Rieko Whitfield: Early Career Promoter Fund
Concise Description: Music programming for Movements From The Margins festival at Turner Contemporary, Margate in partnership with Diasporas Now, People Dem Collective, and PRAH Recordings
Biog: Rieko Whitfield is a Japanese-American artist, musician, and Founding Director of live art platform for the Global Majority, Diasporas Now CIC. Currently collective-in-residence at the Institute of Contemporary Arts, Diasporas Now has ongoing partnerships with many of the U.K.’s leading cultural institutions including the V&A Museum and the Royal College of Art. Diasporas Now specialises in curated programming across museum lates, nightlife, panel talks, and artist development programmes. In her solo work, Rieko has been supported by the Arts Council England, Help Musicians, and Sound and Music for her upcoming sophomore experimental pop EP “Zakuro,” self-released her 2023 debut EP “Regenesis” under Diasporas Now as her label, and was a 2022-2023 artist-in-residence at the Tate Modern and Tate Britain. Rieko’s entire practice, from music and performance art to curation and community building, is an act of propositional world-building.The PRS Foundation’s Early Career Promoter Fund will support programming for Movements from the Margins, a nomadic celebration of art, music, and organising as collective spiritual practice, launched as a multidisciplinary festival in 2024 at Turner Contemporary by Diasporas Now and Black-led, Margate-based community organisation People Dem Collective.For 2025, Movements from the Margins returns to Turner Contemporary again, including a national open call for performance commissions and music residencies with label PRAH Recordings – in addition to weekend-long programming for We Out Here Festival, pairing healing practitioners with avant-garde composers for immersive, embodied, and restorative workshops set to live sound score.