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The café at London Fields Lido on a Saturday morning is picture perfect. There are mothers in perfectly coordinated gym clothes drinking coffee and cooing at their babies, a semi-famous magazine journalist talking to a friend in a low, intense voice, and a steady stream of swimmers heading in for a dip, or their wet ones Shaking hair as they stroll out into the gentle spring sunshine.
Peigh Asante, the 38-year-old co-founder of Swim Dem Crew, sits on a picnic bench eating a piece of the cafe’s banana bread. He is at home in the London swimming community. As a teenager, he started taking part in swimming nights at a leisure center in south-east London for £1, just to have some fun (“When you finished you ate pizza for £1, so you got paid for £2). on a Friday evening”). In 2013, he began swimming regularly with two other friends, visiting various London swimming pools. A year later, they founded Swim Dem Crew, a citywide swimming club. In their first decade they taught more than 200 Londoners to swim, worked with Usain Bolt and traveled to Senegal and Jamaica.
Asante’s best friend and Swim Dem co-founder Nathaniel Cole joins us, dressed in his trademark Swim Dem t-shirt. In the 2010s, both were members of Run Dem Crew, a pioneering London running club that made the sport more inclusive wanted to design. When another friend, Emily Deyn, started swimming with them on weekends, the Swim Dem Crew was born: “We would swim together, have some lunch or whatever, and then fall asleep on Emily’s sofa.” The group’s name came naturally: “Run Dem Crew was such a big part of our lives that we just gave everything that nickname.” We went for coffee: Coffee Dem Crew. You ride a bike: Bike Dem Crew.” Hence Swim Dem Crew.
Soon friends were asking if they could join in, and the answer was always “Of course!” After a few years of swimming all over London and exploring the city’s various swimming pools – usually followed by brunch and sometimes an exhibition – , they decided to get their swimming qualifications so they could teach alongside their work in “creative management” and advertising. It was a turning point. The duo marketed the lessons through social media, and within two years, just one session per week was no longer enough to keep up with demand. Their response was to add more classes, and Cole began teaching full-time at pools around the city.
They had been in Swim Dem for five years when they realized that “most of our friends and family” were still non-swimmers. “To this day, my sister can’t swim,” says Asante. Many were people of color. An oft-quoted statistic from Sports England states that 97 percent of black adults in the country do not swim. The number tracked by Active Lives for Asian adults (excluding those who identify as Chinese) is similar.
The duo decided to embark on a session on Thursday evening specifically designed to help them overcome their fear of water. “Some people don’t like their hair getting wet,” says Cole, whose parents are from the Caribbean. “Some people don’t like the way chlorine damages their skin [feel]The pair have adapted their teaching methods accordingly, recommending products for skin and hair before and after swimming, making sure their language and references are familiar to students, and letting them know if hairdryers will be available. Their approach and message of inclusivity have become something of a blueprint. Asante, who is of Ghanaian heritage, says similar swimming clubs have cited Swim Dem as inspiration. “Simply by being present and visible [we became role models].”
As the club expanded, so did its power and reputation, which helped when the pair faced opposition from the swimming community. Asante remembers a coach at the London Aquatic Center who refused to leave his lane on time when they tried to start a class because, as Asante saw it, he wasn’t taking what Swim Dem was doing seriously. Asante felt his behavior encouraged the children in the pool to think unfavorably of the group. The redress came quickly and kindly. Not long after, the club appeared on the front page of Swimming times Magazine. The coach’s attitude changed overnight. “This is his world,” says Asante. “We are now on the front page of your world.”
Having firmly established their place in the city, the only threat to the group now is the slow decay of the ponds in which they swim. Data analyzed by Sport England Guardian found that from 2010 to last year, nearly 400 pools closed. “The public infrastructure around swimming is, in my opinion, part of a broader discussion [about] how community assets are handed over to private companies,” says Cole. Just because they’re privately owned doesn’t mean they’re better places “for you and me,” he says. The lack of “third spaces” for millennials has become a “hot topic,” he says, speaking of the demand for places where people can relax and spend time away from home or work that don’t cost much . Swim Dem is important because it “exists as one of them.”
The Swim Dem Crew is now expanding its reach. In 2019, Cole and Asante filmed a Puma Swim brand campaign in Jamaica with Usain Bolt, an experience that led to time on the Olympian’s yacht. Last year there was a trip to Senegal to take part in the 34th annual Dakar-Gorée crossing. The two friends documented the swim, which is a tribute to the victims of slavery in the area, with a documentary and a zine full of photographs by Ash Narod, available from the Photographers’ Gallery and the Swim Dem website (£10 ). But ultimately they do it for sport. Cole is evangelical when he talks about what swimming means to him. “Water keeps you upright. Water says, ‘I got you.'” He continues, “Especially when it rains. When it rains and you swim…” Asante finishes his sentence: “It’s beautiful.”
swimdemcrew.co.uk