Bringing together young people, artists & organisers to develop creative responses to social injustice

What we do

Voices that Shake! brings together young people, artists & organisers to develop creative responses to social injustice.

Prioritising Black and people of the global majority, Shake! uses a model of personal transformation and structural change to challenge established imbalanced power bases and to re-imagine new infrastructures in opposition to white supremacy, cis-het patriarchy, racial capitalism, colonialism and state violence.

We do this by emboldening young people to realise the tools and inherent power they hold as active members in their communities and to re-imagine and build new infrastructures with resilience and confidence.

Working intergenerationally, Shake! builds holistic, decolonial and politically radical educational programmes and creative campaigns to foster a catalytic and self-determined community of creative organisers/leaders embedded in and led by the grassroots.

Together, we are dismantling, visioning, re-building and cultivating a future praxis and embodiment of transformative justice, systemic change and community accountability.

* This theory of change was written as a collective effort with the core team, our long-term collaborators and Shake! participants. (Updated in 2023) 

Latest courses

publications

Anthology cover

Anthology

Voices that Shake! An Anthology of Creative Movements

A full-colour 320-page book of Shake! young people’s creative writing, original artwork, photographs and essays; also pieces by artists, facilitators and elders involved in Shake!

Anthology cover

guidebook

Shake! the System Guidebook: Rituals, Tools & Practices

A 60-page guide to Shake!’s methods, to inspire, amplify the work, strengthen movements.

Anthology cover

Research Report

Shake! the System Research Report: A Decade of Shaping Change 2010-2020

A 120-page full colour youth-led research into the impacts of Shake! on young people.

 

The Perpetual Winter

(an extract, read the full version in the Anthology)

Where do I begin?
Where do I place the pin
as the starting point to express
this state of paralysis?
Ice crystals wedged between
each frightened vertebrae.
I am inflexible. Today.

— ZENA EDWARDS

Purano Sei Diner Kotha

How can you forego events of the good old days, dear. The glimpse of each other, spirited chatting, are unforgettable.

Come once more, my friend, come into my heart.
We’ll talk about the joy and sorrows to soothe heart.
We’ve collected flowers at dawn, played and swung a lot – Sang and fluted under the BAKUL tree.

Then happened the separation, alas, we got diverged – When we’ve got a chance to unite once more, come into my heart.

— PROMI FERDOUSI

Dice

an extract, read the full version in the Anthology

Deception causes us to see colours in the colourless
and darkness in light.
We can learn to see black dots as a blessing
the next time we are playing with dice
If we are black dots,
then we define the glimmering shield on the ladybird.
We are the fists held high as the survivors of bloodshed.
The locus points for a complete circle to be drawn.

— ANNIE ROCKSON

She Dreams Herself Alive

an extract, read the full version in the Anthology

Made love to herself by the rivers
Of sensual delusion
Recalling past lives as they rush
Towards Heaven on the scarlet waters
Of her own mythology.
She dances an obsidian trail
Upwards from the depths of hell.
Loving, Suffering, Being Born Again and Again-

— MONIQUE ETIENNE

Voices that Shake

an extract, read the full version in the Anthology

Like the rumbling before thunder,
the peak before orgasm,
the bone before it breaks.
The fear. The pleasure. The pain.
My voice shakes because I’m afraid of the possibilities.
I’m afraid if I speak too loud,
you might just hear what I’m saying.

— AMENAH WASEME

Bound By Food

an extract, read the full version in the Anthology

I step into this fertile land, aware of its inhabitants.
There’s a siren for the onions.
I run to grab five. She says it’s not enough.
I run to grab two more making sure they’re not rotten.
That would be like treason, she says.
Sufficient.
I step to the side.
Back in my place. I watch her methodically take no loaf by heart measurements of dried spices and herbs.

ANEESHA HUSSAIN

Songs and singers from long ago
And songs and singers to come
Greet you
The more you sing
Yourself into being
Sing your visions into form

Extract from Voices that Shake! soundscape by Teju Adeleye

Fam That Shake

an extract, read the full version in the Anthology

Ten minutes in, we’re family
Cousins, brothers, sisters, mothers
Holding, caring, feeling, sharing
It’s become everything.
Our mere existence, a dangerous threat
Building systems to sustain, to shield
Seeking truth, as the pain ruptures our comfort
Uncovering, discovering how real loving resistance be rollin’
We’d been deceived,
Led to believe that we need white-washed charity
Fetishising poverty and working class minorities.

— AMINA GICHINGA

The call and response of your songs
echoing in the air all this time later
Barefoot dancing on grounds tilled in care
To answer one call is to dance
in affirmation towards dignity

extract from Voices that Shake! soundscape by Teju Adeleye

Songs and singers from long ago
And songs and singers to come
Greet you
The more you sing
Yourself into being
Sing your visions into form

extract from Voices that Shake! soundscape by Teju Adeleye

Oceans

Time is forever flowing,
as we sail downstream at a fast pace,
riding the current,
never stagnant in one place.
Never forget to go back to the source.
Never forget the ones who broke down dams,
allowed our fams,
to set sail on a new course.
In this sea of time in forward motion,
We must learn from the mouth
of our cultures’ oceans.

— ROTIMI SKYERS

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