Kenyan student wins €50 000 to build mobile music studio

Jesse Mugambi, a master’s degree student in sustainable design at Brighton University in the UK, won Jägermeister’s Save the Night international competition, which supports nightlife projects.

Mugambi beat 300 contestants from 50 countries to be named the joint winner of the €100 000 prize fund. The other €50 000 will go to Northern Irish duo Holly Lester and Boyd Sleator. The competition’s focus was on safety, inclusion and sustainability in nightlife.

Named Studio Can-V, Mugambi’s innovation aims to serve musicians with a rehearsal and recording space, which will also host inclusive events. Lester and Sleator’s project, titled Free the Night, will see them produce a documentary showing the social and cultural value of the club and music scene in Northern Ireland. The duo also plans to carry out an anthropological study to produce a report about the challenging situation of their country’s music clubs.

Mugambi project was developed during his time as an undergraduate at the University of Brighton and aims to create a versatile space that transitions from a studio for young DJs to a club during the night. An aspiring DJ himself, Mugambi envisions a cultural hub for socially disadvantaged groups. He wants to promote sustainability through a circular economy and help make Kenya’s nightlife accessible to people beyond the capital Nairobi.

The mobile sound studio will be built by local artisans in Nairobi, where Mugambi hails from, using repurposed shipping containers. The containers will be sourced from the port of Mombasa and built using renewable materials such as steel tubes for structural support along with aluminium panels for the doors.

“Having faced challenges in pursuing my own passion for music when I was younger, I’m driven by the belief that there are countless young and old people longing for opportunities to explore their musical itch,” Mugambi said. “I aspire to create those spaces where they can really explore their creativity and pursue their musical dreams without constraint.

“My aim is to use this project to showcase contemporary Kenyan identities and promote inclusivity by foregrounding the voices of young DJs from various communities and backgrounds, who represent the future of an equal society. It will help build relationships across the industry and create new gateways for those yet to break into the sector.”

Jägermeister director of global culture and experiential Kai Dechsling said that an inclusive, diverse and safe nightlife could open up unique avenues for self-expression worldwide.

“It’s a space of freedom and creates sanctuaries,” he said. “The two projects in Kenya and Northern Ireland address crucial socio-political issues and actively contribute to developing nightlife in a positive direction.”

Since 2020, the Save the Night Fund has been calling on nightlife fans to suggest innovative ideas to improve their scenes. It has supported more than 1 500 creatives and 1 200 projects in some 60 countries. “The goal of Save the Night is to make nightlife a better place worldwide – today and in the future,” the German liquor company said.

It added: “Even beyond the pandemic, nightlife worldwide continues to face historically unprecedented challenges, including gentrification, the security of its participants and a rapidly dying club scene. All these factors continue to threaten artists, venues and clubgoers alike, with free spaces rapidly assuming the status of precious commodity.”