WINDRUSH STORIES AMPLIFIED THROUGH EXTENSIVE MULTIMEDIA PROJECT

By Jamie Morris

We sit down with the creatives behind Small Island Stories 2 to find out how they’re honouring their heritage via music, film and theatre…

2023 marks 75 years since the initial arrival of the Windrush Generation from the Caribbean to the UK, and many have suggested that this could be the final major anniversary that most of the original pioneers will live to see. As a result, the need to record and pass on their stories is arguably now more pertinent than ever –but how can these tales be presented in a way that will reach the younger generations that need to hear them?

Small Island Stories 2 – a multimedia project spearheaded by arts organisations Motion Framework and Mashup Derby – proposes not one, but several solutions to this question. Starting off as the second of two hip-hop albums paying homage to Windrush history, the project has since snowballed into an accompanying short film, exhibition and live show.

The pair of albums began life as the brainchild of teacher, rapper and Motion Framework founder James Batchelor. “Hip-hop is usually braggadocious guys talking about how big they are in drug games or how established they are in their street culture – but I don’t fit those moulds, because I’m a school teacher,” says James. “What do I have that signifies that I am me? My heritage.”

As the son of Jamaican parents, James sought to weave his roots into his music by featuring samples of conversations with his family alongside lyricism about his own experiences. “Old school Caribbean people tell the greatest stories,” he says. “So let’s amplify them.”

After a strong response to the first album and a funding package from Derby CAN, James and his partner Tandeka Williams – who was born in Guyana – set about creating a sequel to Small Island Stories that would compile tales from the wider Caribbean community. “As much as the Windrush has its stories, there are other stories,” Tandeka explains. “And it wasn’t just Jamaican families that came on the Windrush, so we wanted to highlight that by including other small islands and all of the people of the Commonwealth that came and contributed.”

Tandeka’s experience in youth work as part of Mashup Derby also allowed for the project to become more collaborative, as she worked with young artists to bring out their talents and help illustrate the stories in a variety of formats. A short film serving as a visualiser for the album was produced and shown at Quad and Déda, and will be screened as part of the UK-wide Windrush Caribbean Film Festival throughout June.

“We brought in young people from the community and showcased their work in the film, which then rolled onto us talking about images of Black people,” Tandeka says. “How many people recognise certain Black people? When you Google ‘Black people’, what images do you see? Are they positive or negative?”

This idea was depicted via an eclectic collection of portraits of Black people throughout history, printed in monochrome and removed from their context in order to test visitors’ knowledge, prompt questions and start discussions. The gallery is set to tour the UK, with more photos to be included.

Small Island Stories 2 has also grown to encompass a live performance element, which extends from Mashup Derby’s background in impromptu theatre. “It’s about mashing up your skills and our skills, no matter what they are,” James explains. “If you can dance, you can sing or you can stand on one leg for one minute…put all that in a theatre show and you’ve got Mashup Theatre.”

Tandeka says this discovery of hidden talents is what Mashup and Motion Framework are all about. “You might look at your skills and think, ‘That’s not a skill, that’s just something that I can do’,” she adds. “But that’s exactly what a skill is.”

James and Tandeka hope that projects like Small Island Stories 2 will not only connect Derby’s Black youth with their past, but also help to shape their futures by showing that a career in the arts can be more than just a pipe dream. “You don’t have to be academic – this creativity thing could be your buzz,” James says. “Can you imagine a world with no art or entertainment? The world needs creatives.”

Follow @motionframework and @mashupderby on Instagram for more

“THEY’RE NOT JUST COSTUMES – IT’S FOLKLORE,” SAYS LEADING CARNIVAL DESIGNER

By Jamie Morris

We caught up with Samantha Hudson – aka Sam Carnival – to talk about the costume design process and her new research project…

Mojatu: How did you first get involved in Carnival?

Sam: I was born into Carnival. My earliest memories of it were in the 1980s on a float with bunting, balloons, my friends and my parents on Normanton Park. Culture was always a part of our upbringing, so I just carried on being involved in it.

Mojatu: Do you have a favourite Carnival memory?

Sam: My favourite Carnival memory isn’t actually from the day of the Carnival. I had a knock at the door one evening, and it was a young person who had come to see one of my twins, so I said he could come in until they got back. I was making a massive phoenix costume, and I asked if he could give me a hand – anybody who comes into my house has to help out. He was helping to attach the sequins and he said, “Sam, this is really therapeutic!”

I told him about Carnival and asked if he was coming…and he said no. He was born in Iran, and he told me that when he was ten, he witnessed public executions that traumatised him, and because of that he doesn’t like big crowds. He’d never go to a Carnival, but he’s happy to help out behind the scenes. Carnival is a big jigsaw. Everybody has their part to play and everything is important, so if one piece is missing, then it’s not the full picture. Even though he wasn’t there on that day, his contribution meant a lot.

