Inside Warner Music Group's Kinfolk Writers Camp: how an ERG built a three-city songwriting program
Warner Music's Black ERG Kinfolk ran a three-day immersive songwriting camp across LA, Nashville, and Toronto during Black Music Month — 150 creatives, 70+ original songs, and a model other labels now want to copy.
About Kinfolk
Kinfolk is Warner Music Group's ERG celebrating and promoting the talents of Black employees through professional development, community service, and outreach. It started with chapters in LA and New York and has expanded to Toronto, Nashville, and London.
Orurande Jenkins, Director of Mechanical Licensing at WMG, is the North American chair.
The program
The Kinfolk Writers Camp is a three-day immersive songwriting camp curated by and for Black creatives, run during Black Music Month. It launched in LA in 2024 with three rooms. This year it expanded to three cities:
- Nashville — 10 writer rooms plus 2 studios
- Toronto — 3 writer rooms
- LA — return engagement
Each city went beyond a single genre. Nashville rooms produced country, trap, R&B, and soul, including a saxophonist who dropped lines on another room's track.
Beyond the rooms, every camp included:
- Educational panels — Music Publishing 101, sync licensing, and an industry panel.
- A closing mixer so WMG employees and outside creatives could connect informally over food and drinks.
The impact (in numbers)
- ~150 creatives participated across three cities.
- 70+ original songs started or completed (about 50 in Nashville alone).
- Multiple student participants moved from writer rooms into early-career opportunities.
- Press coverage in local outlets and Music Row Magazine.
- Active conversations with Sony Music Publishing about co-producing a camp next year.
Nashville is known as Music City, but historically that has meant country and predominantly white musicians. For many participants, this was the first camp of its kind in the city — and it surfaced Nashville's deep, often overlooked roots in R&B and gospel.
Tapping HBCUs
Earlier in the year, Kinfolk ran an HBCU Summit with students from Fisk University and Tennessee State University, walking them through how a record label actually works — label, publisher, and shared services — and the full range of careers in entertainment beyond artist and producer (accounting, legal, marketing, A&R).
How they pulled it off without burning out
- Bi-weekly team meetings with clearly owned tasks.
- A shared Google doc for ongoing brainstorms so nothing got lost.
- ~5 months of planning kicked off right after Black History Month.
- Tight budget discipline — Orurande personally handled food ordering (GrubHub-ing meals instead of a caterer) to cut a potential $8K bill down to $3K.
Takeaways for other ERG leaders
- Start with purpose, not scale. Three rooms in year one is a real program. Grow from there.
- Be intentional with framing. Find language for your goals that lands across audiences.
- Get creative with resources. A small budget plus sharp choices beats a big budget spent loosely.
- Track your cultural ROI. Collect testimonials from creatives, panelists, and attendees — they're how you get the next budget cycle and outside partners.
- Remember your why. When volunteer fatigue hits, the why is what keeps the team going.