East London is home to me. To be specific: Hackney. I grew up in Clapton, went to the local Lee Valley Ice skating rink, and played football for over a decade at the iconic Hackney Marshes – even today I feed my inner football champion at Mabley. East London has its own energy, and Newham holds a special place in my heart, too. I’ve spent 20 years DJing and producing electronic music, and it all started in Newham.
Stratford’s Westfield now marks the location of an iconic piece of underground music history – It was once the location of the legendary pirate radio station, Deja Vu FM. Run on top of a nightclub called EQ on Waterden Road, the area looked very different to what it does today, but the station was a prominent platform for so many of today’s music stars like Kano, Ghetts and Tinchy Stryder, who were all educated at schools in the borough.
I myself studied at Newham Sixth Form College in Plaistow, where I made friends for life with people from across a range of different communities. Back then, I didn’t consider, or perhaps fully understand the power of those informal and serendipitous relationships, not just within the college but also around the borough and in the community generally.
My formative years in Newham and Hackney typified something essential to the unique harmony that thrives in neighbouring communities where diaspora and diversity play a central role. At its core is a creative fusion, where Bengali friends know a few cheeky Yoruba words, and white English boys understand the steps to the latest Ghanaian dances. These connections, through movement, language, music and food build trust, and play an undervalued role in dispelling harmful myths and preconceived ideas. Experiences like these in my early days around here shaped my creativity, my work ethic, and even my approach to how I parent my three sons.
I started my first DJ residency in the borough at what was then a branch of pub chain Yates’s on Stratford Broadway, (now The Abbey Tap). The people I engaged with back then have all played a part in shaping my career. Over that time I felt nourished by the rich melting pot here in East London, which somehow felt more pronounced than anywhere else in the capital. To say my understanding of that connective bridge of cultural awareness has informed my career success would be an understatement. Although I’ve been to many places and pushed my creative limits, mainly through music, I’ve gravitated back to Newham, where I now work to build bridges of a different kind – across continents.
Today I work at the British Council, the UK’s international cultural relations organisation, which has its headquarters in E20. Our mission is to build trust, peace and prosperity between the UK and other countries through arts and culture, education and English language teaching. We’ve been doing that for 90 years.
The British Council is the most unusual place to work because this mission is so huge it can seem a bit abstract, but as a local, it all makes sense to me. We often host delegations and had one in particular, from Iraq, not too long ago.
There was a beautiful moment when the delegates requested to be photographed on the terrace of our office, with the Zaha Hadid Aquatic Centre in the background. From my perspective it’s simply an Olympic-sized swimming pool, but for them it was clearly so much more; a tribute to a renowned and talented British Iraqi architect, whose work stands proud in London’s Queen Elizabeth Olympic Park (see pic, above).
I work with our teams across other countries to help connect them to UK arts and culture, and in doing this I aim to strengthen connections, deepen curiosity, and sometimes bust a few myths. I’ve learnt so much about working mutually, in collaboration, and the importance of investing in relationships now, for the longer-term.
The variety of early relationships I developed here in Hackney and Newham shaped me, so in my job now as the British Council’s Relationship Manager Arts, I’m drawing on that knowledge to nurture diverse international relationships for others. My hope is that these, too, will last over time, and contribute to creativity and growth for everyone: from East London to the whole world.
Kwame Safo is Relationship Manager Arts at the British Council, where he works with the Music and Creative Economy teams. He is also co-founder of the UK’s first Black music export office, BLACMEX.
To learn more about the work of the British Council please visit britishcouncil.org
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