Community Connections - Building Creative Enterprise Networks

Over the last six months, we have invited Community Connectors to join our team at Brixton House. The role of Community Connectors has been to support us in making deeper connections within our local neighbourhood and creating opportunities to engage with our House. In the third instalment from the Community Connectors team, Andrae Palmer led Brixton House’s Round Table: A VIP Power Dinner on Friday 4 April 2025.

Andrae welcomed Brixton’s creative entrepreneurs, artists, youth workers, policymakers, and business owners to dine and initiate conversations about future collaborations, connections, and pathways for growth in the community. As an organisation with a longstanding legacy of working with young people and connecting communities to the arts, we are excited to begin this journey with Andrae’s support. Guests included Brixton Recording Studios, Brixton Soup Kitchen, DOES, One with the Village and more. Brixton House’s Round Table marks the first step in developing stronger connections with the local creative entrepreneurship network in Brixton.

Read on for our Q&A with Andrae.

Why did you choose to focus on the Round Table as an initial connection for Brixton House?

I decided to focus on this because it’s my space – it’s what I know best. Connecting people is something I’m passionate about, and over the years, I’ve been lucky to build a vibrant network of local changemakers who are all doing amazing work.

A lot of us have been building businesses, developing community projects, and putting down roots in Brixton for a long time. But things have shifted, especially since the pandemic. We don’t really have a central place anymore to come together, share ideas or collaborate in a real, meaningful way. There have been challenges around capacity, ownership and sometimes just trying to do it all individually. I believe Brixton House has the potential to be a real solution – a space where those connections can thrive again, grounded in the heritage and community spirit of Brixton that we all share.

Why do spaces such as Brixton House matter to the community – and what is the cultural, creative or economic business value?

Brixton House is a unique resource. It has the potential to hold space for a truly diverse community while also attracting attention and support from far and wide, especially across the arts, culture and education sectors. It’s a place of neutral ground where businesses can be housed, ideas can be shared and effective collaboration can happen naturally. Its location, and even its very name, feels like a perfect reflection of the heart of Brixton which, in my view, is the very heart of Lambeth.

Brixton House carries the legacy of Ovalhouse Theatre, an institution known for its community ethos and for championing underrepresented voices in the arts. It feels fitting – and powerful – to have that spirit living on in a place as culturally rich and diverse as Brixton.

How would you describe Brixton’s creative and cultural landscape?

To really appreciate why spaces like Brixton House matter, it helps to look at the creative and cultural ecosystem that Brixton sits at the heart of.

Lambeth’s creative and digital businesses provide and 22,000 jobs and generate £1.8 billion in gross value added to the economy (Lambeth Council, 2018*).
Across London, the creative economy employs one in six people and adds £47 billion to the city’s economy (London LMI**).
Brixton is home to everything from independent artists to agencies like Dalton Maag and Livity, and cultural institutions like Brixton House, Black Cultural Archives, Brixton Library, and the O2 Academy, forming a rich foundation for arts and culture.

Alongside this energy and growth, there are real challenges including:

Affordable workspace is in short supply,
Rising property prices threaten the very communities that have built Brixton’s creative spirit.
And there’s an urgent need to make sure local residents, especially young people, actually benefit from the opportunities in the creative economy.

That’s where Brixton House comes in. Brixton House is a central hub that holds space for collaboration, supports creatives and businesses, nurtures young talent, and strengthens Brixton’s unique creative ecosystem from the inside out.

Brixton House’s Round Table is not just a dinner party. It calls on all of us as invitees, creatives, community leaders, business owners to engage with purpose, bringing our best ideas, boldest collaborations, and collective energy to the ‘table’. The road ahead is no easy journey, real collaboration brings real challenges but also births real transformation.

