9.40am at the Stephen Lawrence Centre and all is quiet, waiting for participants to arrive and the final day’s work to begin.
Yesterday 6 of them had to go to their schools and colleges to receive their A or AS level results. Quite a heavy experience, and I really felt for them, especially with the ludicrous crush on places available to them at university. Horrible and stupid piece of policy and planning to set a target of 50% participation at university and then not to build capacity within universities to cater for this. And now of course the new government is going back on this 50% anyway. Just playing with tender young lives (and the lives of lecturerssss, administrators etc).
But back to SHAKE! The video group have got to work SO hard today to edit the film. Going to be an intense and rewarding day for them, working closely with Ana. The poetry group will polish their performances, and some of them will work with the music/DJ group to create a collaboration between spoken word and music. Others in the poetry group will continue writing, create new work. Zena has audio-recorded all of the poets to go on a CD. The Music group need to create some sounds to go on the film, and also work with text copies of the poems to research and respond in sound and music before the poets arrive…
Loads to do and a long day ahead because we are having a showcase just for us at 5pm – 7pm. But it’s 2 minutes to 10 and building feels a little bit empty…That Friday feeling? Some footsteps coming..