Kunle Olulode
director, Voice4Change England

Kunle Olulode is the director of Voice4Change England, a BME charity and infrastructure body. Its members number over 450 black community organisations and charities covering everything from criminal justice to migrant rights. Kunle believes it’s time to develop a new narrative around race equality away from deficit models. Working in a sector that eats, sleeps and breathes identity politics, he is acutely aware of how lack of diversity in thought is crippling serious debate on social policy issues including race.  He was co-opted Commissioner on the Commission of Race and Ethnic Disparities.

Kunle also has a long-standing interest in arts development. He was the creative director of the Anglo-Spanish arts group Rebop Productions which, for over 20 years plus, was involved in the seed development of a whole host of British and American musicians connected to artists such as Amy Winehouse, Neneh Cherry and Hip-Hop heads, The Roots. His time in Catalonia also included the founding of the legendary WTF Jam sessions at the Jamboree Club Barcelona.

A keen film buff and historian, he is known for his ground-breaking work on jazz and modernism in art, presented as part of the Miro season at Yorkshire Sculpture Park in 2012. He is part of South Bank’s BFI’s African Odyssey programming board.

Kunle is a regular contributor to Radio London, Al Jazeera, Sky and RT on debates relating to politics the arts, diversity, and race. He is author of A New Era of Trust: Trust, politics, race and civil society, in the Spring 2021 edition of the IPPR Progressive Review.

Follow Kunle on X/Twitter: @KunleOlulode

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