January 5, 2026 |
Want a glimpse into fashion’s future? The Holiday Club is the place to find it. The free-to-attend annual summer school, founded and led by creative entrepreneur Bisoye Babalola, offers a group of young Londoners the opportunity to build their own magazine starring industry leaders and shapeshifters in the worlds of fashion, music and art.
The talent incubator was set up for those aged 16 to 25 who may be at risk of social exclusion and aims to give them the practical skills to enter their desired fields. Over the course of three weeks in August, the group each gets the opportunity to interview talent and assist on styling and photographing shoots, as well as build sets for cover stories.
Along the way, Babalola, 34, has called upon a network of mentors to deliver tutorials and workshops on helping the summer schoolers to find their footing in an increasingly challenging job landscape.
Holiday Club was set up to give 16-25-year-olds the practical skills to step into creative industries. Pictured here are this year’s participants taking part in a sports day
“The biggest thing we probably need to look at in the creative industry across the board, whether it’s music, fashion, art, whatever, is how people can build sustainable careers,” says Babalola. “That’s probably the biggest thing, because there are so many people who want to access these opportunities, but there are very few of them.”
When we chat, Babalola is working on wrapping up the final layouts for Holiday Club’s fourth issue, which has a stellar line-up including the fashion editor and Off-White creative director Ib Kamara, artist Yinka Ilori, musician Sasha Keable and former 10 cover star, Chicken Shop Date’s Amelia Dimoldenberg.
“I work with graphic designers and then try to bring alumni back from previous years so they get the opportunity to design the mag. Right now, one of our biggest challenges is that we need to find a way to facilitate all this from a financial standpoint, because the funding we get is just for the summer school. It’s not funded to create a magazine. I donate a lot of my hours to doing that, and it takes away from doing anything else. I mean, I’m happy to do it, but I just need to figure out a way to make it more sustainable. Otherwise, we can’t keep doing it.”
Holiday Club was set up to give 16-25-year-olds the practical skills to step into creative industries. Pictured here are this year’s participants taking part in a sports day
It hasn’t been easy. The morning of our call Lambeth Council sent an email confirming that they will no longer be able to provide funding to the summer school. This means Babalola will have to spend the coming months finding both financial backing and a new home to house the Holiday Club before applications open for next year’s school.
“That really does put us in a scary place,” she says. “Funding is already very limited. This year, Amelia [Dimoldenberg] donated, that’s how we were able to even do the summer school. It’s very difficult for organisations in these spaces doing things like this. I appreciate the opportunity to do it, and I love collaborating with young people, but I can understand now why charities don’t last. It’s a lot.”
Her goal is to get brands on board to help expand Holiday Club into a fully-fledged creative community based around a 360-degree experience, one with paid activations inside the magazine and the resources to allow Babalola to build a team and bring a new sense of freedom to how the organisation operates. “That comes down to being able to have the time to focus and build it as a business,” she says.
Alumni from previous Holiday Club cohorts return each year to help run the incubator programme
Last year, she expanded Holiday Club into a creative studio, where she has taken up the role as head of strategy and an executive producer. The studio sits at the intersection of culture, creativity and recruitment, connecting brands to audiences, from role marketing and storytelling to partnerships. “Our mission is to change how hiring looks and feels in culture, creating pathways that help more creatives into work while helping brands engage talent authentically,” she says.
The first big project she’s been working on is Mouth Full of Golds, a documentary following the Idea-published book of the same name framed around the life and legacy of Eddie Plein, the pioneering New York dental jeweller whose removable gold grillz transformed the face of hip hop. Produced by A$AP Ferg and Richard Fearn, with contributions from Goldie, A$AP Rocky, Marc Jacobs and Michèle Lamy, the film is set to be released next year. Babalola is also producing more films and collaborating with brands as a strategist.
Alumni from previous Holiday Club cohorts return each year to help run the incubator programme, alongside creatives like (pictured right, left to right in the right hand image) stylists Emily J. Davies and Jake Songui-Hunte, Nat Bury (session stylist and barber), Bisoye Babalola and Laura McCluskey (photographer)
Growing up in Clapham Junction, Babalola knew she wanted to be an entrepreneur. “I was always very assured of that. I was heavily influenced by American culture growing up. I used to watch a lot of shows like MTV Cribs and be like, ‘Wow, these rappers and musicians live so great in these big flashy houses.’”
“I always used to hear them talk about business,” she continues. “I remember in year seven, teachers gave us the task of writing about what we wanted to be. I said I wanted to be an entrepreneur. My teacher told me that wasn’t a career. And I was like, yeah, but that’s what I want my career to be.”
Industry big names including Amelia Dimoldenberg and Ib Kamara have staged workshops at Holiday Club’s summer school
In her early twenties, she wanted a career in music but couldn’t find a job. “I fell back a little bit, then told myself I was gonna start my own thing. If no one’s going to give me a job, I can do it.” She set up her own PR agency, Runner Communications, in 2018, initially to promote young musicians. “I just didn’t end up enjoying PR,” she says. Alongside her day job, she would stage screenings of independent films across London where she began to connect with directors and producers, leading her to evolve the agency to focus on film. There, she worked with filmmakers to produce content for events such as Art Basel Miami, working on big-budget social media strategies for directors and collaborating with the likes of Netflix and Adidas.
Still, she felt lost. “There was still so much I wanted to achieve,” she says. “I’m an avid fan of music and fashion, I’m still a fan of all these creative outlets, but I struggled to find out what the hell my career is.” Before the pandemic, she had begun volunteering in schools in South and East London. “I thought if I was struggling, I was sure young kids were struggling too.” The idea for Holiday Club arose after Babalola realised schools didn’t really understand the creative industry. “They didn’t have the resources or the understanding of what the creative industry was, or how it’s navigated. But through doing all my various things, I guess I’ve found my own path with it. I don’t have a fashion background, I’m just a fan of fashion. I paid quite close attention to what was happening in culture, just building some type of odd career.”
Industry big names including Amelia Dimoldenberg and Ib Kamara have staged workshops at Holiday Club’s summer school
She started doing her own programmes, where she would hire her friends in education alongside creative practitioners to stage tutorials and classes with 15-16-year-olds on how to get their foot in the door. With Holiday Club’s threshold expanding each year, and with Babalola wanting to scale up its operations, she’s faced with fresh challenges. “Now the age range we work with, they want jobs and careers. They see so much stuff on social media, see people doing things at a rapid pace and feel like they also have to move at that pace. When I was their age, there wasn’t social media. It wasn’t like what it is now.”
She’s not looking for tons of experience from Holiday Clubbers, but people committed to working hard. “The programme we offer is so fast-paced. We’re doing four shoots in three weeks and they’re learning and practising at the same time, working with professional equipment. I need them to be dedicated and want the opportunity,” she says. Babalola hopes she can partner with a university to host the summer school in its future iterations and is set on growing its studio arm into a defiant force in the creative world. Already changing the face of the industry for better, Holiday Club is just getting started.
Photography by Elliot Morgan. Taken from 10+ Issue 8 – FUTURE, JUBILEE, CELEBRATION – out now. Order your copy here.
Bisoye Babalola, who founded Holiday Club in 2020
