What I Do
Yaw Owusu is a Liverpool-based award-winning music industry creative strategist and consultant with 20+ years’ experience designing, directing and delivering projects that integrate music, culture and content production – with long-term impact for creatives, brands, organisations and communities.
He operates where music and music culture meets infrastructure: shaping programmes, partnerships, platforms and processes that don’t just create moments – they build movement, strengthen ecosystems, and leave behind practical pathways that change careers and industry ecology.
If you’re a global brand, leading music organisation, strategist or policy maker with a high-stakes, reputation-sensitive brief – talent pipelines, cultural strategy, equity and inclusion with real accountability, city and regional music infrastructure, or legacy frameworks that outlast the campaign – Yaw brings the strategic clarity, cultural legitimacy and delivery-level rigour to make it work.
Whether the work sits at boardroom level or on the ground with music creators, creatives, maverick leaders and / or communities, Yaw understands the whole ecology: how decisions, funding, access, media, audiences and industry behaviour connect – and how to design interventions that shift outcomes, not just optics.
Yaw has delivered landmark work with organisations including Google, BBC, Universal Music Group, MTV, BET, MOBO, Levi’s, Liverpool Football Club, Bauer and Diageo, and helped shape and drive initiatives such as Google’s UNION BLACK, POWER UP, LIMF Academy, Open Sauce and Liverpool Against Racism.
His impact is backed by major recognition, including Liverpool Citizen of Honour (2025) and the BBC Radio 1Xtra Future Figure Award (2025), alongside honours such as Honoured Friend of Liverpool Institute of Performing Arts (by Sir Paul McCartney), a Leader in Music Award (Mayor of Liverpool) and a Senior Leader Changemaker Award (B&BAN and BRiM).
In Liverpool, he helped reimagine the city’s contemporary music offer as Artistic Director of the award-winning Liverpool International Music Festival (LIMF), with a deeper legacy rooted in LIMF Academy – a multi-award-winning talent development programme built around mentoring, masterclasses, performance opportunities, networks and funding.
Nationally, Yaw is a central figure in the design and delivery of PRS Foundation’s multi-award winning POWER UP, supporting exceptional Black British music creators and executives through grants, networks, mentoring and masterclasses.
In 2026, Yaw launched BLK SCL! – a connected model spanning a label, professional network and career pathways programme – built to link Black British talent across the North and devolved nations to real infrastructure, access and opportunity.
SERVICES:
- Programme and Project Design
- Creative Direction and Curation
- Delivery / Co-ordination of Delivery
- Advisory Services
