White City Place's HQI Helped Council Win £200,000 Award

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Not-for-profit's founder Muz Azar was key advisor on bid which impressed London Mayor

 

Headquarters International, a not for profit organisation based in Wood Lane's White City Place has helped the borough of Hammersmith and Fulham to receive a £200,00 award from the Mayor of London.

Muz Azar, the founder of Headquarters International, or HQI, which works with property owners to provide arts facilities to London-based visual and recording artists, was a key advisor to the Hammersmith & Fulham team presenting a bid to the London Borough of Culture.

The proposal made such an impression on Mayor Sadiq Khan, that the Borough was bestowed with a Cultural Impact Award.

As we reported last month, the £200,000 sum will provide funding for the next generation of musicians creatives from Hammersmith & Fulham, enabling young creatives to develop their talents by providing access to recording studios, musical equipment, tuition and placements.

Since the award was announced, Hammersmith & Fulham Council have decided to match the funding, bringing the grand total to £400,000.

In an Instagram post, Muz said: "Happy to announce that I (Muz) recently represented HQI at the London Borough of Culture Awards. I was asked to help write a proposal for a large scale music development programme for young people in the Borough of Hammersmith and Fulham, where HQI is based. ⠀
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" Mayor of London, Sadiq Khan liked our proposal and decided to fund it with a Cultural Impact Award which means after matched funding, the Borough will have at least £400k to bring the project alive!
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" The money will go towards helping young people with an interest in pursuing music, particularly those who may have less of an opportunity to do so, discover and sharpen their talents with access to tuition, recording studios, equipment and placements as part of a modern and experimental music development programme. ⠀⠀⠀⠀⠀⠀⠀⠀⠀
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" Excited to see how this pans out, congrats to Yvonne Thomson and to the H&F Borough arts team, and happy HQI was selected to be a key advisor and partner in all of this. Very institutional of us! "

Artist run not-profit HQI, which works with owners of vacant buildings to provide long term arts facilities has established its first space inside the former BBC social club in White City Place.

The HQI studio is 24/7 access with 2 music and video editing studios, a communal visual arts studio, a workshop room and a 1500sq foot exhibition space and music venue.

The organisation says: "We regularly offer residencies to musicians, visual artists or anyone that else doing interesting work. All new artists are offered at least 3 months of free space with options to extend or contribute via a low nominal fee based on affordability."

Find out more at HQI

March 9, 2020