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..

My name is Ed, and I teach about politics, religion and philosophy, and one of the other things I do is volunteer at PLATFORM. For Most of the past few weeks I’ve been enjoying the privilege of summer holidays, but this week I’m participating in an experiment. It’s a course for young people called Shake! Conceived by PLATFORM, it is an attempt to bring together this dizzying collection of elements: the stories of Stephen Lawrence and Nigerian activist Ken Saro-Wiwa; the vast range of themes and issues that spring from those stories; the role of art-forms in bringing about social change; and the technical crafts of spoken word, DJ-ing, and film-making. It’s an experiment for the seven facilitators – who are campaigner, educators and artists – in working together in such a diverse format. It’s an experiment for me, as I find myself blending many roles – volunteer, facilitator, observer and, to be sure, teacher – some of my students of A level Government and Politics have gamely made the hike from Barnet to Lewisham every day this week (here’s hoping they’ll do it for the last two days!), and struggle occasionally to avoid calling me ‘sir’! And it’s also an experiment for the participants – things like this aren’t exactly ten-a-penny.

SHAKE! reflects the distinctive approach of PLATFORM, which attracted me to them in the first place: challenging the misdeeds of the largest centres of power in the world – corporations and banks as vast as Shell, BP and RBS – using, in part, the resources of creativity and art. One example is standing outside the Stephen Lawrence Centre right now – the Living Memorial to Ken Saro-Wiwa and eight of his fellow activists, executed for their role in the non-violent resistance to Shell’s abuse of the land and people of Ogoniland in the Niger Delta. A sculpture in the form of a Nigerian bus, it’s just one of the many creative interventions made by PLATFORM in pursuit of social and environmental justice.

So I was naturally excited about the opportunity to get involved with bringing these elements to the sorts of people – indeed, as mentioned, some of the very people – that I work with on a daily basis. And, of course, I was excited about doing it in the Stephen Lawrence Centre, another memorial, this one to the British teenager whose murder was subject to an investigation that led to the Metropolitan Police being condemned as ‘institutionally racist’. The SLC is certainly a living memorial, and I see it as an act of hopeful defiance in the face of hatred, injustice and cynicism.

The bulk of the work done at SHAKE! has been creative. Having been introduced to the stories of Ken Saro-Wiwa and Stephen Lawrence, and having been fortunate enough to meet in person Doreen Lawrence, Stephen’s mother, the participants have responded both personally and analytically, and used these responses to form the basis of what they have produced. There have been three groups – music, video and spoken word, which are beginning to work together. Poems have been spoken over African beats; a roving film-crew is interviewing hopeful DJs. We haven’t reached the end of the course yet, where things will all tie together, but I just spoke to one of the participants. He told me that he didn’t know what to expect, but he’s found an outlet to express himself where there are no holds barred. He has other outlets – sometimes he boxes – but he’s enjoyed a different kind of outlet, one that ‘feels gentle’. The discussions about ways people have challenged injustice led him to tell me that ‘knowing that there are ways of making a difference inspires you’.

I’ve also been touched. Seeing young people feel moved by injustice, and feel grasped by a commitment to act against it, is affecting. We are already talking amongst ourselves about how to continue our connection with the participants, to create an ongoing exploration of all that’s been raised here. I guess this is another way of saying – it’s been a good week so far! But there isn’t a lot more time for all this reflection – there’s work to be done…

Ed Lewis

Monday 16th sees 14 participants aged between 16 and 25 meet with artists DJ Eric Soul, poets Zena Edwards and Simon Murray from African Writers Abroad, and Ana Tovey from Chocolate Films at the Stephen Lawrence Centre in Deptford, for SHAKE! Ben Amunwa, Jane Trowell and Ed Lewis from PLATFORM are coordinating…
http://remembersarowiwa.com/events-2/

This week-long course is a central part of our year-long residency with SLC called “Shaping the Future”.http://remembersarowiwa.com/shaping-the-future-global-art-project-launch…

Lots of unknowns – we’d registered a big group of participants but who would turn up? Would our collaboration between the artists work? Would we get the balance right between serious politics, art, and hope: our case studies are heavy. We are focusing on the Ogoni struggle for environmental justice in Nigeria through the life and execution of Ken Saro-Wiwa, and considering it alongside the conditions that led to the murder of Stephen Lawrence at a bus stop in Eltham in 1993, and all the wider ramifications…

So all of us were pretty happy to meet the group and hear from them…quiet-seeming, very switched on and thoughtful participants who know why they were doing the course and what their stake in it is. 9 women and 5 men, the majority describing themselves as of African-Caribbean descent, with some young people of Kurdish, Chinese, Sri Lankan, and white English backgrounds. London in all her glory…
They brought up a range of political concerns coming out of the themes, from sex-trafficking to youth crime to unemployment to racism to capitalism to combatting apathy. There was a lot to take in on day 1 and by the end I hoped we hadn’t asked too much.

Day 2… had it been too much? who would return?
But… everyone from day 1 showed up on time and we were off again. The vibe was keen, looser, and good. For this morning session, the group brought examples of something in culture which they found powerful and political. Music from K’Naan, Lowkey, Bashy, Within Temptation, Jill Scott, personal photos, photographs of life in Somalia, Anansi stories, a book by Gemma Malley… This built on what we had done yesterday where the artists had presented some work they had been influenced by, followed by discussion on how it works, why it works, for whom it works (or not)…

Then into artform groups – video documentary, music/DJ, writing/performance poetry. This was the moment we’d all been champing for – an outlet for all the talk, all the politics, and all the feelings that had been aroused… I participated in the first writing workshop. Free-writing which led to an outpouring of responses. Really powerful to be witness to it. Some tears, lots of applause. Cool calm encouraging comment from Zena and Simon and others in the group. Kernals of ideas that would be worked on, worked up. Me, I’d written a splurge about skinheads… got me going…