Shake's 3-year programme starts...

Shake is GO! We are absolutely delighted that Esmee Fairbairn Foundation has awarded the project a £20,000 grant to underpin the project in 2012/13. They're particularly interested in any social action/arts projects the new youth participants might come up with so we're hoping this is the start of a long-term relationship. We heard good news from Arts Council England a couple of months back and now we've got the EFF grant it means we've got the green light and can now go ahead with the 3-year programme.

Straight away we're getting down to appointing a new dynamic Coordinator for the project who we hope will be recruited to start in October/November. Interested in the job? Visit Platform's 'Vacancies' pages for details which are going up in the next few days. Application deadline is 14th September.

Meanwhile three young people from Shake's pilot project are going to the Emergence Summit in Machynlleth, North Wales. This is a conference on arts and sustainability for artists and activists, technologists, environmentalists. It's organised by a great collaboration between Volcano Theatre (Swansea) and the Centre for Alternative Technology in Machynlleth. Platform and Emergence offered bursaries to young people,  and Samia, Selina and Rotimi from Shake! have taken them up. Together with young people from Wales and London they will be co-creating the Youth Delegate's Group, facilitated by Project Phakama, ensuring that the voices and creativity of the next generation are loud and clear on key issues such as energy use, environmental issues, racism, the role of arts in social change. I believe there are still places if you want to come to Emergence.

The winners are... Yorkshire!

Members of Ralph Thoresby team at the regional heats

At yesterday afternoon's National Poetry Slam finals, the team from Ralph Thoresby High School in Leeds were hailed as the overall winners. This group works with Sai Murray, our very own poet-facilitator here at Shake! How well deserved it was, and how hard it must have been for the judges to decide.

Because it was an afternoon of amazing talent and some extraordinary moments. The stage crackled with energy, commitment, and craft. Too many fabulous moments from many groups to recall here, but for me one of the things that stood out about the Leeds group was the political content. A lot of groups addressed tough issues but something about the analysis that the Leeds young people brought seemed sophisticated beyond their years, yet so authentic.

First Wave at 'Shake the Dust'

First Wave at 'Shake the Dust'

Last night's '100% Proof' event showcased the coach mentors for today's National Youth Poetry Slam final plus we also got to see an amazing performance by 'First Wave', a group from the Spoken Word and Hip Hop Learning Community course at University of Wisconsin, Madison (USA). 

This group, now touring the UK, used their own experience of race and racism in the US education system as the basis for this piece. It was mesmerising: a performance of such power, and such polish, and also such rawness, love, humanity. And great tenderness. I went with a friend completely new to this way of working with poetry, and he was overwhelmed by it. The slam groups from around the country filled the audience and you could have heard a pin drop from the concentration and appreciation. 

NEWS! Arts Council funds Shake's major programme!

Great news at Shake! 

ACE funded the pilot, and have now
come through for the major programme

With the Arts Council coming up with a major grant of £57,000, we are 50% towards our funding target to roll Shake! out at two London centres over three years. We'll be working intensively with 150 young people, 75 artists in training, 300 policy-makers, and gazillions of audience through our social media comms campaigns, online and live youth-made films, performances, publications and policy-changing documents.

After Shake's pilot project which started August 2010 at Stephen Lawrence Centre, we knew we had to do this again and do it BIG. So, after gathering a lot of ideas and feedback from everyone involved in the project, the team worked up a three-year programme. This involves doing two Shake! intensive courses a year, each with their own Continuity Programmes of mentoring and support work, based at Stephen Lawrence Centre and at exciting new partner Bernie Grant Arts Centre (Tottenham).

more great youth, arts and activism projects this summer

Organised by Apples and Snakes.

SHAKE THE DUST - the National Youth Poetry Slam final, (featuring Yorkshire heat-winners coached by Shake's own poet-mentor extraordinaire Sai Murray), is happening Saturday 7th July, 2 - 5pm, in London's Southbank Centre, supported by some fantastic events in the run-up.

Our Sai is performing on the Friday 6pm, as one of the 9 winning poet coaches from the UK-wide regional finals. Leeds Young Authors Artistic Director and dynamic poet-activist Khadijah Ibrahiim who we worked with on our 2011 event Britain on Trial is one of the judges...

There's a free screening of the award-winning film "We Are Poets" featuring a year in the lives of a group of Leeds Young Authors as they make their way through heat after heat to be selected to represent the UK in the internationally heralded Brave New Voices festival in the USA. Wonderful, inspirational. That's on Thursday 6th July, Queen Elizabeth Hall foyer, 6.15pm

Get over there for one or more of the great events. See whole programme here.

Youth, arts, & activism events everywhere this summer

There are loads of interesting projects coming up so I thought I'd pull some of them together in a few blogs...

It's still not too late to do this amazing project...

'So We Stand' - the dynamic popular education collective - are organising a Summer School in Community Organising and Social Justice. 7th - 14th July, London. Check out their launch event 'Reclaiming the Riots, 1 year on' here, happening this Thursday at George Padmore Institute, Finsbury Park.

And find out about the whole summer school and application process here! Get that application in by 2nd July. They want to make this an annual thing so you have a real chance not only to learn but to influence the way the whole project develops.

Zena Edwards in new video documentary on 'riots'

Check out a taster of this critical new film coming out soon, this one featuring Zena Edwards.

To follow what's happening with the film VoiceOver: Riots Reframed, go here.
They write: ‘VoiceOver: Riots Reframed’ is an independent documentary aimed at countering mainstream discourse on last year’s riots and riots that occur in poor, racialised and marginalised communities generally. Dominant media has towed the government line that August’s riots were about “criminality, pure and simple..."


Young people from Shake! worked with facilitators Ed Lewis, Simon Murray and Zena for their sell-out session "The Unheard" at the Rebellious Media Conference last year, and at the natonal Shake! event "Britain on Trial" in Leeds. Zena is involved in several youth initiatives combatting stereotypical, biased and racist responses to the uprisings.