Mobo Awards creator to be honoured at former school

What do Olivia Dean, Stormzy and Beyoncé all have in common?

They're all Mobo Award winners.

The Mobo Awards - which celebrates music and culture of black origin - was first launched in 1996 by Londoner Kanya King.

Her award show platformed the work of up-and-coming artists, helping them to become some of the biggest names in the music industry.

Kanya, who passed away earlier this year, will now be honoured with a stone at her old secondary school.

Kanya was born in Kilburn in London, the youngest of nine children.

She worked in music and television, but told magazine Music Week she often felt like "an outsider" in meetings, where she said she was often the only black person in a boardroom.

In 1996 she launched the Mobo Awards, which stands for Music of Black Origin.

She was awarded a CBE - Commander of the Most Excellent Order of the British Empire - for services to music and culture in 2018.

In the thirty years since its creation, the Mobo Awards has attracted and showcased some of the biggest black talent in the UK and around the world.

Kanya passed away at age 57 after battling cancer.

A stone will now be laid at Kanya's former school - Queens Park Community School in London.

It will be call the Paving the Way stone, and will be unveiled on November 18 - exactly 30 years from the launch of the very first Mobo Awards ceremony.

Queens Park Community School headteacher, Jude Enright, said the school were "so excited" to be honouring their former student.

"She has paved the way for thousands of young people," Ms Enright told Newsround, "and so it will be momentous to have a paving stone at our front entrance in her honour."

Ms Enright said school students will be performing Mobo tracks to play at the ceremony's unveiling later this month.

There will also be a special display of Mobo memorabilia opening at the V&A East Storehouse in London until summer 2027.