The BGF Weekender - An intimate day of celebration 🎉
To celebrate our 5th birthday, we produced The BGF Weekender. Packed with carefully curated discussions, workshops, performances and a mini marketplace for our community to connect and celebrate our journey and growth as a business.
The past 5 years have been nothing short of incredible. With the relaunch of our brand, multiple programmes, building our very own web app and so much more!
None of this is possible without our fantastic team and community! So what better way to celebrate us than bringing us all together? 💐
Videography + Edit by Zoe Kezia
We started the day with a nourishing guided meditation led by Jocelyn Yeboah-Newton, health practitioner and founder of Our Naked Truths.
Clo Abe, co-founder of FiveXMore then hosted our panel discussion on Navigating Motherhood. Panellists included Chloe Pierre (founder of Thy.Self), Hannah Faith (Music curator + Art director) and Desriee Asomuyide (Founder of Little Omo + Children’s author). Mothers of all ages were able to come together and learn from one another in a safe and welcoming environment.
We then had a Read & Chill session with Zainab Swanzy who also gave a reading from her book, A Quick Ting on The Black Girl Afro.
Photography by Ella Ward
Whilst the talks and activities were taking place at BGF Studios, the mini market place and photography exhibition next door at Shallow Roots was popping with buzzing customers and Black women making connections.
Our mini marketplace featured carefully curated sellers and artists such as Vanessa Ankara - Vanessa Esther Designs, Dominique Harvey - Baby Saint, Nicole Kolawale, Morenike Art & Sherifat Ponle - Abekajik.
Our curated photography exhibition highlighted talented photographers from our BGF Academy programme. This included work from Jannell Adufo, Suzannah Gabriel, Eilish Marie Bailey, Kara Kelisha Blake and Ines Yearwod-Sanchez.
The marketplace closed at 4pm to make room for the next workshop! Which was a fun and vibrant Sip n Paint, led by talented Artist Lindsey Danniella.
The evening was full of live performances from Belinda Zhawi and Akachi Mbakwe. Belinda Zhawi is a Zimbabwean literary & sound artist, Author of Small Inheritances and co-founder of literary arts platform BORN::FREE & experiments with sound/text performance as MA.MOYO. Belinda gave a captivating poetry performance of poems surrounding Home and Heritage
Our final performer of the evening was Akachi Mbakwe who gave a stunning saxophone performance.
This wonderful day of celebration was brought to a close with a speech from our CEO - Nicole Crentsil and lots of delicious cake!
A huge thank you to all of our facilitators, performers, and community for joining us in celebrating 5 years of BGF! x
