Engaging in a Social action project – Grime Waltham Forest brief

Introduction to Beatroots Creative

Beatroots Creative is a social enterprise committed to developing young people's skills, supporting health and wellbeing and bringing communities together through music. It is inspired by an Asset-Based Community Development approach which focuses on identifying and mobilising a community’s strengths. We launched in March 2016 and run events and projects primarily in the London Borough of Waltham Forest.

Grime Waltham Forest – a summary

This Autumn we are producing Grime Waltham Forest, a project to celebrate the borough’s contribution to the creation and development of grime music.

In November, a series of events will take place across the borough to shine a light on the artists, producers and promoters who helped to create the grime genre back in the early noughties. These will include gigs, film screenings, panel discussions, talks and lyric writing and beat-making workshops.

Alongside this, one of our project partners, MVP Workshops, will be delivering a film-making project for 16-25 years olds, starting in October half-term. The group will create a documentary about the history of grime music in the borough that will be screened during Waltham Forest’s year as the first London Borough of Culture in 2019 and then shared as an educational resource with local schools and colleges.

We are recruiting and training a number of volunteers to support the project in the areas of photography, blogging, filming and event management.

The project is being funded by National Lottery players through a grant from the Heritage Lottery Fund and with support from the London Borough of Waltham Forest. We are working with a number of partners to deliver this project including Chantelle Fiddy, Diesle D-Power, Girls of Grime, Lemzi, MVP Workshops and Stow Film Lounge.

Target audience

(1) Young people from across the borough.

(2) People who are looking to develop heritage and heritage related skills in order to enhance their employment prospects, strengthen their knowledge of and connection to their local heritage and arts sectors and / or links with their local community.

(3) Established and emerging artists – established grime artists from the borough who helped create the genre will benefit from having a platform to share and celebrate their achievements with the wider community as well as develop ongoing links with local schools, colleges, the local authority and local arts sector. Emerging artists will benefit from having an opportunity to share a platform

with these experienced artists and a chance to recognise and reflect upon the influence they have had upon their practice.

(4) Communities of Walthamstow, Leyton and Leytonstone – the diversity of events and activities are designed to attract as wide an audience as possible. The aim is to introduce the borough’s grime heritage to those who are both already familiar and new to the genre. While the primary focus is on creating an enjoyable and impactful experience for the local audience, we anticipate that there will be a lot of interest in the project from neighbouring boroughs including Hackney and Haringey where grime also first emerged as well as from the capital as a whole.

Intended outcomes of the project

Through the project, we aim to achieve the following outcomes:

(1) The Grime Heritage of Waltham Forest will be identified / recorded.

We will use the following indicators to measure our progress against this outcome: - number of filmed interviews, panel discussions and talks - number of users engaging with the project website and social media channels - number of schools, colleges, youth groups and heritage settings that have screened the film - audience members and organisations that state they have increased knowledge and

understanding of their local grime heritage and that it is something they appreciate and value.

(2) People will have developed skills

(3) People will have learnt about heritage.

Through our evaluation process, we will record what:

- young people engaged in the film-making project have learnt through researching artists, key locations and the social context of the time and how they will use this knowledge and skills in future volunteers have learnt through filming, photographing, blogging and helping manage the events and how they will use these skills in future

- budding song writers and producers have learnt about grime lyrics and beats and how this will inform and enrich their practice

- students and teachers have learnt through artist visits and talks and how they will use this knowledge and the film resource in future

- audience members have learnt through engaging with the events programme, website and social media platforms and what impact this has had on their lives.

(4) People will have changed their attitudes and / or behaviour.

Through our evaluation process we will measure:

- how people’s perception of grime music has changed and / or developed - how knowledge and appreciation of grime artists contribution to the local cultural heritage

has increased and deepened

- how people’s perceptions of the physical locations in which grime was created including some of the area’s estates has changed as a result of the project.

(5) People will have had an enjoyable experience.

(6) People will have volunteered time.

(7) More people and a wider range of people will have engaged with heritage.

Our evaluation process will capture our participants’ profiles and identify their knowledge and understanding of their local grime heritage before, during and after they engaged with the project.

(8) Beatroots Creative will be more resilient.

Evaluation

We will collect data on these indicators throughout the project through a variety of means including:

- Audience feedback forms at the events - On-line audience survey on the project website and shared on the project’s social media

platforms - Volunteer surveys and 1-1 discussions - One to one discussions with young people who have completed the film making project- One to one discussions with partner organisations - Engagement with the website and social media platforms including numbers of followers,

likes, shares, retweets and comments.

What next?

Following the initial screening of the film produced by young people as part of the project, we will arrange repeat screenings at some key events during the borough’s London Borough of Culture year 2019, including Walthamstow Garden Party. Subsequently the film will be shared with schools and colleges. We will work with an education specialist to produce a set of educational resources to accompany the film.

All photographs, blogs and films produced at each event will be collated and shared with the Vestry House Museum to create a new grime archive for the borough and for use in future exhibitions.

