Kafayat Adegoke

I am a delight to work with! Get in touch. Festival Programmer, Performance Art Theatre, Disability Arts, Character-Actor, Percussion Dance, Folk-Jazz Music, Showbiz Producer

Kafayat is instrumental in the current ‘UK City of Culture 2025’ win of the Bradford district, as she sits firmly on the Bradford Producing Hub Creativity Council which fed directly into the bid, while proudly pissing on the conventions of traditional art agency by pushing her voice in undoing gatekeeping within the arts sector, to deliver real diversity – not race (as popular opinion seem to only relate that phrase to) but also inclusive of access for all creatives living with unseen disabilities, as she is an artist living with disabilities herself. Kafayat believes it is time to develop a new narrative around equality, away from deficit models.

In a threefold capacity as an interdisciplinary research artist, educator, and cultural leader, Kafayat works across disability arts, contemporary arts, and community-engagement arts.

She has credits as a Funding Judge, Trustee, Harmonica DJ,  and Showbiz Consultant.

And they all interlink and feed into each other under her company umbrella Art empathy, and Curiosities CIC.

‘She curates work edible for every person who enjoys storytelling and shenanigans, hence her work cannot be confined to the boundaries of themes, race, gender, type and other labels’

Kafayat has performed outdoor/ busking/walkabouts and indoor stages at venues like Vortex Jazz Club, Jazz Cafe, Crucible Sheffield, Brays Dublin, 13 Festivalen Sweden, Konstepidemin Göteborg, New Morning Paris, Leeds Playhouse Quarry stage, Somerset Gypsy Weekend, Roystonbury Festival, Fringe, Church of Sound, Cambridge Junction, Crucible Sheffield, Arc Stockton, The Tetley, e.t.c And alongside cross-cultural World Music bands, and Television actors like 2-time Grammy-winning Percussionist Lekan Babalola, Jessica Hynes, Strictly Come Dancing Anton Du Beke, Stephen Mulhern, Steve Jones, Academy Award Winner Steve McQueen, Nok Cultural Ensemble of Sons of Kemet / Ezra Collective, Grammy Award Nominee Seun Kuti & Egypt 80, Bukky Leo & Black Egypt…to mention a few. And as Roadie/ Artist Liaison to MTV Award Winners Sauti Sol, and Dele Sosimi. She also performs as a Harmonica DJ – playing the Harmonica live to a live DJ cue under the moniker Jala-Jala.

She is a member of Natural Voice Network, Outdoor Arts UK, Drake Music, Sound Artist Collective, Musicians Network, and Making Music.

For years running, Kafayat is also in charge of Big Top Stage at BBC Radio6’s Giles Peterson-curated We Out Here Festival, seeing to the creative needs of young people arts charity like Tomorrow’s Warriors, Youthsayers, Abram Wilson, Future Bubblers, and more.
During her many tour travels, Kafayat enjoys collecting eclectic stories, and songs, all of which form part of her influences .e.g. Isla Cameron (Irish), Korean Folklore, Kofi Ghanaba – Guy Warren (Ghanaian), Newen Afrobeat (Chilé), Samara Joy (American), Obongjayar (Nigerian-British), Sola Akingbola (Jamiroquai Band Percussionist). As a character-actor, she embraces the works of Helena Bonham Carter, Lolly Adefope, Simon Farnaby, Jennifer Coolidge, Josh O’Connor, Ryan Sampson, and 50Cent.

With a dynamic improv and conversational approach to researching and making work, Kafayat chases emotional purity and ancient spirituality in her experimentation, which can be felt whether she’s performing a one-woman theatre show, as a session vocalist/dancer with bands, or in an ensemble. And she teaches this experimental method to dancers, theatre actors, and young musicians.

Kafayat is driven by her Yorúba tribe origins and sacred Órishas, using them to find commonality globally, while applying the logic of the Rotary 4-way Test …Is it the truth? Is it fair to all concerned? Will it build goodwill and better friendship? Will it be beneficial to all concerned?

She is a Trustee of Ifa Yoruba Contemporary Arts Trust, Trustee of the Church of England; PCC (and in 2017, became its first young Black board member in the Yorkshire region), Arts Council England; North Area Council Dev., International Instigator for Yorkshire Producing Collective, Guest blogger for The Reviews Hub London, and a regular provocateur on television and radio. Including BCB 106.6 FM, BBC 2 shorts – with a nomination at Sundance Film Festival, National Literary Trust appointed Speaker at the UK screening of Netflix documentary ‘Knock down the House’ (following congresswoman Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez’s rise to Senate as a POC), National Science and Media Museum, Collaborated with University of Oxford; Wolfson College Creative Arts Fellow to curate a jazz percussion rendition with John Coltrane as a study, Voice curated Audio/Photo exhibition ‘Seeing Asylum’ for Refugee Week -commissioned by Centre For Applied Social research (CeASR) and Leeds Beckett University and facilitated by Criminology Author Maria De Angelis, Won award commission with the Centre For Cultural Research in collaboration with the Department of Psychology; University of Bradford to curate an expanded CBT exhibition to be included as an ethics classroom teaching aid, Curator of International Women’s Day digital piece ‘Loud-Straws’ featuring Jordan Stephens of music group Rizzle Kicks, and Chair of the Writers’ Guild of Great Britain Lisa Holdsworth.

Kafayat has impacted positively on many lives. With a long-standing interest in the growth of emerging creatives, she tendered her Grantium Arts Council England repertoire to be fronted, to enable funding for a development programme to create pathways and skillsets to benefit 45 early career theatre producers. The funding application was successful (no surprise there) and the project was executed in collaboration with Absolutely Cultured Hull, Center for Live Art Yorkshire, and BPH.
She has a strong track record championing young people to be considered for board governance, which is exemplified in her involvement with CLORE Leadership, including public speaking conferences where she highlights her vision for cultural leadership experiences of young people, many of whom are subjected to the brunt of ageism – knitted with her own lived experience of being a young person working in the arts sector.
She represented over 150 Black communities/creatives on the Focus group for the Leeds 2023 flag and theme, to ensure it captures and reflects the multi-cultural connection between mainstream and contemporary horizons.

She also curated the very first Bradford African Festival of Arts.

*Wellness & Mindfulness
Trauma-informed unseen disabilities facilitator; she runs body-art, on-the-skin illustration workshops as a wellbeing and alternative therapy. Fusing chants, libation, rituals, grounding, centering, vision board, and Harmonica Sound bath. The workshop is designed to promote positive spirits & good luck, energy levels recovery, combat isolation, and encourages self-expression. Mannequins are provided for participants with conditions like social anxiety, as baby steps to ease them into engaging.

Working in an industry that tends to be cliquey, Kafayat is acutely aware of how the continuous existence of prejudice towards the Queer/ LGBTQIA+ community, conditions a lack of diversity in thoughts, and is crippling serious debate on social policy issues across all parastatals. She runs holistic workshops to further educate/ inspire on this too.