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Magid Magid 
Politician and activistWhen Magid Magid, a Somali-born, Muslim refugee with a penchant for accessorising his ceremonial gold chains with high tops and backwards facing caps became the youngest ever Lord Mayor of Sheffield and, later, an MEP, he was accused of being ‘too political’. He spoke out on issues including anti-immigration policies, about the dangers of climate change, taking on politicians including Jacob Rees-Mogg and banning Donald Trump from the city of Sheffield (despite the City Council saying he didn’t have the power to do that).

‘But,’ he explains, ‘as someone who grew up with a lack of opportunity and who did make it into that space, I don’t have the privilege of sitting on the fence. I have to use my voice. What drives me is the thought that I am responsible for making my small bit of the world a better place, whether that’s saving a library or getting involved with local politics. I didn’t set out to change the whole world, just the small things.’

He turned over his Lord Mayor robes in May 2019, when he was then elected as a member of the European Parliament and like all of the UK’s MEPs had to vacate his seat in January. Since then he has been working on a range of topics, including writing a book, The Art of Disruption: A Manifesto For Real Change, which came out in September.

This month sees the launch of his inaugural online programme with the University of theUnderground. This groundbreaking institution was founded in 2017, by Nelly Ben Hayoun, whose NBH Studios, The Manufacturers of the Impossible, produce large-scale multi-platform projects such as The International Space Orchestra. Offering free education ‘to the next generation of creatives’, the University of the Underground is run from the basements of nightclubs, with headquarters in Amsterdam and London, and its advisory board members include the likes of Noam Chomsky and Dave Eggers.

Magid’s course, titled ‘New Politics & Afrofuturism’, will explore how Black Radical imagination and pop-culture can be vehicles for propelling progressive social justice narratives to mainstream audiences. ‘With so much social and political discourse – we need radical system change,’ Magid says. ‘And at the heart of that change needs to be education, so I’m super excited to explore,
with the University of the Underground, how we can radically reframe our institutions, our political, economical and sociological frameworks.’

Magid, 31, was five years old when his mother fled with him and his five siblings from the erupting civil war in Somaliland in 1994. They spent six months in a refugee camp in Ethiopia, before being admitted to Britain and moving straight to Sheffield. ‘My early memory is that it was raining and I couldn’t speak the language,’ he says.

Seeing the sacrifices his mother made and the hardships they endured as a family, gave him a profound desire to want to change not only the system, but people’s attitudes, especially towards refugees and immigration. ‘Nobody flees their home and family with the sole purpose to make a native person’s life worse; it’s a case of necessity. The only difference between us [refugees] and people fortunate enough to be born here is luck.’
His greatest legacy in his political career to date, he believes, is in ‘making people, but especially young black people, feel like this is something they can do. If I can inspire one other young person to feel that it’s something they can do, too, then that is a job well done.’

As well as the University of the Underground, Magid continues to work with political organisations on racial and climate justice and contribute to various cultural programmes.

And despite the challenges that this year has thrown up, he believes that we’re living in a time of great possibility. ‘Covid exposed the deep inequality in our society and showed us that we’re only as secure as our most vulnerable people,’ he says. ‘But the realms of what we can do about that have been dramatically expanded. Previously, governments have said that we couldn’t borrow more, couldn’t house the homeless, but actually, we can and we have. As scary and as painful as this year has been, it shows there is a real opportunity for change. We just have to be more ambitious and demand more.’ JS magicmagid.com

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The Art of Disruption: A Manifesto For Real Change, £14.99, is out now. For more details on Magid’s online programme visit universityoftheunderground.org

WORDS JESSICA SALTER | PHOTOGRAPH EDD HORDER