Brixton × Amsterdam Zuidoost

Who’s hosting

Black Seed VC is a Brixton-based venture firm, started in 2021 by Karl Lokko and Cyril Lutterodt with Yvonne Nagawa, and the first Black-led venture fund in Europe set up specifically to invest in Black founders. It closed the first £5m of a £10m fund in 2023, backed by M&G, Atomico, LocalGlobe, Molten Ventures and WestRiver Group, and invests in early-stage tech companies run by Black British founders. The reason it exists is one number: over the past decade, 0.24% of UK venture capital went to Black founders. Black Seed describes itself as a fund and a community — it runs events for Black founders and gives its portfolio companies office space. Karl Lokko is its chairman.

A few doors away in Market Row is Impact Brixton — Europe’s first Black-owned coworking space and the home of many of the founders Black Seed meets first.

What the conversation is

• How Black Seed raised a fund as first-time Black fund managers, and what its first investments have taught it
• “Over-mentored and underfunded” — what Black founders in Brixton run into, and what Black Seed does about it
• How visiting founders and investors can plug in: introductions to Black Seed’s community, and staying in touch after Black Tech Fest

Who it’s for

Founders, investors, corporates with innovation or supplier-diversity remits, the city’s economic-affairs team, and the ROC students.

Who’s hosting

Black Cultural Archives is the home of Black British history — the UK’s only national repository of the history and culture of people of African and Caribbean descent in Britain. It was founded in 1981 by a group of Brixton parents and educators, among them Len Garrison, in the year of the New Cross fire and the Brixton uprising, so that young Black people could find themselves in history rather than be written out of it. Since 2014 it has occupied a Grade II-listed building on Windrush Square, named after the ship that brought the first post-war Caribbean migrants to Britain in 1948. The archive, reference library and museum collection are free to use; BCA also runs exhibitions and learning programmes and is one of the leading voices for the Windrush Generation. Its CEO is Dr Wanda Wyporska. Last October’s delegation visited here; the photo at the top of this page was taken outside.

What the conversation is

• How BCA went from a community project to a national institution — and how it stays community-owned
• Archives as infrastructure: what BCA collects, who uses it, and how it works with artists, schools and researchers
• Brixton’s creative scene now: BCA’s exhibitions and learning programmes, and the artists and organisations it works with
• At 13:20 each group reports back one thing it heard and one thing it will do; a culture & arts exchange meeting is already agreed for after Black Tech Fest

Who it’s for

Artists, creative producers, archivists, cultural organisations and the city’s arts & culture team.

Who’s hosting

Impact Brixton is Europe’s first Black-owned coworking space and the largest single space inside Brixton Village, the covered market at the centre of Brixton. A community interest company founded by Gerald Vanderpuye, it is home to founders, freelancers and community organisations, runs programmes such as Pathway to Work, and is the operational lead for this partnership on the Brixton side. Gerald is also a founding steward of the Brixton Traders & Community Association, the organisation behind Buy Back Brixton.

What the conversation is

• Two models of community wealth. Brixton’s answer is to put ownership and money into the community: the traders’ bid to buy the markets, and the Asset of Community Value listing that gives them time to do it. Zuidoost’s answer is to make sure the community has access to what is already there: regulated housing, the shopping-centre redevelopment, and the institutions and corporates based in the district. Each side wants what the other has — that’s the exchange.
• Urban development machinery. How Amsterdam structures district regeneration (city, developer, housing, finance) against how Brixton is doing it from the ground up — and what each could borrow.
• Community-based working. How each council works with community organisations rather than around them, and what that looks like in practice.
• The partnership itself. A named lead for each focus area on each side, reciprocal visits, and a smaller stakeholder visit in spring 2027.

Who it’s for

The City of Amsterdam and Zuidoost district executive and their officials, the Dutch Embassy, Lambeth Council, Buy Back Brixton and the community-wealth organisations on its board, and the institutions on the delegation with a stake in Zuidoost’s development.