Who We Are

Lanre Ajayi is a Professional Artist, Content Creator, and Actor who has received multiple awards and recognitions from Civic and International Organizations. As the Founder /Artistic and Creative director of Ethnik Festivals, the community organization behind Alberta’s premier Black History Month Festival (Ethnik Festival of Arts and Culture), his goal is to curate, perform and promote artistic forms of expression in Calgary and Internationally. Ethnik Festivals provides a platform to showcase and celebrate the vibrant and beautiful cultures of the Afro-Canadian and the Caribbean.

Before becoming a mentor and inspiration to many people around the world, he started out his artistic career as a teenager. After practicing the arts, event promotion, and managing a printing press for over 10 years in Nigeria, he relocated to Canada with his family some years ago.

After relocating to Calgary Canada, he has worked to use his artistic and community-building skills to educate, entertain, and inform the members of his new community. For Lanre, art is more than just “work”. During his time in Canada, he has worked in conjunction with other professionals to use art as a therapeutic intervention, which has included working with traumatized immigrants from war-torn countries and children. As a community builder, he created a not-for-profit Art Collective for artists of color as a platform for expression and belonging. He also uses his artistic and community building skills to provide mentorship, guidance, and assistance to members of this group.

In 2018, he received the Mayor’s Art Champions Award for Newcomers to Canada in recognition of his efforts to create an inclusive and diverse society and promote the talents of others by using his leadership skills and through artistic endeavors.

Furthermore, he is the host and producer of major community outreach events on a variety of different platforms, including, My City Speaks To Me: a storytelling project about people, places, and events. This project was adopted by the City of Calgary through Calgary Arts Development to showcase happenings within the creative worlds of Calgary.

My City Speaks to me is a bi-weekly online show that he started years ago as a passion project to document happenings and events within his community. He has done this in many parts of the world he’s visited and it’s no surprise that he is doing the same thing here in Calgary. This platform has given him the privilege of speaking with different people from around the world to shed light on what makes our communities thrive. Lanre created this storytelling project to showcase communities, promote tourism, and highlight the unique beauty that exists in different places around the world. His Global Talk-Active Series is an initiative to keep entertaining, educating, and engaging viewers as we all continue to fight the pandemic ravaging our communities, locally and around the world.

Lanre’s passion is making life beautiful for others through organizing charitable efforts and raising awareness to give food and shelter to those in need. His charitable efforts include donating time and resources to Shine FM’s Christmas Miracle event to make food available for those who can’t afford a decent meal, especially during the festive Holiday season. This is one of the reasons why Calgary Food Bank is dear to his heart- if the issues concerning food and poverty are addressed, communities will have an opportunity to do things creatively. In his country of origin, there is a proverb that says: “If a man is hungry, no amount of words or instructions given that will enter him unless food enters first”. One day, he hopes to have a bigger platform to help raise global awareness of these issues and to help provide food for as many people that he has the opportunity to help.