Meet Funso, a businesswoman and all around creative who has been a portrait photographer, spoken word poet and writer, actor and a model. Funso modeled for us at our shoot in the Asylum Chapel in London, for our Spring/Summer 2021 Collection!
Tell us who you are, what you do, and a little background about yourself:
Hello! My name is Funso (pronounced fuun-show), which is a name from the Yoruba language and translates to "A gift to my parents from God" - and I'm the gift!
I'm a lot of things and I do a lot of things so it's difficult to put myself into a neat little package, so I prefer to use the term "creative" to describe myself as it means my identity and abilities are more "free-flowing". I have had a lot of creative endeavours throughout my (albeit short) life - I started off as a portrait photographer (which I am eager to get back to) as well as a spoken word poet and writer - then I ventured off into different avenues. At the moment, my time is spread across modelling, acting and developing my business ATA RODO - a platform showcasing the creative talents of black women and women of colour through organising art exhibitions and events.
What's a typical day in the life for you?
So a typical working day for me begins around 5/6am depending on when my call time is. I'm one of those (potentially annoying) morning people who will wake up at the crack of dawn and go on a sunrise walk or do some exercise to wake myself up and get the day started. My boyfriend has got me meditating and doing yoga in the morning recently too - he's definitely a great influence :)
After exercising, I'll have a shower, make a smoothie, throw some snacks in my bag (I'm a total mum - I can't leave the house without having snacks on hand) and head to my shoot! Shoots can range anywhere from 4 hours to 12 hours and if it's on video, there's often a lot of sitting around so I'll make sure I have a book on hand to get some reading done between takes.
If it's a shorter shoot, I'll squeeze in any ATA RODO related work in the evening before I go to sleep but most of the time I get home and go straight to sleep! As I wake up so early, I end up crashing by 10pm - around the time that all the fun seems to happen!
You can learn more about Funso's Ata Rodo London website here - Visit Ata Rodo!