LatinoLife (TDN 2025)
Organisation Biog: LatinoLife is the UK’s leading Latin events, media and music organisation and its first and only Latina-run National Portfolio Organisation (NPO). For 21 years, since producing the UK’s first ever Urban Latin Music Festival in 2004, LatinoLife has been promoting Latin music, with focus on nurturing young homegrown bi-cultural talent and developing the UK Latin music industry, through LatinoLife magazine (in print and online), LatinoLife in the Park (Britain’s largest Latin music festival), The LUKAS (Latin Entertainment Awards) as well as club nights, concerts, conferences, artist showcases, incubators, mentoring and outreach programmes and Candela Records.
Short Project Title: The LatinoLife Artist Development Program (LADP)
Program Description: LatinoLife’s Artist Development Programme (LADP) aims to advance the careers of Latin music creators in the UK who have shown a baseline of musical quality, success and commitment but struggle to market to wider audiences due to insufficient resources, barriers/disparities in representation in the UK music and media industry. All the artists on our programme are from immigrant, ethnic minority or lower income backgrounds and produce unique, new, pioneering and ground-breaking genre-fusing sounds, mixing their heritage with UK genres. The programme will help provide high profile performance opportunities/touring in the UK, Europe and Latin America, as well as access to booking agents, managers, branding, PR, marketing and mentoring from music industry professionals with the aim of releasing and marketing their music to larger audiences. Our 3 artists include: Yxng Dave – a UK-Colombian/Spanish artist, whose single ‘Canada Fur’ garnered over 3 million streams, has collaborated with Chip on the track ‘Blacked Out’ and performed with Dappy and KSI at Wembley, O2 and Manchester Arenas; Alvarez Funk – an electrifying, high-energy Cuban funk band led by award-winning Santiago-born singer-songwriter and multi-instrumentalist Rene Alvarez; British-Nigerian Sola Akingbola, former percussionist for Jamiroquai, whose solo project connects thedots between his Yoruba roots and theLatinworld.