First Cultural Micro-Commissions Announced

Kampala Chukwuka

I'm currently working on my next children's book titled Kenna and the Colourful Beads of Hope. It's a heart-warming story set in an African context where a young girl named Kenna learns to navigate life’s challenges through the symbolic wisdom of her bracelet.

Kampala Chukwuka is a Wandsworth-based children's author passionate about how storytelling that uplifts and empowers and reflects the beauty of diverse cultures. She is the author of three books, Kind OB Amor's Gift and Mommy's Love for You Will Always Be. Her work is rooted deeply in cultural representation and positive moral values of kindness, hope, confidence, things that inspire little ones to be good human beings.

Shomokeh

I would like to create a short YouTube video series that documents the creative process of making an original EP from scratch. The series will be filmed in a local music studio and will follow myself and a small group of producers, all of whom are aspiring musicians I have formed creative relationships with, as we build the EP collaboratively. Each episode will highlight a different stage of the process, including beat creation, collaborative writing, recording sessions, creative challenges, and reflections on the music industry. 

Shomokeh is a music producer and composer based in Wandsworth, with a Master’s degree in Audio Production and over a decade of experience creating music across different platforms. Shomokeh’s work includes composing for television, releasing original instrumentals, and producing collaborative content that blends music and visual storytelling. Shomokeh also runs an event series called Producer Link Up, which connects emerging music producers and artists through beat showcases, live studio sessions, and educational workshops. community-led content. I am particularly interested in uplifting Black British voices and creating behind-the-scenes content that feels both creative and honest.

Jaesher McDowall

For this commission, I would like to create a multi-layered audio-visual project titled “Still Standing: A Soundtrack for Resilience” - a short, powerful visual and musical piece that captures everyday moments of emotional strength and self-worth, filmed in the heart of Wandsworth. It will focus on the connection between mental health, music, and environment, aligning directly with the theme of health and happiness. As a Wandsworth-based artist, I’ve spent the past few years creating music that reflects real emotional experiences, blending genres like Hip-Hop, Soul, and Spoken Word. I’ve written and recorded over 30 songs rooted in themes of self-belief, vulnerability, and healing.

Jaesher McDowall is a multidisciplinary music artist and storyteller based in Wandsworth, working primarily in Hip-Hop, R&B, and alternative Black music. My work is deeply personal and often explores themes of self-worth, healing, identity, and resilience.

World Heart Beat

We would like to create Operation Forest, a bold, youth-led performance project that puts young people on stage-sharing music, stories, and creative expression that truly reflect who they are. This is a representation project by students, for students, where participants will engage with repertoire that resonates with their cultural identities, lived experiences, and personal creativity. 

Operation Forest will be directed and curated by Ava Joseph - a rising star and inspirational local artist. A gifted singer-songwriter and World Heart Beat alumna, Ava is known for her genre-crossing talent and authentic voice, combining jazz, soul, R&B, and conscious lyricism. As a performer and composer, she has worked with artists such as Jas Kayser, Cleveland Watkis, Akin Soul and has been featured on BBC Introducing. 

Young people from across Wandsworth-will co-create a powerful, original performance for the public at World Heart Beat’s state-of-the-art venue in Embassy Gardens. Through workshops and jam sessions with professional artists, they will explore musical repertoire from underrepresented voices, and create their own new work centred on the themes of nature, identity, and voice. 

World Heart Beat’s artistic practice is rooted in musical excellence, community participation, and cross-cultural collaboration. Since our founding in 2009, we have delivered high-quality music education and performance opportunities for thousands of young people in Wandsworth, many from challenging backgrounds, while also serving as a platform for world-class artists across genres.

