You may know Sian Anderson as a BBC 1Xtra DJ. You may also have heard of her mentorship schemes, such as One True Calling (with longtime friend and fellow DJ Julie Adenuga) or more recently, her FLOOR SIXX Music Academy, which all served to give young creatives advice and music industry experience. Now, backed by the Mayor of London, she's returned with a new project, Nexxt Step, in which she will be helping to support the development of black women in the music industry, with Reprezent Radio, Gal-Dem and Urban Artist School serving as media partners for the programme.

Applications are now open, with successful participants embarking on a month of mentored workshops, writing camps and studio sessions, before writing and recording an EP around the theme #BehindEveryGreatCity which will be released and supported by Saint Music and Parlophone Records. But that's not all: November will see the artists perform said EP at two headline shows at XOYO on Oct. 7 and 14, before doing a final show at City Hall on Oct. 23 to mark the official launch of the project.

"Following on from FLOOR SIXX Music Academy, I was keen to empower more women and provide platforms, spaces and knowledge to those who need it," says Sian. "Black music is a great London success story; it's an internationally renowned sound with awarding winning artists, but black women are still a minority within their own scene."

She added: "Launching a music career is such a weighty task and without the right helping hand, it can be a real long, lonely, and frustrating process. I want to make it an educational but enjoyable process and inject live music, live performances and live mentoring into the programme to cover as many areas as possible and encourage other industry executives to recognise and support the development of our women, too."

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