Black masculinity, mental health and the evolving Black barbershop.
In the Cut Programme
The Black barbershop has long been an important social and cultural space — a place of conversation, exchange and community. For generations of Black men, it has offered familiarity and reprieve within a wider society that has not always felt welcoming, with barbers at the heart of these spaces. In the Cut draws on this cultural significance to raise awareness of Black men’s mental health and open up conversations around evolving Black masculinity and the role the barbershop can play within it.
But we don’t romanticise the barbershop. These spaces can also reflect the expectations, pressures and inequalities that shape Black masculinity, and they are not experienced in the same way by everybody.
In the Cut holds both. We celebrate the barbers, the craft and what the barbershop already holds, while creating space to consider what it could become. How might we hold onto its cultural significance and sense of community, while making more room for conversations about mental health, vulnerability, accountability, care and evolving Black masculinity?
We bring the Black barbershop into community spaces, universities, festivals, workplaces and other settings — creating culturally grounded spaces for conversation, community and connection.
Each In the Cut is shaped around the people, place and conversations that matter there. Alongside free haircuts from skilled barbers, we bring together community voices, practitioners and guest speakers to open up conversations around Black masculinity, mental health, relationships, family life, entrepreneurship and navigating adulthood.
In the Cut can take different forms — from pop-up barbershops and intimate community conversations to live panels, collaborative events and larger gatherings. Whatever the setting, the barbershop remains at the heart of it: familiar, informal and culturally rooted, creating a different way into conversations that can sometimes be difficult to have.