Adil Akram

I would like to stage a play, Bokhari's Boyz, about a local Wandsworth hero, Naz Bokhari. He was the former Headmaster of Ernest Bevin Boys Comprehensive Secondary School in Tooting, Wandsworth. I was born and raised in Tooting and went to Bevin in the 1990s. Taking inspiration from Alan Bennett's 'The History Boys', my play will take a humorous look at the relationships between a class of young boys and their Headteacher as they face the future in a multicultural UK and are guided by Naz Bokhari's prophetic words of wisdom about assimilation and identity.  Mr Bokhari was the first headmaster of a secondary school in the UK from a South Asian Pakistani Muslim background. His quiet humble conduct provided a role model for many young boys looking to forge their identity. Alumni from Ernest Bevin during that era included Mayor Sadiq Khan, Winston Gordon (judo champion), Jimmy White (snooker champion) and Lennie James (actor), as well as many other successful members of society. My play will pay homage to the diligent work of a decent local man trying to inspire a new generation of young boys from BAME backgrounds to not see colour or prejudice as a barrier to forging your dreams.

Adil Akram’s artistic practice has focused on filmmaking, acting and writing. He was a Tara theatre NOVA new playwright commission and was shortlisted for new playwrighting commissions with the Royal Court and Soho Theatre.

Luca Bosani

I intend to create a new series of ‘Unidentified Performing Objects’: practical and conceptual tools for gender non-conforming individuals (LGBTQI+), neurodivergent communities and young people to feel seen, heard, included and supported. At the core of my project is nurturing and improving the mental health and well-being of those who experience my sculptural work, both physically and visually. The commission will focus on the production of a new series of four ‘Unidentified Performing Objects’. An ‘Unidentified Performing Object’ is a wearable artwork that can be worn (as a shoe) during performances, but that can also exist as an object of contemplation (sculpture) displayed in an exhibition or gallery. I aim to create four new sculptural artworks that will act as catalysts for joy, inclusivity, and community engagement. These pieces, each a standalone artwork, are deeply inspired by my personal experience as a gender-non-conforming and neurodivergent artist and are intended to give voice to LGBTQI+ and neurodivergent communities in Wandsworth and London. Drawing from my background in experimental sculpture and live art, these ‘UPOs’ are designed to blur the lines between object, costume, and artwork, encouraging new possibilities for creative expression and storytelling around mental health, queerness, and identity. Created in my local studio, these four sculptures mark the beginning of a new creative cycle following my recent Artist Residency at the V&A Museum (exploring the history of heels and gender).

Luca Bosani is a multimedia artist working and living in Wandsworth (Battersea) since 2015. Luca attended the Royal College of Arts and obtained an MA in Contemporary Art Practice in 2017. After graduation, Luca collaborated with London Councils (Wandsworth, Kensington & Chelsea), presented exhibitions and live performances nationally (Tate Britain, V&A Museum) and internationally (NMMCA South Korea, Weltkunstzimmer Germany). Luca’s work champions diversity, inclusivity and queerness. Challenging stereotypes and preconceptions around identity and gender, and to improve the mental health and well-being of performers, participants and audiences.

DJ Roberts

I would like to create a public art installation consisting of a text on the billboard mounted above the pastry shop ‘Aux Merveilleux de Fred’ in Shelgate Road, SW11, where Shelgate Road meets Northcote Road. The text would read: Where any turn may lead to Heaven Or any corner may hide Hell Roads shining like river uphill after rain

These three unpunctuated lines were found jotted down on a slip of paper in the pocket of the poet Edward Thomas after he had been killed at the Battle of Arras on Easter Day 1917. 

Thomas grew up at 61 Shelgate Road - there is a London County Council blue plaque on the house commemorating him - and he had close ties with Wandsworth. Thomas is now regarded as one of the most influential poets of the early 20th Century. The poet and critic Andrew Motion believes he occupies a crucial place in the development of poetry today for introducing a modern sensibility to the subject matter of Victorian and Georgian poetry - a modern sensibility later to be found in the work of such poets as W. H. Auden and Ted Hughes. 

I am keen that Wandsworth residents should be involved as far as possible in this project. To this end I have arranged with Lucy Milner, Edward Thomas’s great granddaughter and a member of the Edward Thomas Fellowship to lead a walk visiting areas of the borough associated with the poet. 

DJ Roberts’ practice includes drawing, painting, performance and public installation. ‘I’m in love with the modern world’, was commissioned by Waltham Forest Council in 2012 and ‘Michelangelo, ping-pong, ambition, Sibelius and girls’, was commissioned by Locws International in Swansea in 2014 as part of the Dylan Thomas Centenary.

