WIILMA Founder JJ Khun, is an artist, multilingual vocalist & community ambassador for the British Library’s Business & IP Centre, the national library of the United Kingdom. WIILMA in it’s role, supports the relationship between communities, charities, local authorities and businesses.

JJ has volunteered since age 9 in primary school, welcoming & teaching new arrivals from around the world how to read, going on to teach disadvantaged peers across East London from Newham, Hackney to Tower Hamlets, through his teen years, designing & delivering social mobility programmes on widening access to London’s Museums, Culture & Architecture, making innovative vox pop, public regeneration consultation films screened at the ICA, leading to being recognised by Buckingham Palace, as a Young Achiever of the UK.

His formal career experience spans national charities including organisations focused on youth, community, prisoner rehabilitation, and disability, a personal area of interest —as well as working for funders, from the EU to different UK central government departments.

He strives to apply this deep, diverse experience & learning from his personal lived experience, the empathy that directly comes from having survived multiple life challenges, traumatic experiences; including sudden loss & multiple bereavements, by as he puts it ‘recycling these negative experiences into something positive’ directly into his life’s main passion: advancing WIILMA’s community missions.

Through WIILMA, as ‘Workforce & Volunteers’ representative’ for 7 North East London Boroughs (City of London, Hackney, Newham, Waltham Forest, Redbridge, Barking & Dagenham & Havering) on the NHS NEL VCFSE (Voluntary Community Faith & Social Enterprise) Collaborative, a collaboration with the NEL Integrated Care Board & Strategic commissioning. He advocates to ensures intergenerational community & voluntary sector voices are central to reducing health inequalities and shaping health & care across the 7 boroughs of North East London contributing to strategic leadership and the building of partnerships with the NHS.

WIILMA was created in 2019, by founder JJ Khun, as an experimental response to social problems supported by the ministry of housing, community & local government’s, NATIONAL PILOT EXPERIMENT WHICH ENCOURAGED CREATIVE APPROACHES TO COMMUNITY COHESION.

A global disadvantaged majority & DISABILITY led, grassroots community support & cohesion project. we’ve been EXTENSIVELY piloting a DIVERSE PLETHORA of experimental, intergenerATIONAL community projects, building community cohesion & resilience, whilst tackling isolation.

we achieve ALL WE DO through community education & awareness projects, centred around our shared world music, arts, history, heritage & culture.

everything we set up to do PRE-COVID have since become national priorities.

We believe:

• Everyone has a right to high quality arts provision not just those who can afford it.

• Community education & creative wellbeing programs on world music, art, cultures, history & heritage, historical contributions by diverse communities to our society, brings people from different backgrounds together. Those whose paths may not normally cross & helps build a more cohesive society, reduces health inequalities and increases better life outcomes for all.

• Every high density development should have a community integration space for the creative wellbeing and isolation reduction of their inhabitants and community of all ages.

• Every borough should have enabling performance spaces and venues with stages, sound, lighting with equitable access for community groups to perform (this is sadly, simply not the case across many parts of london and spaces are infact disappearing.) - (See LCIN)

  https://www.wiilma.org/londoncommunityinfrastructurenetwork - London Community Infrastructure Network

• People of all ages with seen and unseen disabilities should be enabled to lead independent lives and have access to accessible community arts spaces with stages, and reliable accessible transport options to participate in activities to reduce their isolation, connect with their community and lead healthy lives. (See - LIPSAUDN) https://www.wiilma.org/LondonIntergenerationalPedestrianAndDisabilityNetwork

WIILMA Timeline (scroll back to the future)

2019

Launch of our pilot London Borough of Culture Project supported by the Mayor of London.

‘Across the 7 seas - 7 languages , 7 songs’ - Multilingual community singing & community dance project designed & delivered by JJ in multiple community languages including Polish, Chinese, Arabic, Spanish, Turkish & Hindi.

Mental Health Fine Art programme centred around famous artists who struggled with Mental Health - Van Gogh, Schiele, Munch.

2020

2020 - WIILMA was formally invited by Kings College London to take part in the ‘COGOV - Co-Production and Co-Governance: Strategic Management, Public Value and Co-Creation in the Renewal of Public Agencies across Europe’ european union funded study, aimed at understanding how organisations like WIILMA collaborate effectively with the public, society and one another. WIILMA was included in a case study on London’s cultural sector, focussing on our work and participation in the London Borough of Culture programme.

2021

2022

WIILMA was approached by the University of Istanbul & Royal Hollway, University of London, to share our learning and insights into cultural-led placemaking practices and cultural regeneration in East London to relate this to guiding cultural regeneration in Turkey and other national contexts.

WIILMA African Tree of Life Pilot Community Resilience project - an alternative approach to western models of psychology which can be re-traumatising. Working with community educational psychologists Dr Showumni & D Hamiliton we developed a program to celebrated as a community, individuals’ lives represented by the conecept of trees with roots and branches.

2023

‘Christmas Day NHS Hospice support project’ we ran an innovative intervention in an East London Hospital, End of Life care support centre on Christmas Day. Taking gifts from the community and performing a special but emotional music performance for terminally ill patients and their families to support patients, families & NHS to bring them some comfort.

2024

5th Anniversary Celebration event

December 2024 -WIILMA’s work and impact was acknowledged in a national academic study produced by the University of Arts London and national think-tank British Future.

2025

During 2025. Leader JJ/WIILMA as a community ambassador for the British Library was invited to be included in a London wide advertising campaign across high streets and multiple platforms and busy stations across the London underground tube network, which has helped raise the visibility of our organisation.

WIILMA was invited to feed in our indepth community learning into an important 5 countries international research project across France, Germany, Canada, Japan & England. Hosted by the French Public Institute for Population Studies. The AURELIA project (Autonomy Regimes in Long-Term-Care for people with Disabilities and older people.)