Who are you? Tell us about yourself.
We, the founders of Refuge Worldwide, are George Patrick and Richard Akingbehin. We are both from the UK and have been living in Berlin for around 12 years, working in various jobs in music. While Berlin has its issues right now, we feel blessed and privileged to be here and we are doing our best to contribute something nice to the city’s culture. We enjoy traveling, spicy food and hanging out with the many amazing people surrounding the radio station.
What’s is Refuge?
George started Refuge in 2015 as a series of soli-parties, raising funds for refugee accommodations and other grassroots organizations in Berlin Neukölln. After five years, those parties were paused due to the pandemic so George and Richard teamed up to turn Refuge into Refuge Worldwide, a radio station. We broadcast our first radio show in January 2021 and then moved into our first location 6 months later, the legendary, now-closed Oona bar. We were there for 4 years before moving to our current home at Niemetzstrasse.
The radio has now been running for five-and-a-half years. We have broadcast over 15,000 radio shows, held hundreds of events and workshops, merch collaborations, festival stages and other amazing experiences that we never expected. It’s been a wild ride filled with wonderful people and memories. It’s not been without difficult moments too, though, and we are also grateful for the learnings that come with those.
While the project was no doubt inspired by many spaces, collectives, radio stations and organisations we had engaged with over the years, it also feels like it grew very naturally and organically into its own thing.
Favorite Tally feature?
We use Tally pretty much everyday. For collecting feedback from our residents, or hosting applications to our workshops and events. We love that its so easy to integrate into our website so everything looks smooth.
What makes a form actually fun to fill out (in your opinion)?
Every now and then we try add some fun questions to give people space to include some of their personality in an application. It can be a bit repetitive reading through tens or even hundreds of applications, so we definitely like to try give people a prompt to write something fun :)
Go to coffee order?
Richard: My most listened artist for the last year is definitely The Congos. I saw them at HKW in Berlin and at Le Guess Who? and both shows were magic. My go to coffee order is an Americano - nothing too fancy.
George: Filter coffee! Keeping it clean. Enjoy it from a nice glass. Artist on repeat: The Clash. A perfect blend of dub, rock, disco, punk, and a political outlook on life I've always appreciated.
