Darren McGarvey

Darren McGarvey (@lokiscottishrap), slso known by the stage name Loki, is a writer, columnist and hip hop recording artist, who has made regular media appearances as a social commentator.

Darren grew up in Pollok on the south side of Glasgow, and has lived through extreme poverty, addiction and homelessness. Between 2004 and 2006 he wrote and presented eight programmes on social deprivation for BBC Radio Scotland. Since then he has been a regular contributor to the BBC, STV and other national media, and currently has a weekly column in The Scotsman. In 2009, he founded Volition Scotland, an organisation that was designed and run by the young people who used it. He was part of the Poverty Truth Commission that was hosted in Glasgow in the same year. McGarvey became the Violence Reduction Unit’s first ever ‘Rapper-in Residence’ in 2015 and continues to work across Scotland in some of its most challenged communities.

In November 2017 his first book “Poverty Safari” was published, and was an instant bestseller and critical hit, making the Sunday Times top ten bestseller lists and receiving plaudits from national newspapers and magazines. He won the prestigious ‘Orwell Book Prize’ in June 2018 leading to an upsurge in media requests and appearances.

He has presented three series of shows for BBC Scotland, “Darren McGarvey’s Scotland”, “Darren McGarvey’s Class Wars” and “Darren McGarvey’s Addictions”. Darren’s latest book “The Social Distance Between Us” was published in 2022, serialised on BBC Radio 4 (listen here) and led to him giving a prestigious ‘“Reith Lecture” in November 22 on the “Freedom from Want. In 2023, he embarked on his first nationwide tour and filmed a new series which will hit our screens in Spring 2024.