VILLAGE101…AN UNTOLD SAGA

Since March 2020 the world has not been the same. The glob­al reac­tion to COV­ID-19, regard­less of its ori­gin or your stance on the pro­pa­ganda wars, has caused a great many things to change and change dra­mat­ic­ally. The arts have been hit emphat­ic­ally hard, with artists of all dis­cip­lines forced to drastic­ally rethink their place with­in an already pre­cari­ous field. On top of all the oth­er men­tal and phys­ic­al health mine­fields that have been laid, even those artists blessed with steady income, who have worked hard enough to be pro­fes­sion­als were often left bat­tling for hard­ship and recov­ery funds, find­ing altern­at­ive means to pay bills and feed them­selves and/or their fam­ily. In the case of live per­formers, many had to face the very real situ­ation that their entire sec­tor was, and might remain, locked-off. Artist’s have mourned not only the loss of friends and fam­ily, but also their source of income, a career hard earned and, for many, their reas­on for being, reas­on to live and purpose.

As indi­vidu­als, grass­roots organ­isa­tions and major insti­tu­tions alike struggled, adap­ted or shut down for good, there was a haven cre­ated amidst the chaos. This was an oas­is forged in the heart of North Lon­don where cre­at­ives of all kinds came to express them­selves and serve their com­munit­ies in the way we have for gen­er­a­tions. This place is Village101…and this is its story.

In Octo­ber 2020 I was asked to come to a live stream­ing event called ‘The News with Jonzi D’. It brought togeth­er musi­cians, dan­cers, tech­ni­cians and engin­eers to respond to the government’s latest self-serving, profit-mak­ing, manip­u­lat­ive reac­tion to the deaths they have caused in mis­hand­ling (delib­er­ately or not) the COV­ID-19 situ­ation. I walked into the repur­posed ware­house and was instantly in awe; the glor­i­ous sun­shine stream­ing in from the sky­lights, the sheer space (hav­ing spent so much time in my yard), the hard, indus­tri­al beauty of the interi­or. More than any­thing, I was in awe of the infin­ite pos­sib­il­it­ies that such a space held, wait­ing to be unlocked by the right hands. I knew that the hands hold­ing the key to those pos­sib­il­it­ies were the right ones; the ones that had made the phone call for me to be there.

One of those hands was a young broth­er called Muti Musafiri. He is an accom­plished dan­cer, film­maker and cre­at­ive dir­ect­or who along­side musi­cian and cul­tur­al facil­it­at­or Marv Radio foun­ded Village101 in a repur­posed Hack­ney primary school in 2019. The broth­ers had acquired res­id­ence in the space through one of the con­tro­ver­sial guard­i­an­ship schemes cur­rently at large in com­munit­ies under the siege of gentri­fic­a­tion. These schemes were designed to under­mine the squat­ting move­ment, giv­ing people mar­gin­ally cheap­er rent to live in and ‘guard’ build­ings on land bought for ‘new devel­op­ments’, aka new flats nobody liv­ing in the area can afford, for­cing prices up and people out.

Instead of just ‘guard­ing’ the primary school, Muti, Marv and their many col­lab­or­at­ors trans­formed it into a com­munity ini­ti­at­ive for loc­al people and artists to express them­selves and use as space for their pro­jects, renam­ing it NuSchool. We all know how valu­able and expens­ive space is in Lon­don, so this was immensely appre­ci­ated by the com­munity cre­ated in that space. The extent of the cul­tur­al pro­duc­tion was incred­ible, with a con­stant flow of live streamed events, includ­ing inter­na­tion­ally-reach­ing open mics and Afric­an Lib­er­a­tion-themed per­form­ances, music record­ings, video and photo shoots and much more com­ing out of the space. At first the guard­i­an­ship com­pany, Glob­al Guard­i­ans, embraced the move and all its cre­ativ­ity, using NuSchool for pub­li­city cam­paigns, tout­ing Muti and Marv as poster-kids for ‘pro­duct­ive regeneration’…until it was time to kick them out, just as COV­ID-19 kicked in hard.

With the sup­port of Hack­ney Coun­cil and the dir­ect involve­ment of the may­or Philip Glan­ville, the broth­ers fought hard to hold on to NuSchool at least until the pan­dem­ic and lock­down reg­u­la­tions were less intense. The broth­ers won, and were reluct­antly relo­cated by Glob­al Guard­i­ans to a huge ware­house on the bor­der of Tot­ten­ham and Edmon­ton in August 2020. Their farewell event to NuSchool was a com­munity open day, invit­ing every­one in the loc­al area. Large groups of chil­dren ran around over the moon, everything was kept with­in COV­ID reg­u­la­tions and the huge cli­mactic drum circle, inter­act­ive dance per­form­ance and open mic ses­sion took ener­gies through the roof. The won­der­ful out­doors area and per­ma­cul­ture garden at the school was sorely missed, but it soon became clear that the new space in Tot­ten­ham was a level up and new world of cre­at­ive pos­sib­il­it­ies. Muti and Marv gradu­ated from the NuSchool, ready to build their village.