*Lambeth’s Creative & Digital Industries Strategy for Growth

**Creative and Design, London LMI

Abdoulaziz Lelo Ndambi (One with the Village)
A pioneering Youth Worker who has a unique almost exclusive connection to some of the most active and at risk youth in the Brixton area working tirelessly to reduce and diffuse serious youth violence. Well known and trusted member of the community with unparalleled insight into the causes and nuances of the problem. Abdoulaziz is a mentor, young parent, advocate, talented artist, key intervention and consultant for various local VCO and statutory organisations including my own. Abdoul and Andrae have co-designed programmes together and he’s been a mentee in some regards as well as a key partner in areas of Andrae’s programme recruitment and delivery (see Pain 2 Purpose below).

Akil Benjamin (DOES | Comuzi)
Serial Entrepreneur, Consultant and Designer. Brixton native Akil specialises in supporting entrepreneurs, hosting start up Black business incubators and has a solid background in leading a successful design consultancy. He’s also well known for securing large scale blue-chip investment and partnerships, collating an impressive list of clients/sponsors such as Lloyds Bank, M&C Saatchi, Sky, Google, Somerset House, Apple and many others.

Elijah Kerr (JaJa Soze | Brixton Recording Studios)
Artist, Author, Cultural Icon and local Entrepreneur. Elijah is a prolific figure both locally and nationally as the most influential founding member of the notorious rap group/Street gang (PDC) during the late 90’s-00’s. He has since gone on to become a great example of progressive entrepreneurialism achieving notable success in the community sector as well as music and literary media. Andrae is currently running a project with him at his Brixton Studios facility called Pain 2 Purpose (Abdoul was also instrumental in the recruitment of the participants for this).

Cllr Dr Mahamed Hashi (Brixton Soup Kitchen)
Cllr Dr Mahamed Hashi has been a consistent catalyst for the betterment of Brixton and possesses extensive leadership experience in promoting diversity, inclusion and equality through his roles as a Community Leader within the VCS Sector, and of course as the Co-Founder of the multi-award-winning, Brixton Soup Kitchen. His work as part of the leadership team in a local authority combines leading on community safety, frontline delivery of services and implementation of council-wide strategies as a Cabinet Member. Leading on the council’s work with our communities, the police, our partners and the Mayor of London to combat crime in Lambeth, including violence affecting children and young people, community safety, crime reduction programmes, tackling violence against women and girls and tackling antisocial behaviour and hate crime.

Rachael Palmer (Black Maven UK | Business Mix | Black Nail Techs UK)
Serial Entrepreneur and one of Brixton’s secret weapons in terms of connecting and networking. The Co-Host on Colourful Radio’s The Business Mix show and the Founder of Black Nail Techs UK, the first comprehensive directory for Black Nail Professionals in the UK. Rachael is the current Chair of JustBe, a women’s self-development and empowerment organisation. She leads the communication department for Ecosystems Coldharbour and is the General Manager at Impact Brixton – Europe’s only large-scale, Black-owned, co-working space. If that didn’t keep her busy enough, she has the hardest job of all being married to Andrae and mother to their beautiful not so little family.

Sanaa Abstrakt
Sanaa Abstrakt is a visionary and multidisciplinary visual storyteller with a passion for capturing life’s fleeting moments through a lens of magic and wonder. Sanaa thrives on transforming both the extraordinary and the everyday into captivating narratives that resonate deeply. In addition to photography, she has experience in Set and Lighting Design, bringing vision to life in immersive environments. Her expertise extends to creating dynamic, transformative spaces for music videos, events, and performances, where each detail enhances the story being told. With a keen eye for visual storytelling: collaborating with talented artists and production teams to create memorable experiences on stage and screen internationally, documenting compelling narratives, and collaborating on innovative concepts in the arts, theatre and festivals. Sanaa’s approach merges imagination, theory, and practice, focusing on how photography bridges human connections and enhances our engagement with the world.

Learn more about other events from the Community Connectors:

Love & Lyrics led by Michelle Killington

Tejiendo Nuestro Futuro: The Stories of Latinx Elders led by Valentina Andrade

As a cultural hub in the heart of a community, we are committed to and representative of Brixton. If you would like to find out more about similar events, please contact [email protected].

Brixton House’s Round Table: A VIP Power Dinner, was supported by catering and drinks from Food4Love.