A collection of London organisations and charities, alongside some proactive individuals, collaborated to bring the first Salamat Festival to North Kensington on Saturday 20 July; a day of awareness and celebration of African culture.
The festival showcased the rich, diverse cultural heritage and traditions of the African community to the wider community.
Lead organiser Abdel Karim said: If you Google about Africa, and individual African, countries it comes up negative. I wanted to change that because it does have a serious impact on the way people think, the attitude towards you, and the way that they behave.
"If they see things in the media they tend to believe it without actually having interacted with the people," he said. "So I thought 'I'm going to bring Africa to them in the form of an open air festival showing folk law, dancing and food.' These are the types of things that bring people together."
During the festival there were fashion shows, food and drink, and the different countries showed clothing, traditional items and souvenirs from their heritage.
The team hope to have a second event later this year and have aspirations to make the Salamat Festival an annual event.