#BGFAcademyAlumni — Jumi Akinfenwa
Black Girl Fest Academy is a seven-month community-focused creative programme, created by Black Girl Festival, in association with Today at Apple and The Mayor of London.
Over the past few months, we’ve supported 30 Black women aged 17–25, equipping them with the tools to create events for their local communities. We’re excited to introduce our Academy Alumni sharing more about their event ideas.
Meet Jumi Akinfenwa, founder of Sync Summer School — a day event catered towards Black people aged 16–24 years old, giving them an insight into the world of music supervision and sync. Music supervision is the sourcing and licensing of music for use in TV, Film, advertising and video games and there are only a handful of Black music supervisors in the UK.
Jumi Akinfenwa
Tell us more about your event, How did you come up with it? What impact do you hope it makes for your community?
Being a Black music supervisor myself, I’m very aware of the lack of diversity within the field and haven’t seen many efforts to address this head-on. Having been to a lot of music career-focused events as a teenager, I noticed that there was never a mention of music supervision or sync. I’m keen to fill that gap with this event and I hope that it inspires young Black people to consider a career path that they might not have even known existed. I also hope that it will give attendees the confidence to pursue a career within the field as well as highlighting transferable skills that they may have. I hope that it also highlights that you don’t necessarily need formal music education to succeed within the music industry.
What advice would you give to anyone who wants to sign up to the Black Girl Fest Academy programme?
Just give it a go! I was so sure that I wasn’t going to get on but I’m glad that I applied as obviously if I didn’t then I would be part of the programme. Definitely think about what it is that you want to do and also if it is an event that you could see yourself attending and benefiting from.
What have you learnt whilst being on the programme?
To be decisive! I went through several different event ideas before I came to this one. I also think that it taught me that it’s not a bad thing to think small. Whilst it’s good to be ambitious, I think that my previous event ideas were too big to achieve, especially in light of the pandemic and relied heavily on me acquiring more skills and having to bring more people on board to help out with the event.
Could you give 3 piece’s of advice you would give to someone who wants to run events for their community?
I would definitely think about what community means to you. It doesn’t have to be something that geographical or really broad (e.g. the Black community), it can be something a bit more niche within that, like Black Muslim women in East London, for example. Another tip would be to use the networks around you. I was really fortunate in that I managed to secure a venue for my event in 2021, just by talking about what I had planned with some small businesses within the music industry and one was willing to sponsor it. Another bit of advice would be to set boundaries. This is probably the hardest thing for me as I can often take on too much. Know that you don’t have to try to save the world all the time and that the little bit that you’re doing is okay. It’s okay to say no sometimes and take a bit of a break.