The project website will document all aspects of the project and all the films, photographs and blogs created will be uploaded and available to download from the site. While not adding to the content beyond the project end we will ensure the site is hosted for a further five years to enable it to function as an ongoing reference source on local grime heritage.

We will keep the social media platforms we create – Twitter and Instagram – open so that users can continue a dialogue beyond the project. We will review activity on the platforms on a yearly basis following the project end and if users are no longer using the platforms, we will then close.

Leyton Sixth Form Social action project:

We really appreciate your interest, support and input into Grime Waltham Forest.

In line with the intended aims and objectives of your social action project, we propose the following activities:

(1) Design an evaluation questionnaire for our project audience (Oct 2018)

(2) Distribute the questionnaires during our event programme and whenever possible go through and complete the questionnaire together with individual audience members (Nov 13–24)

(3) Collate and analyse the results against the original intended outcomes of the project (End Nov / beg Dec)Consider to what extent the project:- met its intended outcomes- did not meet its intended outcomes and potential reasons for this - any unintended outcomes (positive and / or negative)

(4) Based on feedback from the audience, compile a series of recommended next steps for this project that would further engage and extend its intended audiences (Early Dec)

(5) Present back on findings and recommendations (Mid Dec)

We would also welcome your involvement in the project in other ways, depending on your areas of interest, which could include:

(1) Becoming a project volunteer in one of the following areas – photography, blogging, event management or filming. As a project volunteer you will receive a 3 hour training from an expert in the industry.

(2) Participating in the film-making project, beginning in October half-term. Register here - http://www.mvpworkshops.co.uk.

(3) Taking part in one of the beat-making or lyric writing workshops on Sat 17 (females only) or Sat 23 Nov.

(4) Performing at one of the open mic sessions on Sat 17 or Sat 23 Nov. (5) Curating a gig to accompany one of the film screenings in 2019.

Background

Grime emerged at the beginning of the new millenium, its distinctly British sound and rapid 140 beats per minute, capturing the voice of a generation growing up in working-class, urban London. It grew out of UK garage and jungle and draws influence from dancehall, ragga and hip hop. Its DIY ethos has led to analogies being drawn with punk culture.

Our project explores the social context in which grime emerged in the borough and the influences and experiences of local artists and producers who helped create the genre including More Fire Crew, Lethal Bizzle, Jammer and Flow Dan, D-Power, Maxwell D and Bruza.

More Fire Crew was one of the first crews in the grime scene, created by Ozzie B, Gary Greer and Lethal Bizzle in 2000 while attending Holy Family Catholic school in Walthamstow. Their best known track ‘Oi’ was released in 2002 and reached number 7 in the UK Singles Chart. After disbanding in 2005, Lethal Bizzle went on to have his own successful solo career with his debut solo single Pow! (Forward) charting at number 11 in the charts in 2004.

N.A.S.T.Y. (Natural Artistic Sounds Touching You), another pioneering crew of the grime scene, included Leytonstone artist Jammer among its members. N.A.S.T.Y Crew’s popular show on pirate radio station Déjà vu featured up and coming special guests such as Dizzee Rascal and Wiley.

The basement of Jammer’s family home in Leytonstone hosted many of grime’s most well-known artists at the early stages of their career for studio sessions and clashes in which pairs of MCs would lyrically do battle with each other. In 2004, Jammer and friend Chad Stennett, began to organise and

film clashes between artists - including most famously between Kano and Wiley in 2004 and Skepta and Devilman in 2006 - which were then sold as DVD Box sets under the name Lord of the Mics. Lord of the Mics has gone on to become one of grime’s most significant brands.

After a period of limited exposure in the latter part of the 2000s, grime is seen to be enjoying a second wave of popularity and recognised as having broken into the mainstream with Skepta winning a Mercury prize in 2016 and Stormzy becoming the first grime artist to win both best British male solo artist and best British album at this year’s Brit awards. Within Waltham Forest however, there is currently no official recognition of the borough’s contribution to the genre and very limited inclusion of grime in local arts and cultural programming. Vestry House, the borough’s local history museum, does not have any grime materials in its archive.

As Waltham Forest prepares to become London’s first Borough of Culture in 2019, it feels an important and appropriate time to shine a light on this significant aspect of the borough's cultural heritage and to recognise, record and reflect upon the ongoing influence that its first wave of grime artists have on music, young people and youth culture today.

Links

Beatroots Creative:

Twitter @WeAreBeatrootsFacebook @WeAreBeatrootsWebsite: www.beatroots.org

Grime Waltham Forest:Twitter @grimewfInstagram @grimewforestWebsite - https://grimewf.org/ (in development)

Suggested background reading:

This is Grime – Hattie Collins & Olivia Rose, Sept. 2016Inner City Pressure: The Story of Grime – Dan Hancox, May 2018Grime Kids: The Inside Story of the Global Grime Takeover – DJ Target, June 2018

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