Yomi Ayeni is an award winning Transmedia creator, producer, filmmaker, and storyteller, and a huge and much appreciated supporter of our Festival.

He is one of a few writers engaged in bringing a multicultural slant to the Steampunk genre, by exploring Victoriana outside Great Britain through the Clockwork Watch project, a collaboration of talents, including Corey Brotherson (editor / adapting writer), and artists that include Jennie Gyllblad, Megan Bradbury and others.

A retro-futurist Steampunk / Victoriana story told across graphic novels, interactive theatre, online and film, the project has spawned several tangential threads, immersive live events, exhibitions at the Royal Observatory, Scottsdale Civic Library (Arizona), National Maritime Museum, The Asylum in Lincoln, and a fictional online newspaper.

He is also the writer of the graphic novel Operation Noyade, a socio-economic tale about life in the late 1980’s, when austerity, unemployment and homelessness were order of the day in the UK. Originally written as a film script in 1989, the story has been adapted to a graphic novel series illustrated by Graham Leggett, and lettered by Mike Stock.

Yomi also lectures Transmedia Storytelling at the Royal College of Arts, and believes mapping stories to everyday life creates experiences that bring audiences closer to the heart of a narrative. He has developed several reality TV formats, including Global E-Missions (ITV), winner of the 2002 Broadcast Award for “Best Use of New Media”.

His 2009 project, Breathe, was one of the first interactive participatory stories to explore how an ongoing narrative offered the audience a chance to become characters in a film, and help solve a fictional murder mystery. A film short, th much-praised Beltane, was released in 2023 and a new project, Age of Quorum, is in development.

Yomi worked as a Broadcast Journalist in the BBC newsroom, was an active part of the Burning Man Festival media team, and is a founding member of the European Burning Man Regional event, ‘Nowhere’ (Spain). He owned and produced music on the seminal drum and bass label Tone Def Records.

He lives in London, loves cooking, street art, travelling and making music.

YOMI AYENI ONLINE

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