With Marv decid­ing to take up a huge oppor­tun­ity and move to Ibiza, Muti took full con­trol of the pro­ject in Autumn 2020. Invig­or­ated by respond­ing to the pan­dem­ic and the reju­ven­ated move­ment for Black Lib­er­a­tion in 2020, Muti decided not to hoard the bless­ing that they had fought so hard for. Instead, he opened up Village101 to his com­munity and bey­ond. Village101 provided invalu­able space for broad range of people, from chil­dren who needed a new place to hold their paint­ing classes because every­where else had closed their doors, to giv­ing inter­na­tion­al, award win­ning super­stars includ­ing Tinie, Chip, Ivori­an Doll, AJ Tracey and Bug­zy Malone loc­a­tions for their new­est music videos and inter­views. This simple, immense decision enabled and empowered people on every point along this spec­trum the oppor­tun­ity to flour­ish in the face of devel­op­ment­al, eco­nom­ic and mental/physical health related disaster.

Cham­pi­on B‑boy Kofi Mongo, one of the people I worked with on my first time there said, “you could make a movie in here” and months later I did. My upcom­ing visu­al album ‘Drum­mer War­ri­or Storyteller’ was filmed at Village101. Hav­ing access to the space allowed me to secure income, provide work for scores of people and com­plete a pro­ject that oth­er­wise would have been impossible to make. We had ori­gin­ally planned to film on my block; a major­ity Black cast and crew film­ing on my estate would have undoubtedly gen­er­ated phone calls to the police at a time when snitching on your neigh­bours was act­ively encour­aged more than ever before.

Sim­il­ar tales can be told by many, many oth­er people, as so much was cre­ated in this space; films, music videos, live broad­casts, dance work­shops, art pro­jects, com­munity health ini­ti­at­ives, well­ness ses­sions, anti-gun and knife cam­paigns, Ances­tral drum­ming circles.

Village101 became a safe space for people of all ages to express their ideas, enrich their com­munity, gain space to breathe and help oth­ers at a time when fear, manip­u­la­tion and viol­ence were skyrock­et­ing. While estab­lished powers failed, betrayed and fought against com­munit­ies and their needs, Village101 gave so much to so many, with no fund­ing or back­ing, just the will­ing­ness to say “yes you can use this space that isn’t being used, come in, you’re wel­come here”, at a time when so much is being done to keep com­munit­ies and people divided.

You would think that any­one who saw such power­ful work hap­pen­ing, espe­cially people who had power to help it con­tin­ue, would be thrilled. This is espe­cially true con­sid­er­ing the space is sand­wiched between two bor­oughs made up of large Afric­an, Carib­bean, Asi­an, migrant and work­ing-class com­munit­ies hit hard­est by the COV­ID-19 situ­ation. These bor­oughs and com­munit­ies are end­lessly demon­ised in the press with biased, reduct­ive crime stat­ist­ics, that are being ripped apart by gentri­fic­a­tion and could really do with some good pub­li­city demon­strat­ing loc­al people sup­port­ing each oth­er intergen­er­a­tion­ally, in mul­tiple, deeply sig­ni­fic­ant ways. Village101 was empower­ing and facil­it­at­ing Black, Brown and work­ing class excel­lence to unearth itself and in response, Glob­al Guard­i­ans did all they could to shut it down.

Glob­al Guard­i­ans’ tac­tics have included threat­en­ing Muti with jail time, tak­ing out court orders, send­ing them to his mother’s home address and build­ing a case against him that will cost him thou­sands of pounds to defend him­self as it is out­side of leg­al aid para­met­ers. As the situ­ation came to a head, Glob­al Guard­i­ans even sent private secur­ity firms down, one of which set an attack dog on Marv when he returned to col­lect some of his pos­ses­sions and tried to allow a dance troupe into the space to hold their weekly rehears­al. The dog was videoed bit­ing Marv, inflict­ing a wound on his arm that left him hos­pit­al­ised, all while the NHS was over­whelmed. Glob­al Guard­i­an have made no attempt to invest­ig­ate this attack, and it’s unclear what the leg­al con­sequences are of such an unpro­voked attack, but it clearly demon­strates the lengths the com­pany will go to. It’s also worth say­ing here that the space was barely brought up to liv­ing stand­ards; for example, the space was not heated, with only elec­tric heat­ers ever provided for res­id­ents through­out a harsh winter, at a time when all the rhet­or­ic told us that get­ting sick could prove fatal.

In oth­er words, Glob­al Guard­i­an, a major com­pany com­pli­cit in the gentri­fic­a­tion of Haringey and Enfield, for­cibly drove out the Black, Brown, immig­rant and work­ing-class people it took rent money from to live in an indus­tri­al space that isn’t safe or fit to live in, then viol­ently attacked and threatened them to stop using the space they paid to live in…because they used it to help their com­munity. It is really dis­gust­ing, abhor­rent beha­viour, espe­cially when surely all they needed to say was “this is great, you’re bene­fit­ting loads of people, how can we help?”.

