Akash Hashmi

Akash founded Sheffield City Opportunities CIC to help strong grassroots ideas become real, sustainable projects. He has put more than 1,600 volunteer hours into the voluntary sector during his adult career alone, on top of earlier work through The BiG Young Entrepreneurs Club and other youth-led activity in Sheffield. At SCO CIC, he handles the strategy, admin, funding work, promotion and operational backbone that help projects keep moving.

Long before SCO CIC, Akash was already active as a performance artist. From his teens he worked under Flite Freerunning, picked up sports-brand sponsorship while still young, and later performed with Steel Motion under Greentop Circus at venues and events including Chatsworth House, Cliffhanger, early Tramlines stages, Sheftival, Paralympic stage shows in London and the Brazilian Embassy during the Games. He has also appeared across BBC Look North and wider BBC coverage around breaking, the arts and community events in Sheffield.

His wider background includes youth board experience with BiGYEC, directing work with Carousel, securing EU funding for media literacy projects, and helping people from underrepresented backgrounds build editing, packaging and radio skills for employment. He also supported Sheffield City Breakers before its move into Industrial Elements. Alongside SCO CIC, Akash now works in SEO and AI-assisted workflow generation, and helps grassroots organisations with it through Cited, helping them get found in search and AI answers, and has spoken at BrightonSEO three times in a row from 2024-2025.