London based arts and heritage organisation, Sweet Patootee Arts announces its powerful brand-new film installation CORNWALLIS CLOTH, opening at the Old Royal Naval College on Saturday 11 October, running until late 2026.

Commissioned by the Imperial War Museum as part of the 14-18 NOW Legacy Fund, CORNWALLIS CLOTH is inspired by oral histories and untold stories of Black Caribbean lives during the Second World War. The film delves into themes of loyalty, freedom, and the birth of post-colonial identity, with dramatic intensity and satirical humour.

Set in a moonlit tropical garden in Barbados in 1942, the film centres around Mrs Bonita Skeete (aka Bonny), a Black woman whose story becomes a powerful metaphor for Caribbean civil rights during the Second World War. Through her spirited exchanges with stirred up patriots, rebels, black marketeers, and in-betweens, CORNWALLIS CLOTH revisits the 1942 U-boat attach on SS Cornwallis, as well as war leaders, the fight for freedom, rationing, and the fate that befalls those found with looted ‘Cornwallis cloth’.

The film interweaves 3D sound design, performance, archive montage, and a soundtrack of calypso and colonial anthems, to create a captivating and poetic Caribbean comedy melodrama vignette.

View the trailer for CORNWALLIS CLOTH here

Also taking place this autumn, Sweet Patootee Arts presents the final phase of its TURNING POINT project, a heritage and creative workshop programme, inspired by the film installation and Black heritage comedy melodrama of the same name.

Running from October – January the final series includes Intergenerational Oral History Workshops at Black Cultural Archives, Brixton (October – November), and Dementia Support Workshops at Tramshed, Woolwich (November – January).

Rooted in oral histories of the Black Caribbean experience after the First World War, the TURNING POINT film tells four compelling stories set in 1920s Barbados and Jamaica, shining a light on often neglected 20thcentury British Black history. The film features a cast of celebrated and emerging talent, including Paterson Joseph (The Beach, Noughts + Crosses), Suzette Llewellyn (Eastenders, Holby City), Ashley D. Gayle, and Veronica Beatrice Lewis.

Coinciding with the centenary of the post-WWI civil rights struggle in Britain’s former Caribbean colonies, the TURNING POINT project has delivered a wide-ranging programme of free creative heritage activities across Birmingham and London connecting communities through shared history and creativity.

To extend the project’s legacy, a series of short films and digital exhibitions exploring the themes of TURNING POINT will be launched shortly on Sweet Patootee Arts’ website.

Sweet Patootee Arts co-artistic directors Tony T and Rebecca Goldstone said: “We bring inspiring, compelling and diverse stories of real people to an international audience. All our work is underpinned by our belief that people from all backgrounds have stories that deserve to be heard. Both CORNWALLIS CLOTH and TURNING POINT address freedom and agency within the Black British colonial context, highlighting neglected voices with fierce beauty to benefit learning, wellbeing, and build social cohesion.”