CityLife

Getting the word out about Identity

Young Identity performers

Getting creative groups started where young people can meet, write, perform and socialise is no easy business, says Shirley May, co-founder of spoken word youth group Young Identity.

Funding poses constant obstacles; finding venues is never easy. And in Manchester, ongoing postcode wars even made location a controversial choice.

But one problem Shirley says she has never struggled with is engagement. When she helped set up the group in 2006 with eight young poets for a poetry slam – a national competition at Warwickshire University, where teams of spoken word poets come together to perform their own compositions on stage for a live audience – it was meant to be a one-off freelance job.

“I came back from Warwick and said to the young people, ‘See you, guys!’,”
remembers Shirley, “and they all said, ‘No!’.

“I remember the young girl who campaigned hardest – I always called her my ditzy blonde even though she was a black girl: big hair, loads of make up, absolutely loved being on stage, being able to say what she wanted to say. She said, ‘You can’t stop’, and she was the spark for the rest of the group.

“At the time, I was part of a collective called Speak Easy which worked out of the Greenroom, and I got artists from there to come in and support free workshops. The young people insisted we continue, and now we’re in our seventh year and we’ve continued to grow.”

This year has been a significant one for Young Identity. Backed by £90,000 of National Lottery funding acquired for them by Manchester-based Commonword (a writing development organisation for aspiring writers), they’ve been able to move out of their base in Moss Side for a new home at Contact Theatre. Long-standing turf wars had made it difficult for some young people to attend the Moss Side meet, so they’ve partnered up with Contact and now meet there weekly.

But the group has also spread its wings into several new suburbs, with fortnightly evening groups running in Cheetham Hill, Salford and Longsight. A fifth group – a morning meet at Old Trafford – has been set up in response to an interest from young Muslim women who are unable to go to evening events for cultural reasons, and a sixth group is planned in Clayton.

Money remains the biggest problem and Shirley is keen to find organisations and companies in Manchester that can offer support for financial or material help.

The group works on two levels. After six years in operation, Young Identity has an established a group of talented spoken word artists in their ranks, many of whom perform at the Young Identity meets.

Shirley has proudly watched some of them move on to university, seen others write plays for Contact and produce short films, and more recently been able to appoint several members as leaders of the Young Identity periphery groups.

The locations have been quite deliberately chosen to target young people in some of the most financially and service deprived areas of the city.

All sessions are free, and drop in, and anyone aged 15 to 25 can go along; it’s not even necessary to have any work prepared because writing and performing  are actively encouraged at all the sessions, usually in response to a weekly theme.

If young people wish to know more before they try the sessions, they can also apply for more information or to pre-register through the group’s website at youngidentity.org, or Commonword’s website at cultureword.org.uk.

This can be helpful for people who may feel they need to know more about the project before coming along. And Shirley is confident that, as soon as they do, they will feel empowered.

“I think it’s about giving young people a voice,” she says, “a platform to articulate their ideas about what’s going on in society or their community.

“One of the things that happened just after we started that group was (15-year-old Moss Side boy) Jessie James was shot in the park. They had nowhere to express their feelings other than on the page, but they wanted to be able to say, ‘Gun crime must stop in our area and people must address it’.

“We have people from diverse backgrounds. We have Jewish and Muslim young people and there’s been real dialogue between those young people about Israel and Palestine.

They’re very aware of the political and economic situations around them because many of them come from places where there is unemployment and people have no motivation to achieve. They may not have much but they want to achieve, and they’re trying their best to do it through spoken word and through school.”

So successful has the group been, in fact, that the young people themselves have formed a splinter spoken word troupe called Inna Voice, which has gone on to perform all over the UK and internationally. The newly formed Old Trafford group has also been chosen to perform at the summer’s Cultural Olympiad.

“Old Trafford is a new group and they organisers wanted a fresh group of writers who hadn’t slammed before,” says Shirley. “So we’re looking for young MCs, writers and poets who want to take part. Now is a great time to join our groups.”

Contact Theatre, Tuesday (7pm-10pm), free.