Back to our team
Iyare Igiehon is the founder of S.O.U.L. Fest, a BAFTA and BIFA-qualifying Black British film festival, and spent over five years as Creative Diversity Partner at the BBC. He brings three decades of media industry experience to inclusion and talent pipeline work.
My Background: the magic I bring to the team
Iyare’s career spans more than 30 years across broadcasting, live events, and inclusion strategy, starting in record plugging and radio production before he joined the BBC 1Xtra launch presenting team. He went on to senior roles at the BFI, delivering national access funding and inclusion events strategy, and later became Creative Diversity Partner at the BBC, part of the team that delivered the broadcaster’s £112m Diverse Programming commitment.
In 2019 he founded S.O.U.L. Fest (Screening Our Unseen Lives), now a BAFTA and BIFA-qualifying festival championing Black British film, run through his company S.O.U.L. Productions and Films. Alongside this, he is a Governor at Capital City College Group and a Board Director at the Bellingham Community Project in Lewisham.
He brings a rare combination to inclusion work: lived experience of building and running inclusive spaces at scale, deep sector knowledge of the film, TV and broadcast industries, and the facilitation instincts of a trained performer and broadcaster used to reading a room and holding an audience.
What I love about my job
What I love most about this work is that it creates an opportunity, in some small way, to make the world a better place. Whether it’s a single conversation that shifts how someone sees their workplace, or a programme that opens a door for someone who wouldn’t otherwise have had it, that incremental change is what keeps me doing this.
Something that surprises people about me
Iyare trained in dance and performed across music, dance and theatre before his broadcasting career. Radio 1Xtra wasn’t his first stage.
“To the world you may be one person, but to one person you may be the world.”