“we likkle but we tallawah”
🇯🇲🇯🇲🇯🇲
what started as a little independence day link-up between friends became a sold-out intergenerational jamaican celebration in south london.
one video travelled to over 110,000 people, our ideal number of tickets went in the first 36 hours, and by thursday the honor oak garden was full of babies, kids, parents, grandparents and elders.
here’s how it actually happened, what we loved, what we learnt and a little bit of where we think it could go next.
it started us saying “shall we just do something?”
there wasn’t a big plan for this one.
we’re always hosting things between us anyway, whether that’s creative events, community gatherings or just having everyone round the house with food and music. one of our friends suggested we do something for jamaican independence day and we thought, yeah, why not?
the plan was to have it at one of our houses. nothing huge. just bring people together, eat, play some music and celebrate.
then the wednesday before independence day, we went to the pub quiz at the honor oak. we had absolutely no intention of doing the event there, but we took a proper look at the garden and it just made sense.
it was one of those warm summer evenings where you could picture it. there was space for people to spread out, kids to be outside, tables for people to sit around and enough room for the kind of evening we had in our heads.
i’ll be real, there was definitely a moment of looking around thinking, how on earth are we going to fill this place in a week?
management were up for it, so we went for it.
and before we knew it, we’d done it.
/// 06.08.2026 ///
“why do we only see all generations together at weddings… and funerals?”
we knew pretty early on that we wanted it to be intergenerational.
there aren’t that many spaces where everyone naturally spends time together anymore. kids might have their thing, young people have theirs, parents are busy and some of our elders can end up spending a lot of time at home.
we wanted a little bit of that feeling you get back home, where community doesn’t necessarily need organising.
someone pulls up a chair. food’s cooking. music’s playing. dominoes are out. the kids are running around. the elders are talking. people drift in and out and somehow you end up chatting to somebody you didn’t know an hour ago.
four nights before the event, @ms.semple put out a video on insta & tik tok asking:
“why do we only see all generations together at weddings… and funerals?”
“and then we all go back to our separate lives…”
that was really the whole thought behind the event & of course the fact that it was jamaica’s 64th independence day!
the video went mad. across platforms it reached over 110,000 views, and what we loved most wasn’t really the number; it was the conversation underneath it.
people were sharing it with family and friends. people were talking about their grandparents, their children, growing up here, growing up in jamaica and how easy it is for those connections to become a little more distant with every generation.
when we spoke about it afterwards, @ms.semple said, “i’ve had to go & find my culture.” her mum is jamaican but very british born, and a lot of that connection to the caribbean has come through her dad, safarii’s jamaican family, other friends’ families, travelling herself and her own research. with her grandma now gone, having an affordable, local way to be around culture and community means even more.
and for safarii, a lot of it comes down to something really simple: “it’s just about making the effort.” making the effort to keep traditions going and keep people coming together.
turns out, loads of other people wanted that too.
meanwhile, we had an event to put on!
while the video was travelling, we were running around trying to actually make everything in it happen.
riónce arts club x farii’s house pulled together food, music, photography, games, creative activities, volunteers and all the other little things that make an event an event.
our ideal number of tickets went in the first 36 hours, and then so many of you still wanted to come down that we ended up adding a few more.
by the end of the week, we were completely sold out.
people were pre-ordering their food before they’d even stepped through the door, the messages were still coming in and then suddenly it was thursday.
the generations actually came!
this is probably the bit we’re most proud of.
because you can write intergenerational on a flyer all you like. that doesn’t mean an intergenerational crowd is going to turn up.
but they did.
there were tiny babies still in high chairs, kids running around, young people, parents, aunties and uncles, grandparents and elders.
the garden slowly filled up and people found their little spots. there was food from velma’s, music, family photos, ludi, dominoes, cards and creative things to get involved in, but people were also perfectly happy just sitting down and talking.
that was important to us.
we didn’t want every second to need programming. sometimes the activity is literally just being around each other.
the bits we couldn’t have planned
some of our favourite moments were really small.
