital. For us, cultural work contributes to liberating us from racial capitalism in three main ways:
1. Culture is the most effective way to transmit world-changing ideas that really take root.
Everyone engages with culture, whether or not they engage (consciously) in capital ‘P’ politics. Through art, music, writing, film, theatre, dance, etc., we can communicate complex ideas about the world as it is and the world as it could be. These cultural vehicles are accessible and effective because they do more than just transmit information; they make us feel the message, in our bodies and our spirits. Fascism needs people to be uninformed, uninspired and uncurious, because the less literate we are – politically, creatively, emotionally, intellectually – the less able we are to imagine or build other ways of being. We believe cultural work is uniquely placed to clarify and deepen understanding; keep people smart and engaged; and equip us with the stories, images and songs we need to feed revolution.
2. Culture can provide narrative support for those working on the frontlines of liberation.
As operatives in the culture and media sphere with a platform and an audience, we have a duty to help create narrative and material support for those working on the frontlines of liberation, from grassroots organisers and community workers to direct actionists. We produce creative work that helps shift the Overton window, fertilising the ground for everyday popular resistance. Through cultural production, we help grow the connective tissue between the vanguard and the wider community.
3. Culture feeds our spirits by reminding us what we’re fighting for.
Creative work that is truthful, beautiful, and life-affirming is crucial for nourishing all of us living under the crushing weight of racial capitalism. We need it to remind us that freedom is worth fighting for, to keep us energised in the struggle and disciplined in our hope. If capitalism is anti life, then resistance to it must give us more life, more pleasure, more feeling, more beauty, more energy, more sensation, more love.