Open Mind Summit Programme
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DARREN<br />
McGARVEY<br />
Keynote speaker<br />
Darren McGarvey (@lokiscottishrap), better known by the stage name Loki, is a writer,<br />
columnist and hip hop recording artist, who has made regular media appearances as a social<br />
commentator.<br />
Darren grew up in Pollok on the south side of Glasgow, and has lived through extreme poverty,<br />
addiction and homelessness. Between 2004 and 2006 he wrote and presented eight programmes<br />
on social deprivation for BBC Radio Scotland. Since then he has been a regular<br />
contributor to the BBC, STV and other national media, and currently has a weekly column in<br />
The Scotsman. McGarvey has a certificate of excellence for his voluntary work with young<br />
people. In 2009, he founded Volition Scotland, an organisation that was designed and run by<br />
the young people who used it.<br />
He was part of the Poverty Truth Commission that was hosted in Glasgow in the same year.<br />
McGarvey became the Violence Reduction Unit’s first ever ‘Rapper-in Residence’ in 2015 and<br />
continues to work across Scotland in some of its most challenged communities.<br />
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