Kevin de Randamie: ‘I see a clear respect for the purpose of design’

Kevin de Randamie (45) is originally a hip-hop artist, known as Blaxtar. In 2006 he independently released his first album Ozmoses, on his own label. “People around me were getting record deals and when I looked at them,
I thought, ‘there’s got to be another way of doing this’. Why do we accept a construction in which you’ve already lost eighty percent of your turnover, with hardly any guarantees in return?”

“My point was: a label can be really valuable, but I want to know exactly what it is. So I tried it first myself. This approach is still the wave underneath my surfboard. I can safely say that it generated quite a few shockwaves that led to what I’m doing now with Cre8tive Revolution: helping people create their own conditions for their creative or artistic work, while maintaining the financial value of that work.” He describes Cre8tive Revolution as a community business, where creatives learn how to determine the value of their work and how to increase that value. In practice, he sees a lot of misinformation. “Unfortunately, I think there’s still not enough happening with this in creative education. Lots of makers leak value through incorrect assumptions. There is a myth that foundations aren’t allowed to generate profit, for example, or that setting up a limited company is really expensive or complicated. It is such an incredible waste of all the wonderful creative ideas if they are not given the space to grow to their full potential. I want to do something about that. And I see DDA in exactly that vein.” 

Read the full interview on the Dutch Design Awards website >