SPOTLIGHT.
Shola McAfro
INTRODUCTION
Born to a Nigerian father and Scottish mother, Shola was no stranger to discrimination and alienation due to her race from a young age. Little did she know at the time that these experiences would become the inspiration to make relatable content for fellow Scots of colour. In 2008, to get her mother off her back, Shola enrolled in a creative industries course at the Glasgow Met and at the age of 17 fell in love with broadcasting. The following three years brought opportunities in modelling and interviewing musicians for a variety of projects, including Harry & Domenic, The Bays, Josh Wink and Kevin Saunderson for Red Bull Music Academy:Glasgow Sessions in 2009.
Facing discouragement due to a lack of opportunities for POC in media, Shola took a sabbatical from the creative industries.
A string of unsatisfying jobs in sales, customer services and office work became the catalyst for Shola to jump back into media in 2016. This manifested in the form of a media internship at Kiltr and in 2017 began creating content for BBC The Social. After noticing a gap of representation for minority cultures in community and commercial radio, Shola joined the Sunny G Community Radio team that same year, using this as an opportunity to feature a plethora of genres of music from Africa, Asia, Caribbean and South America in an attempt to cater to people of non-Western and mixed backgrounds.
During lockdown 2020, Shola was also a featured writer for BBC series Raiders Of The Lost Archive, starting the project just 6 weeks after giving birth to her second daughter.
INTERVIEW
Can you tell us a little about your current practice and how you got into this?
Currently I'm still broadcasting weekly with Roots. After having my second daughter in Summer 2020, I took some time off broadcasting to focus on my family. Admittedly, through the lockdown and baby brain haze, I felt a bit less like myself but after starting back in September this year, I feel more me again. That chick I thought I had lost is back.
What themes do you tend to interrogate in your work?
One of things I love about creating content is that I have autonomy to basically do what topics I fancy. That being said, I tend to integrate themes of self-identity, culture, race, community and parenthood. As a kid and adolescent, I lived in a town where I didn't see any other girls with afros, or mixed black kids. At times this was very alienating and daunting. The 90's and 00's didn't have much representation for me - the closest biracial artists I knew of were Prince and Mariah Carey but they didn't reflect my experience of being an afro Scot. So when I started writing and making videos, my main focus was to make relatable content for people who look like me, for those of us who grew up and still currently live in predominantly white towns and were always othered.
What project are you most proud of having worked on so far and why?
I'm finding it difficult to pick just one of my proudest moments so far, so I'll tell you two. Firstly, after making my video on BBC The Social, "What Not To Say To a Mixed Person", I had people in the street, pubs, public transport and on social media telling me that they felt seen, having gone through the same issues and that it was a comfort to know that they weren't alone in dealing with microaggressions and straight up ignorance. The other proudest moment was when a Ghanian friend of mine told me that the music I play on Roots reminds him of home. That comment had me smiling for days.
What advice would you have for creatives of colour looking to get involved in the creative industries?
For other Black and POC creators, my advice is to know your value and don't feel the need to assimilate your work. Whitewashing dulls your authenticity. Also, don't compare your journey to others. This just leads to needless stress and insecurities (speaking from experience!). We're all on our own journeys - some paths are straight, some meander but they're all valid
What are you currently working on?
Not too sure if I can give details about it yet but soon I'll be starting a comedy project for television. Since having my second child, my brain had been taking it's sweet time in lifting the baby haze but I have bits and bobs written in notebooks and that's just begging to become wholly realised content.