Pathfinders EXHIBITION

SUNDAY BEST

An exhibition exploring identity, style, and the enduring power of being seen.

Portraits and archival photography

Personal objects and artefacts from community contributors
First-hand testimony and recorded oral histories
Participatory programming throughout the run
An opportunity to add your own story to the archive

About the Exhibition

Sunday best. The phrase begins in church — your finest clothes, worn on the day of rest. But for Afro-Caribbean communities in Britain, it became something far richer: a cultural language, a declaration of dignity, a refusal to be diminished.

Pathfinders: Sunday Best explores how dress, colour, and self-presentation have been used by Afro-Caribbean communities to express pride, identity, and belonging. Through portraits, personal objects, archival photographs, and first-hand stories, the exhibition invites visitors to see Sunday best not as vanity, but as an act of authorship — the right to define how you are seen.

The exhibition builds on the legacy of the neighbourhood photo studios that documented the Windrush generation, reimagining the studio as a contemporary space of celebration. Visitors are invited not just to look, but to contribute their own stories and objects to the growing Pathfinders archive.

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