The Green Room Collective consists of seven migrant and refugee artists as they weave music, dance and film to address themes of home, displacement and migration.

From Iran to Palestine and Ukraine to Venezuela, The Collective is a celebration of diversity, a dialogue of difference, and a tribute to resilience.

Visit our Live Events Dates to see The Collective live!

What is the cost of forgetting? What is created when we misremember?

‘Mone Rekho’ (or ‘Remember’ in Bengali) is an immersive concert that explores how the beauty and complexity of Indian music shifts and changes through the prism of memory.

Voices and stories appear through spatial audio technology creating an interactive sonic environment, enabling the sounds of the sarod, tabla and Indian ragas to be heard from different directions and distances.

The project was born through Soumik’s conversations with elderly people in care homes facilitated by University College of London and Alzheimer’s Society senior research fellow Dr Naaheed Mukadam. These interactions prompted Soumik to revisit his own childhood memories of his late guru Pandit Buddhadev Das Gupta, returning him to the stage space through archive recordings and surround sound.

Visit our Live Dates Page to find tour dates near you.

Soumik Datta Arts is looking to recruit a diverse team of seven migrant and refugee artists to form the first cohort of our Green Room project, which will take place between December 2023 and March 2024. In this programme, artists will have the opportunity to collaborate with each other to develop their creative practices and create new work.

We want to work with key partners to identify artists from a range of countries, including but not restricted to Iran, Kenya, Ukraine, Afghanistan, Syria, Palestine, Yemen. Our aim is to recruit at least 50% of artists from refugee backgrounds and we would love to support at least one artist who has been through the asylum process.For details about the programme and how to apply, please read this document. Application deadline, 1 September 2023, 5 pm

Breaking the silence of iconic British cultural venues during the 2020 lockdowns, Soumik Datta and a team of 40 strong musicians ventured into empty spaces like the British Museum & The Royal Albert Hall to create a series of 6 films and songs. The album is now released digitally and available wherever you stream music.

“Diwali is a special festival for my family. It marks the mythic victory of light over darkness. For me, during the pandemic - music was my light. Music allowed me to break the silence of the pandemic and bring together otherwise isolated artists to fill vacant arts spaces with beautiful sound. We made strings, voices and beats echo through the hallways of empty museums, auditoriums, cinemas and nightclubs. So this Diwali we celebrate it all - light over darkness, sound over silence, offering this album as a message of joy.” - Soumik Datta

Winner of the British Council Climate Change Commission, Songs Of The Earth is an animated short film created by Soumik Datta and brought to life by Indian illustrators, Sachin Bhatt and Anjali Kamat. The film follows Asha, a young climate refugee from Bengal, as she searches for her missing father through the flood banks of the Sundarban delta, burning forests and melting polar ice caps. Accompanied by an eight-track album, it is a creative response to climate change, weaving issues from climate migration, extreme weather to ocean pollution, deforestation and sustainable fashion through original narrative, songs and immersive visuals.

"Songs of the Earth is dedicated to the Global South - to anyone who has had to flee their home after catastrophe and natural disaster" says Soumik of his project, adding "I feel the arts have an important role to tell their stories, while generating hope, inspiring empathy and driving grassroots communities to demand for a better future. As an artist, I want to gather people, physically and digitally, to immerse them in sound and space - to make them feel connected and part of one earth, one tribe, one people, one hope." - Soumik Datta

In partnership with Choose Love, Soumik Datta toured the SDA production Hope Notes across England in autumn 2022. Hope Notes tells refugee stories through music and was made in collaboration with refugees from Syria, Afghanistan, Kenya, Bangladesh, Yemen, Cameroon and Uganda. A sensory feast to challenge social injustice through an uplifting, musical lens, Hope Notes highlights an important part of our history, and shows us how our society deals with vulnerable people.‍

Choose Love does whatever it takes to provide refugees and displaced people with everything from lifesaving search and rescue boats to food and legal advice. Since Choose Love was founded in 2015, we have supported almost 4 million people (3,860,000) and raised more than $80 million for over 390 partner organisations working across the world.

Soumik Datta is a Laureate of the 2022 Aga Khan Music Awards. The triennial Awards, established by His Highness the Aga Khan in 2018, recognise exceptional creativity, promise and enterprise in music in societies across the world in which Muslims have a significant presence.

While contributing to the preservation and ongoing development of musical heritage, many of the laureates, including Soumik, draw on the power of music to raise awareness about social and environmental issues.The Aga Khan Music Awards reflect the conviction of His Highness the Aga Khan, 49th hereditary Imam of the Ismaili Muslims, that music can serve as a cultural anchor, deepening a sense of community, identity and heritage, while simultaneously reaching out in powerful ways to people of different backgrounds.