Black barbershops in focus: a space for community and culture in Britain

A Christmas cactus grows in Dr Karis Campion’s home, which she propagated from a clipping cut in her local barbershop. This clipping – gifted to her for free by her barber – is an image of what barbershops represent to her: a generative space that extends out into the local Black communities they serve.

Dr Campion first decided to shave her head after receiving her PhD in 2017, in part as a rite of passage to signal the end of student life and new beginnings, as she stepped into the role of sociological researcher.

As she spent more and more time in barbershops, she became deeply interested in these community hubs and their role within the African and Caribbean diasporas in Britain. When she looked at academic literature, she found it overwhelmingly US-centric.

Now a Lecturer in Race, Ethnicity and Social Justice at City, University of London, her ethnographic research recognises this important sociological site, incorporating art, photography, interviews and participant observation.

Black barbershops, community and culture in Britain: an event at City

In May, Dr Campion organised the event “Black barbershops, community and culture in Britain: building the evidence base” at City on campus, in which she discussed her research and welcomed the writer Inua Ellams and the photographer Lee Townsend.

Attended by around 50 guests, she discussed how her findings found that barbershops a location for ideological-building and learning how to argue, as visitors discussed topics like gender, sexuality and capitalism.

Speaker Townsend has worked in the third sector for over a decade, sits on the advisory board for Dr Campion’s project Black Barbershops in Focus.

Fellow speaker was Nigerian-born writer and curator Inua Ellams is the author of the highly successful play Barber Shop Chronicles, which is set in Lagos, Johannesburg, Harare, Accra, Kampala and in south London. He gave a rousing reading from his essay featured in the collection The Good Immigrant (Unbound, 2016, edited by Nikesha Shukla).

As a barbershop visitor myself, I guess you could call me an indigenous researcher.

Some of the barbershops in the research are like a messy room in a house that needs sorting, which I think is part of their charm. And for so many of the different participants who use them, they each articulate their own claims to these intimate spaces. The waiting public are also a part of it and have their own claim to the space.

Black communities are often at the sharp end of crises like the excess deaths of Covid, austerity, and the need for food banks and warm banks. In the face of this, barbershops become these community assets that nourish Black social life.

Barbershops are a special place. I go to the barbershop to not only look good but also to lift my spirits.

African and Caribbean barbers don’t just have repeat customers, they have repeat customers across generations within a number of families. From grandfather to grandson, barbers are deeply embedded in the Black British community.

Barbershops are a place where a group of men who seldom talk about their feelings feel safe to open up.

Barbers become tutors, with children being tested on their times tables.

Barbershops provide economic development for people who need it, in some instances creating an opportunity to people who have a criminal background, have learned from their mistakes and need a second chance in life.