a child looking for somebody to play cards with and an adult they’d never met sitting down and playing with them.
kids being able to move around, talk to different people and just experience what was happening around them.
younger people talking to elders. people bumping into friends they hadn’t seen in ages. people who came alone finding someone to sit with.
there was something nice about not having to explain every bit of the culture to the children either. sometimes they can just be in it. hear the music, watch people play, see everybody helping each other, get used to the noise and the different generations around them.
and then there were the conversations.
one jamaican mum told us that her grandparents have passed away and she now has chosen family, so she has to intentionally find environments like this for her children.
another guest came from a mixed caribbean family but didn’t have much connection to her jamaican side, so she actively looks for spaces where she can meet elders and find that connection herself.
those conversations stayed with us because they put words to something we could already feel in the garden. sometimes having elders around to chat to, learning a game, hearing a story or just spending an evening surrounded by your culture is more important than it looks.
it wasn’t all smooth, obviously
we had seven days lol.
there were definitely things we’d do differently, and we don’t want to tell the story of the event without those bits because that’s how the next one gets better.
food was probably our biggest learning curve. the demand was huge and our setup wasn’t quite there for the amount of people we had coming through, so some people waited much longer than we would’ve liked.
we also realised we’d tried to fit a lot into one evening.
there were so many activities and ideas we wanted people to experience like the karaoke & other live entertainment elements, that we didn’t actually get through everything. next time, we’d rather give the things we do include a little more room to breathe than try to squeeze every good idea into one night.
but that’s part of doing something for the first time. you find out what people actually use, what they love and what needs tightening without losing the relaxed feeling that made the day work.
the pub itself got incredibly busy too, the team at the honor oak were really happy with the response, and most importantly, they’re excited to have us back again in the future.
what we came away with
the numbers were lovely. selling out in a week was lovely. seeing the video travel was lovely.
but the thing we came away talking about was what people had actually told us.
loneliness. cultural disconnection.
families moving around. grandparents passing away. fractured families. people born here having to actively work out what their relationship with jamaica looks like. parents wanting their children to know something that might not naturally be around them at home.
the gap between young and old can quietly get wider if nobody creates reasons for us to keep meeting. we’re also at this crazy generational intersection whereby those born before the rise of the Internet, those born in the thick of the digital age & those in between are for a few decades longer, able to gather in one place.
and that’s probably where this became more interesting to us than simply putting on a nice jamaican event.
riónce & fariis house have always been about building a second home for people.
this gave us another way to think about what that could mean.
of course we want beautiful photos, good music, proper food and a garden full of people having a good time.
but we also want the child who came with their mum to have spoken to an elder.
we want the person who came alone to leave knowing somebody.
we want people to hear stories they wouldn’t hear within their own family anymore.
we want different generations to actually know each other.
so, what happens next?
the main thing people have told us since the event is that they don’t want this to be a one-off.
neither do we.
we don’t want to over-plan it just yet, but we can already see a rhythm forming. a couple of the bigger intergenerational gatherings throughout the year, with smaller moments in between at riónce arts club in ladywell and outdoors around south london while the weather is still warm.
the next bigger one might actually have fewer attractions. more room to sit, play, eat, talk and let things happen naturally. we learnt from the first one that we don’t need to fit everything into one day for it to feel full.
the first event was free, which gave everyone the chance to come and experience the idea with us. to keep producing these properly and keep the concept alive, future events likely won’t be able to be free, but keeping them affordable and accessible where we can matters to us. in alignment with how riónce arts club already operates, we’re also thinking about what membership could look like for the people who want to make this a regular part of their lives, rather than waiting for the next big date in the calendar.
we’ll share more when we know more.
for now, we’re just really happy that something which started as “shall we do something for independence day?” ended with a south london pub garden full of generations spending the evening together.
not everything went perfectly & we defo learnt loads, but the thing we wanted to happen, happened.
we did the ting, everyone came
and for a few hours, nobody had to wait for a wedding or a funeral to pull up a chair.
“we likkle but we tallawah”
until the next time!