Yannick Oho Bambe

My work as a writer, storyteller and filmmaker is rooted in human relationships and our capacity to understand and connect with one another. 

So when Mark Walmsley invited me to imagine my Fantasy Cultural Year, he presented me with an extraordinary proposition: a wealthy family foundation would fund me for a year to travel the world, using reflective storytelling and workshops to encourage peace, dialogue and greater human understanding.

My journey begins in New York, close to one of my favourite buildings, the Empire State Building, where you'll find me at a sidewalk café with an organic juice, a copy of Cal Newport's Deep Work and some traditional jazz in my headphones.

From there, I travel to Washington DC, where my global storytelling project begins and where I imagine creating Word Steps, a festival bringing poetry and dance together.

The journey then takes me further afield. In Senegal, I step inside the extraordinary work of Jean-Michel Basquiat through an imagined immersive virtual-reality gallery. There's football along the way too, before I head to London for a feast of culture encompassing Richard Bona, Shakespeare's Globe, Hamlet and opera.

Then it's off to Las Vegas, where I experience Avatar in a spectacular immersive cinema.

Finally, I'm offered the ultimate Hero Lunch and the opportunity to sit down with someone whose life has helped change the world. My choices are Nelson Mandela or Martin Luther King Jr. — two people whose belief in communication, dignity and our shared humanity resonates deeply with the ideas behind my own work.

My Fantasy Cultural Year is an imaginary journey, but the idea at its heart is very real: stories have the power to build bridges.

Through writing, conversation, art and shared cultural experiences, perhaps we can listen more closely to one another, understand perspectives beyond our own and recognise what connects us.

This is my journey through the stories that connect us to our shared humanity.