Omari Swanston-Jeffers

Omari Swanston–Jeffers specialises in writing, directing & dance, with a career spanning over 10 years. He achieved a First Class Honours degree in Creative Writing and his writing commissions & projects have included artistic reviews for Corridor 8, and scripts and screenplays published in the University of Roehampton’s Purple Lights anthology & Northern Noir production. His collaborative work & commissions in theatre, film, poetry and dance includes Forced Entertainment, RJC Youth Dance Theatre & Breeze Arts Foundation.

In 2015 he began a directing career at Leeds Playhouse as an Assistant Trainee Director and later on became an Associate Artist, as well as continuing to work as a director. His professional dance training began aged 13 when he studied African, Afro-Caribbean & Contemporary dance with RJC. Since then, Omari has performed nationally & internationally as a professional artist. In 2019, he premiered Northern Noir (NN), a multi-platform show of spoken word, dance, film & live music exploring themes of femininity, masculinity, blackness & Northern identities, at Seven Arts Leeds.

He is currently working on The Shoulders of Giants, an interdisciplinary large-scale arts project that celebrates the generations of Black British and British Caribbean artists and creatives and their contributions to shaping British culture through film, documentation, oral histories, theatre and other art forms.

Omari Swanston-Jeffers is an Associate Artist at Renaissance One.