Belinda Chapman

We would like to further develop TWIST, a dance-theatre production that blends movement, music, film, and storytelling to reimagine the 1960s through a contemporary lens. The piece explores identity, ageing, liberation, and joy centring untold narratives, particularly of intergenerational and LGBTQ+ communities, while celebrating the cultural shifts of the era. This micro grant would support a second phase of development in Wandsworth, building on our initial R&D held at Omnibus Theatre Clapham in 2023. 

TWIST is led by director and movement practitioner Belinda Lee Chapman, whose work spans Matthew Bourne’s New Adventures, National Theatre, and Clean Break. The project is supported by a growing network of partner venues across the UK including Theatre Royal Plymouth, Dance East, Stanley Arts, and the Lyric Theatre Bridport.

Youyang Song

I would like to use this micro-commission to carry out a 3-day research and development process exploring the theme of health and happiness through clowning, physical theatre, improvisation and audience participation. My work-in-progress show, Clown on a 7-Day Hunt for a British Husband, is a wild, absurd solo piece packed with antics, awkwardness, and surreal attempts at assimilation. 

A Chinese international student, panicked by looming visa deadlines, sets out to win her place in Britain the only way she was ever taught - by auditioning to become the perfect British bride.

The piece is a playful yet piercing satire of immigration, identity, racism, and social expectation. Structured around a clown’s misguided “syllabus” of husband-hunting modules, the show explores the pressure to assimilate through joyful failure and illogical logic. Playful, political, and painfully relatable, it invites the audience to laugh, cringe, and question what it means to exist in a country that smiles politely while looking the other way.

Drawing on lived experience as a neurodivergent, working-class, East Asian migrant, the show unpacks themes of assimilation, cultural translation, and institutional absurdity through humour and physical play. The show is in development, with separate 20-minute excerpts previously shared at Chisenhale Dance Space and Artsadmin…...

Youyang Song is a multidisciplinary artist and facilitator from China, working across acting, writing, clowning, devising, and theatre-making. She has performed at Donmar Warehouse, Almeida Theatre, and Southbank Centre. She is passionate about using the arts for wellbeing, and values collaboration that fosters connection and transformation. Youyang is part of Welcome to Wandsworth’s Culturally Mindful Programme, which aligns with her belief in creativity as a tool for social change.

Catherine Ward

I would like to create a project that connects local communities to their surrounding post-industrial spaces where nature is actively reclaiming sites of past human intervention. The Borough of Wandsworth has a rich industrial heritage, from iconic structures such as Battersea Power Station to the Wimbledon Windmill. I am interested in examining the “edgelands” that have emerged from this past, particularly located along the River Wandle. My project will begin with organising walks through the borough, particularly along the River Wandle; with a focus on areas often seen as neglected, residual or in-between. Part of my research will also involve looking at archives such as Wandsworth Heritage Service to learn more about the history of identified sites. I am also interested in creating lake pigments or dyes from some of the plants located on the riverbanks. I will then bring these drawings and photographs back into the studio. I propose creating a series of medium to large-scale oil paintings based on these initial studies. I intend to use the time awarded from this opportunity to organise the exhibition of these works in a local art space. It will also be shared through digital platforms to extend to a wider audience.

Catherine Ward is an Irish artist working with painting, photography and drawing, currently based in London and studying for an MA in Painting at the Royal College of Art. Her work is inspired by landscapes marked by human interventions. It is concerned with the material condition of land, expressed as a finite resource. She is interested in capturing the shapes, traces and patterns that are left behind after mines and quarries are closed, and she uses found pigments such as yellow ochre and iron oxide as part of her practice.

Kylia Benjamin (Kindness Courier)

Rhythms of Unity is a Black History Month celebration of Caribbean and Asian Heritage through Culture and Creativity. Which aims to celebrate and promote the rich cultural heritage of Caribbean and Asian communities through a vibrant and inclusive community-led event in Battersea. 

Collaborations with A2nd Voice, Pointe Black Ballet, Just Vibez, DJ HappyHome, and Alliance will showcase cultural performances, community engagement, and sustainability initiatives.