A new music collective founded and run by young creatives from mostly ethnic minority backgrounds and queer identities has been launched – and it’s based in Manchester.
Different Kind of Dough, or DKD for short, aims to be a collaborative effort between creatives – including musicians, graphic designers, and videographers – who will work together to enhance each other’s projects.
Tyla Rex, a musician and one of the founders, said: “We’re all pursuing careers, so we grouped up to try and make a little label/collective.
“For our releases, it would all be under the same banner, we could all grow together, essentially.”
Manchester has always been a cultural hotbed for artists, with many world famous bands originating here, and performing from underground venues to world famous ones.
Being based in the city, Different Kind of Dough will be part of a long history of innovation, especially because it’s a label run collaboratively, and not by a faceless CEO.
Amira Mercury, a co-founder of DKD who has also worked within the industry as an artist manager, emphasised the collective’s aspirations.
Amira said: “We have people who really want to work hard for this, and working together and viewing it through the lens of ‘We can actually get somewhere’.
“Why don’t we just reach out and find other people who really want to do this and want to take it seriously?”
Many of the members of DKD have worked professionally in creative fields before, and found other collaborators online through Instagram, Bumble Bizz, and other networking apps.
DKD also intends to create a supportive, professional and courteous environment where everyone benefits from the inclusion.
Tyla Rex added: “I’m a big fan of worker cooperative models and the long term goal would be to build it from this kind of a volunteer collective that wants to be able to hire people and pay them.
“When we have more resources, we want to get to a place where we’re running events and collaborating with local fashion brands.”
Different Kind of Dough launched and can be found on Instagram at @differentkindofdough.
Images provided by Different Kind of Dough
