What’s up everyone, it’s Fresh 2 Def Clothing’s boy Emz  and I caught up
with Daniella the founder of Talent 2009.  I met her at her apartment to ask
her a few questions about her show.

Emz F2D: Can you tell us who you are and a bit about yourself?

Daniella: I’m Daniella, I’m from Nottingham but I’ve been living in
Birmingham for six years and I’ve been doing Talent  for five years so this
will be the fifth one in 2009.  I run an organisation called Aspire for you
which is a social enterprise basically dedicated to providing development
showcasing training opportunities for young people. We also run an event
management company alongside that and we provide work experience for young
people.

EMZ F2D:  What is Talent 2009?

Daniella:  Talent 2009 is the ultimate entertainment extravaganza; Basically
we’ve got young people, students and non students from across the midlands
and some of them from beyond. Were giving them training in event
management, project management marketing, so we’ve had twenty volunteers
doing all of the event management side, we did that with a company
called ‘Smarty Pants marketing’.  We’ve got the rest of the young people
doing catwalk fashion design, Vocal coaching, chorography, performance
coaching and music industry training.  This basically comes together in talent 2009 where the volunteers can put there new found talents to use and the performers can perform and show what they can do. So
there will be singing, dancing, poetry, rapping, and MC’in,  theres also going to be a series of fashion shows with models that are students and young people and fashion designers that are student’s aswell, basically they are
all going to be competing to be crowned Talent 2009.  There will be a winner within each category, singing, dancing etc and they will all win industry prizes. We are going to have a judging panel which include DJ Gchild from
1extra, Reggie Curve, Def Jam, Daneo Tanya Anderson who’s a dance choreographer from Birmingham and Richard Costello who managed Jamelia and N-Dubs etc.  And they will win different prizes which include the chance to
perform with Doneo in a music video and free membership to Mahogany models and  a variety of
other big prizes.

EMZ F2D: How did you start?

Daniella:  When I was at uni i was the president of the African Caribbean
society I went to UCE and there was nothing going on so we decided to do a
talent show for Aston, Birmingham and UCE so we could get to see who the
other people were at the uni’s and at that point coz I thought I was a
singer and a dancer and I wanted to perform so i put my own show on and I
performed in it. It sold out and we had it at the drum so we decided to do
it every year we got good sponsors the first year and we thought that it
could be a good money making kinda thing and it just got bigger every year

 
EMZ F2D:  Who’s your show for and aimed at?

Daniella:  It’s aimed at everyone, it’s kind of got and urban slant coz
that’s the kind of music I’m into mainly and a lot of the people i work
with also and it’s hosted by Slim.  Its going to have rapping, its going to
have the  MC’ing so people who kind of love black music, black culture the
designers are quite cross cultural we’ve got people from Poland, people from
Greece so with that its open to all cultures.  It’s a multi cultural
event.  And in terms of age groups  its a family
event  so people can come with there grandmothers and kids.

EMZ F2D: What do you, and what can people gain from Talent 2009?

Daniella: Well the fact that it’s a entertainment extravaganza as I like to
say, its going be a night of fun there’s going be a whole load of give
always from a whole loads of organisations coz freebies is always good. You
get to see local talent, national talent, get to see comedy and dance, there’s
not really any other event that has everything. Its a good networking
thing, this is something for everyone in whatever community your from to
kind of get together and celebrate the positive achievements of young
people.

EMZ F2D:  Where do you see yourself and your show in the future?

Daniella:  Well the plan is to have it as a national event,  have regional
heats west midlands, east midlands, go around the country and do a tour and
have the main event in Birmingham to find the overall talent of whatever
year it is, with big prizes, big PA’s with the artists who are in it
having the chance of being in the charts, coz at the moment with urban
music you’ve got your Chipmunks and your Bashy’s but in terms of RnB
artists there’s not really that much going on. So i’m just trying to give
people more opportunities in the future just from being in the show.  Me
myself I want to take Aspire 4 you to on a national level, doing events in
different cities, training young people in different cities aswell and
training in different areas with this is event management but we also want
to do photography, we want to get in to fashion design, and want to get into
marketing and PR anything that young people want to get involved in we just
want to be the number one training provider for that.

What do think massive??

BIG BIG shout out to Danielle, keep doin it big for the 09 and us at FRESH 2 DEF CLOTHING wish you all the success for the future.

We are going to have a stand at the event selling some of our latest summer 09 collection so get down there and support the big show and come and meet us.

For more info on ASPIRE 4U check http://www.aspire4u.com and http://www.myspace.com/aspire4uk

EMZDON!!