A BLACK British media company is celebrating 10 years in business with its first ever festival.

Black Ballad was launched in 2014 by Tobi Oredein and is a media and membership platform – which publishes stories about Black British women.

The Black Ballad Weekender, is a special two-day lifestyle festival for Black women, which takes place this weekend at the Business Design Centre in Islington on 23rd and 24th August.

The event will have over 40 panels and workshops covering beauty, family and identity, health, work and careers and much more.

Company founder, Oredein is excited to celebrate a decade in business with Black British women, who have supported her vision from the very beginning.

Speaking to The Voice, she said: “I think it’s going to be a lot of fun, if you are having around 1000 Black women in and out each day, I think it is going to be an amazing experience for us all.”

The weekender will also include interviews and keynote speeches, featuring nearly 100 esteemed Black women and non-binary people including Candice Brathwaite, Reni Eddo-Lodge, Kelechi Okafor, To My Sisters Podcast and Jamelia Donaldson.

These sessions and spaces are sponsored by Penguin Random House, Garnier and Coppafeel. 

Lack of diversity

Oredein, initially dreamed of becoming a lifestyle journalist, but the severe lack of diversity in the industry left her feeling shut out and inspired her to start her own media company.

She said: “I started all those years ago because my goal in life was to be a lifestyle journalist and I had no ambitions of being an entrepreneur.

“As a Black journalist you start to realise that doors get shut on you a lot quicker.”

Recalling her days trying to get her break into the media industry, Oredein said she quickly noticed “everyone looked the same” in the newsrooms.

She said: “I was realising when I was in those newsrooms – as a freelancer and as an intern – that everyone was looking the same.”

She added: “It was White, thin, non-disabled women who were in the rooms making decisions and if anyone was different, it would be white men making decisions about women’s bodies.

“I just never saw Black women there!

“I never saw us represented, even when we were being spoken about, I felt it was a very limited representation or misrepresentation of Black women.”

Launching

Oredein told The Voice, the year she was applying for media jobs, is the same year statistics were published that journalists were 94% white and Black journalists only made up 0.2%.

She added: “I think that was the final nail in the coffin! I thought this industry is never going to let me in.

“If I want to be a journalist I’m going to have to go above and beyond and prove myself and that is where Black Ballad really started.”

Since then, the well-loved platform has gone from strength-to strength and has published thousands of articles written by over 500 Black female and non-binary writers.

According to the organisation, they have paid creators nearly £1,000,000 for their work helping to tell the diverse and important stories of Black British women.

“It’s been a huge team effort, especially with my co-founder Bola Awoniyi and Jendella Benson, who is our head of editorial and they deserve as much credit as I do because without them there’s no team,” Oredein said.

The company has also hired staff over the years who Oredein says have also “contributed to the success of this platform”.

Black-owned business

Oredein says there has been some challenges while building her empire.

She said: “The biggest challenge definitely has been like most Black-owned businesses, we don’t have access to capital.

“I think being a smaller business when you deal with bigger businesses in partnerships sometimes their payment terms are so much longer than you can afford and it makes things really hard.”

According to the CEO, the company has financed itself over the years through its paid memberships and brand partnerships – which is now the company’s main source of revenue and how it finances itself.

Community crowdfunding

Black British women have also heavily invested in the platform, which Oredien is equally proud of.

She added: “At really critical times, we’ve had two crowdfunds and the community of Black women every single time have stepped up and stepped in and said ‘yeah, this is ours!’”

Oredien told The Voice, that the company is still majority Black-owned.

She said: “When we did our 2021 crowdfund, we had a group of angels who were individuals who gave us money.

“One of those individuals, there were five of them in the end, four were Black and one was a White man.

“In the community crowdfund, the majority of our community invested but there were a few allies that wanted to put their money where their mouth was.

“So, I would say that Black Ballad is 95% Black-owned at this point.”

Oredien is happy to share tips for other entrepreneurs and emphasises not to be disappointed if you are told “no” to a partnership.

She added: “Sometimes when someone says no, you might be talking to the wrong person at that brand.”

One of the most valuable lessons she has learnt on her journey is to delegate jobs to her team.

She said: “Sometimes the messenger is more important than the message.”

She continued: “I don’t need to be delivering the pitch, sometimes it might be better to let someone else do it, as they have a better relationship with the person or they may know that aspect of what we are talking about better.

“I’ve learnt that I don’t need to be the messenger of everything, you don’t have to do everything – especially if you want the business is to be sustainable.”

Defining moment

While Oredein hopes the Weekender will be defining moment for her company, she says being able to take her own children to see her on a billboard as part of an International Day campaign she did with Google this year, is one of the stand out and defining moments for her.

She explained: “I got to show my kids me on a billboard and they were very freaked out and very happy, it was a professional and personal triumph for me.”

She said: “We collaborated with Google and we had 56 Black women and we photographed them all on a pixel and every woman was from a different career path.”

The idea of the campaign entitled ‘The Face of The Modern British Workforce’ was to highlight the important careers Black British women have in tech, medicine, education, entertainment and more.

Oredein was overjoyed “to see all these Black female faces on billboards around London” and acknowledged the vital message the campaign sent.

She said: “We do these jobs and people pretend that we don’t.”

Weekender

With her company achieving so much success already, Oredein is looking forward to celebrating her 10-year milestone this weekend at her first-ever festival.

She said: “We are having a combination of a retail shopping experience, with workshops, panels and talks that are all aimed at helping Black women live their best lives!”

At the event, Black-owned businesses will be selling their products and services, as well as free hair giveaways from Garnier, a free nail bar and hair specialists offering hairstyling services.

She added: “This two-day event will be the ultimate celebration of Black womanhood in a way that we haven’t seen before and our way of saying thank you to our audience.

“Black women deserve to have spaces that celebrate them and have conversations that can help them live their best lives.” 

Just Eat have also sponsored a Black-owned food court on both days.

Plus, special activations that will allow attendees to have their scalp analysed provided by Mielle, NHS Blood & Transplant will be doing blood type checks and there will be book signings with Black authors courtesy of Penguin Random House.

There will also be important discussions about Black maternal health, education, work, money and career advice and Black men will have a panel discussing Black masculinity and the Black family.

Tickets for The Black Ballad Weekender are available now and can be found at: https://blackballad.co.uk/events/the-black-ballad-weekender-24