This part of the story becomes even more dis­turb­ing when the actu­al own­er of the land and build­ing is Haringey coun­cil, argu­ably the biggest bene­fact­or of the ini­ti­at­ives run by Village101. So much of the work Muti and the move­ment did improved com­munity rela­tions, men­tal health and well­being in the bor­ough. It would be in the interest of every­one in the com­munity, at Village101, the bor­ough and Glob­al Guard­i­ans – every­one except maybe those set to profit fin­an­cially from the gentri­fic­a­tion – to simply give the space to Muti and Village101, or work with them to find a sim­il­ar space for them to do their work. It feels incon­ceiv­able that with everything that has been said about the les­sons learned from the COV­ID-19 situ­ation and post BLM in 2020 about togeth­er­ness, well­ness, com­munity and anti-Black racism, that any­thing else could be done. But instead, Glob­al Guard­i­ans (and Haringey bor­ough through their silence) is choos­ing to run with court injunc­tions, set­ting dogs on people and viol­ent clamp­downs on com­munity work.

For­tu­nately, this isn’t the end of the story. As is typ­ic­al of Black Lib­er­a­tion move­ments, immig­rant com­munit­ies and the cre­at­ive prac­ti­tion­ers they cre­ate, Village101 has sur­vived the loss of this space. Village101 is a com­munity and a set of ideals that tran­scend any spe­cif­ic loc­a­tion. Muti and the move­ment are work­ing on loc­at­ing new spaces to build with­in whilst fight­ing the battles against Glob­al Guard­i­ans. Wider com­munity sup­port is really needed to demon­strate the value of the work they’re doing. As sup­port­ers, I Am Hip Hop Magazine are call­ing on Haringey coun­cil, espe­cially it’s may­or Adam Jogee, to engage with Village101 to sup­port what they are doing, in the same way Village101 have sup­por­ted the com­munity of the bor­ough through this toughest of times. To see more of what Vil­lage 101 has done and will do in future, head to their new web­site — www.village101.org

To end, Muti and the com­munity of Village101 have provided the fol­low­ing state­ment to demon­strate what Village101 stands for:

Village101 is a test­a­ment to how it is pos­sible to cre­ate social impact and eco­nom­ic abund­ance by bring­ing people togeth­er to share their gifts. 

In this time of unpar­alleled dis­con­nec­tion, what we need more than ever are spaces in which we can come togeth­er to exper­i­ence the heal­ing power of cre­ativ­ity and community. 

Village101 is not a uto­pi­an idea, it is a real-world solu­tion to some of the press­ing prob­lems this coun­try is facing, such as:

Youth unem­ploy­ment
Viol­ence among mar­gin­al­ised youth
Rising levels of anxi­ety and depres­sion in young people

These are all symp­toms of the mul­ti­fa­ceted crisis of dis­con­nec­tion that is play­ing out on three levels:

1.Within the indi­vidu­al = men­tal health crisis

2.In soci­ety = rising social inequity

3.Globally = the cli­mate and eco­lo­gic­al crisis.

We work between levels one and two…bringing people togeth­er in loc­al com­munit­ies for mutu­al enrich­ment and eco­nom­ic empower­ment that uplifts the indi­vidu­al and the collective.

There are dis­used build­ings in all major cit­ies that could be turned into vibrant centres for learn­ing and expres­sion; Lon­don is home to many. We see Village101 as a blue­print that can be rep­lic­ated across the city and across the country.

We offer a solu­tion to these needs:

lack of spaces in which young, dis­ad­vant­aged / mar­gin­al­ised people feel safe to fully express themselves
lack of spaces that bring people togeth­er inter­cul­tur­ally and intergenerationally
lack of plat­forms and resources for under­priv­ileged young people to exper­i­ment artist­ic­ally and gain exper­i­ence needed to get into the cre­at­ive industries

Village101 embod­ies these principles:

Cre­ativ­ity is a life-giv­ing energy that can gen­er­ate abundance
A sense of shared inten­tion or mis­sion gal­van­ises people
When people come togeth­er and dir­ect their cre­ativ­ity towards a shared goal, we gen­er­ate cul­tur­al cap­it­al and social impact.

Essen­tially, Village101 is har­ness­ing the already exist­ing cre­ativ­ity with­in indi­vidu­als by cre­at­ing spaces in which it can be wit­nessed and nour­ished. By offer­ing safe spaces for con­nec­tion and expres­sion we cre­ate a fer­tile ground of mutu­al enrich­ment in which people’s skills and tal­ents can take root and flourish.

For more inform­a­tion, hit the web­site www.village101.org and fol­low @Viallage101studios on Ins­tagram. To help, share these details far and wide, write to the may­or of Haringey with your sup­port for us, raise com­plaints against Glob­al Guard­i­ans, and get in con­tact via the web­site with mes­sages of sup­port. Please reach out to us if you have access to fund­ing pots or buildings/spaces you know could do with an infu­sion of Village101 energy.

Much Love, Thanks and Blessings

Writ­ten in col­lab­or­a­tion with Zack Lewis-Griffiths