Kwende Kefentse, City of Ottawa

Kwende Kefentse is a DJ, Writer, Researcher and Culture Worker from the Greater Toronto Area, currently based in Canada’s capital, Ottawa.  He is leading a Cultural Mapping process as part of the renewal of the City of Ottawa’s long-range 20 year Culture Plan.  He has participated in Ontario’s Municipal Cultural Planning Partnership since 2008.  His cultural work, both as an organizer and practitioner includes serving as an advisory board member of the Canada Dance Festival between 2006 and 2007 to launch Hiphop 360, the festival’s first engagement with urban dance.  As a practicing DJ, Kwende – known as DJ Memetic – has also performed for Michaëlle Jean, Canada’s Governor General/Head of State on several occasions from various arts summits, to Obama’s inauguration party.  He also hosts and DJ’s both a hot monthly dance party called Time Kode and a bi-monthly mix-show called Beet.Roots Radio on Canada’s oldest campus based community-radio station 93.1 CKCU FM.

While completing his thesis project in Interdisciplinary Urban Studies at Carleton University, Kwende worked as a journalist for the Ottawa Xpress and connected with Richard Florida during an interview in 2008.  Since he began blogging on the Creative Class Exchange later that summer, he has written extensively about the relationship between space, place and cultural emergence in the form of scenes, and has presented internationally on the subject as well.  2010 will see Kwende collaborating with the National Film Board (NFB) developing his thesis “The Uprising of Public Man: Youth Culture in Young Spaces” into a multi-media project about the relationship between Highrise and Hiphop for the NFB’s documentary project examining the phenomenon of global suburbanism called Highrise.  More locally, he is also developing an arts program called Beat Roots Ottawa where youth aged 12 – 16 learn how to make music by sampling vinyl records to create new songs.