Nobody Wants You — Javel Watt on Identity, Prison, and Building Beyond the Narrative
Javel Watt arrived in the UK at age 3. By 12, the identity he'd been given had collapsed — he found out via Facebook that the man he called his father wasn't his biological dad, and an internal voice started telling him nobody wants you. By 16 he'd been stabbed — knife through his lung, diaphragm, liver, and intestines, one centimetre from his heart. He went to prison three times. After his final release in November 2024, he spent nine months homeless while raising his daughter Linnea weekly from a caravan on a holiday park.
Today Javel is the founder of Beyond the Narrative — a lived experience consultancy working across schools, prisons, and public sector organisations to change the system from the inside. While still incarcerated, he contributed to the David Lammy Review and was the only prisoner invited into governor-level policy meetings. He wrote and performed a play about stigma in prison that was used for staff training across multiple prisons.
In this conversation, Tino and Javel go deep on what happens when a child is handed over informally without the system noticing. What school exclusion actually does to a young Black man's life trajectory. Why punishing behaviour is the same as saying "I don't like how you express your pain." And why self-actualisation — not safety, not shelter — might need to come first for people living in chaos.
They get into Javel's Collective Individualism workshop, The Hustler board game built to channel street drive into something that builds a future, and the friend's funeral that made Javel realise he was living like a hypocrite.
This is one of the most important conversations Black & Raww has ever had.
🌐 Beyond the Narrative: www.beyondthenarrative.co.uk
📸 @beyondthenarrative_BTN
💼 linkedin.com/in/javel-watt-4b9a38238
🎙️ Hosted by Tino Bvunzawabaya | @tinotalk25
🌐 blackandraww.co.uk | 📩 heard@blackandraww.co.uk | 📸 @blackandrawwcic
