Lanre Bakare is the Guardian’s arts and culture correspondent.

He is the author of We Were There: How Black culture, resistance and community shaped modern Britain, which is published by The Bodley Head on 17 April 2025.

He was senior correspondent on the Cotton Capital project, which was an exposé on the Guardian’s founders’ links to transatlantic slavery and was recognised at the Press Awards as a “breathtakingly honest mea culpa”. He also commissioned original art work for the project, including a portrait by Claudette Johnson which was included in her work that was nominated for the Turner Prize in 2024.

He has worked in New York and Los Angeles as part of the Guardian US team where he set up a west coast culture desk and interviewed everyone from A$AP Rocky and Future to Kerry James Marshall and Spike Lee. He also appeared on CNN, where he was interviewed about his piece about the impact of the Eric Garner killing.

He has collaborated with Northern Monk on a series of beers that are inspired by his writing and Elephant Magazine once described him as “one of the art world’s biggest crushes”.

He was born and grew up in Bradford, West Yorkshire.

His agent is Matthew Turner at RCW.