One room. Five disciplines. One shared frequency.

What do we carry with us?

A sound. A memory. A colour. An object. A phrase.

What Carries Us brings together five friends and creative peers who have, in different ways, shaped Foday Dumbuya’s thinking and work. Alec Boateng, Peigh Asante, Tawiah, Zezi Ifore and Yinka Ilori each bring a different creative perspective, spanning music, creative direction, performance, broadcasting, art and design.

Rather than simply asking what they do, Foday asks what shapes them - what stays with them, what they carry, and what happens when those influences meet.

Everyone arrives carrying something: a sound, a memory, a reference, an instinct.

Through listening and exchange, those individual worlds begin to intersect - and something new emerges in the space between them.

THE FIVE PERSPECTIVES

THE EAR

Alec Boateng: Music Executive & Curator

Alec brings an instinct for hearing possibility before it becomes obvious. His perspective begins with listening - to records, to culture, to what is happening beneath the surface.

What are you listening for? Can you recognise something important before you can explain why?

THE EYE

Peigh Asante: Creative Director

Peigh explores how references, instinct and identity come together to shape a world. Her perspective considers where taste comes from, how cultural identity informs what we see, and what gives an idea an identity beyond simply looking good.

What makes an image stay with you? When does something move beyond beauty and begin to have presence?

THE VOICE

Tawiah: Artist & Performer

Tawiah brings a perspective rooted in emotion, identity and personal experience. Through music and performance, she considers what we carry into a room before we even speak - and what we reveal when something personal becomes something shared.

Where does performance end and the person begin? What does home sound like?

THE SIGNAL

Zezi Ifore: Broadcaster & Cultural Commentator

Zezi considers how culture moves, who gets to define it and whose stories are carried forward. Her perspective looks at the journey from the humble beginnings to the mainstream, and what can be lost along the way.

Who decides when something becomes culture?

THE COLOUR

Yinka Ilori: Artist & Designer

Yinka explores colour, memory, joy and African visual language through the spaces we inhabit. His perspective considers how the visual language we inherit can transform the places around us - and how joy itself can become a creative force.

Where did colour first enter your life? Can joy be radical?

THE POWER OF LISTENING

Sound becomes a thread connecting the five perspectives.

Listening is more than hearing. It is a way of paying attention - to people, to culture, to memory and to the details that might otherwise pass unnoticed.

For What Carries Us, Bowers & Wilkins supports this idea through a listening experience designed to bring sound, people and conversation together. 

When we listen closely, something shifts. A personal reference can become a shared one. A sound can unlock a memory. One person's perspective can change the way another hears, sees or understands something.

The power of listening is in what it makes possible: connection, exchange and a deeper understanding of one another.

HOW DO WE SEE IT?

Where we come from affects what we notice.

London, Africa, migration, family, community and memory all shape our visual language. The film asks what happens when those different ways of seeing meet - and whether influence can ever truly belong to just one person.

HOW DOES IT HOLD SPACE?

A song can hold a room.
A garment can change someone's posture.
Colour can transform architecture.
A voice can create permission for another voice.

The film explores what happens when an idea leaves your head and enters the world - and how creative work can make people feel seen, challenged, comforted or understood.

HOW DOES IT MAKE US FEEL?

Before we understand the reference, we feel it.

Joy. Recognition. Discomfort. Pride. Nostalgia. Possibility.

The most powerful creative work isn't simply understood. It is felt.

WHAT DO WE CARRY FORWARD?

Culture moves. It changes as it travels between people, places and generations.

Through listening, influence and exchange, we carry something forward - and leave something of ourselves behind.

What Carries Us is a conversation about what we inherit, what we exchange and what we carry forward.