Mojatu: Where do you find inspiration for costume ideas?

Sam: We get the young people together and talk about what kind of themes they’re interested in, and look at what’s happening politically and socially. We had two themes last year. The under18s section was celebrating sixty years of the Derby West Indian Community Association. We had bright, canary yellow feathers representing the Caribbean sun, tangerine orange representing the tropical fruits, and turquoise representing the ocean.

It was also the Queen’s Platinum Jubilee, so we had a section which was purple, because it’s a regal colour and used to only be worn by aristocrats. Everybody is regal and important to us, so we did a section for over-18s that was all purple. It all means something. They’re not just costumes – it’s folklore, it’s storytelling, it’s street theatre.

Mojatu: What are they made out of?

Sam: Before, we’d make things out of whatever we could source materials from, like recycled stuff and cardboard. Now, as costume making becomes more sophisticated, people look towards funders like the Arts Council or the Lottery to gain money, because by the time you start adding feathers into your costumes, your budget goes sky-high. Then you’ve got to look at biodegradable glitter and stuff like that, which is really expensive as well.

The sad thing about it now is that people tend to purchase their costumes elsewhere instead of making them. Coming together and making it is all part of the community element, so that’s what we want to try and bring back.

Mojatu: Do you have a practice run beforehand?

Sam: I make a full prototype from head to foot to show to the management committee, and then I’ll go back and make a couple of tweaks until they’re happy with it. Then we show the troupe, and they’ll say what they want – wings here, hats like this, shorts like this, for example. We take on board all the different drawings that the young people do, and then come back with the final piece and make that work before we do the mass production. Finally, we have a costume dress rehearsal to make sure everything fits. Everyone gets an allocated bag with their name on it.

Mojatu: What’s happening behind the scenes at the moment?

Sam: I’m doing my PhD research with Carnival and costumes as my specialist subject. Part of that includes making a costume, so I’m building it as we speak. It’s on a different level now. It’s not needle and thread anymore – it’s sawing, drilling, screwing, getting on my ladder and cable tying… it’s a structure, a sculpture.

Mojatu: Tell us more about your research project.

Sam: I wanted to do a PhD in Caribbean Carnival because there’s not enough known of it over here. Because the University of Derby weren’t fully aware of the history behind it, it’s classed as a contribution to knowledge, so that’s why they agreed to take me on.

I’m starting off with quantitative data, so I’ve got a survey out there now to check the demographics and their understanding. It’s amazing how many people take part just for the fun of it and don’t understand the cultural rituals, heritage and symbolism behind it. I’ll be reaching out to get the authentic voice back home from the Caribbean and from Africa, as well.

Mojatu: What does Carnival mean to you?

Sam: It’s culture, in the same way that Eid or Chinese New Year is culture. Everybody has their own culture, but the difficulty about Carnival is that it’s often just seen as an art form and not as cultural heritage. We do our game because it came from pain, but people just want the game and forget the pain. It’s about honouring our ancestors. It’s not just something we want to do –it’s something we have to do.

Scan the QR code to take part in Sam’s research survey

Carnival Ceo Says Honouring Its Past Is Vital To Ensure Its Future

The chief of the East Midlands’ foremost Carnival organisation has reiterated the importance of generational legacy in keeping the tradition alive.

Donna Briscoe-Greene, CEO of the East Midlands Caribbean Carnival Arts Network (EMCCAN), has said that preserving elders’ experience and skills is ‘a matter of urgency’ ahead of this year’s circuit.

“The volunteers that are fundamentally the most experienced and most involved are a bit older now and need to pass that information on,” Donna says. “We are predominantly led by a board of directors that hold decades of experience in this area of work, so it’s really important to understand that their passion and time is of value.”

Donna, who previously ran the Maypole Cafe Bar, has been overseeing the delivery of the regional Carnivals across Derby, Nottingham, Leicester and Northampton since she was appointed as CEO in 2022. From an outsider’s perspective, Carnival may appear to just be a single day – but for Donna and the regional teams working behind the scenes, it’s a parade that keeps marching all year round.

“The Carnivals take place from June to August,” Donna explains. “But before that, there’s the workshops, the costume building, the dancing… all of that development, and then building the infrastructure to deliver it.”

More recently, EMCCAN’s role has included raising greater public awareness of the history of Carnival and the hard work that goes on behind the scenes. In March, a showcase was held at the Albert Hall in Nottingham titled ‘Jouvert to Last Lap’, which showed attendees what a full day of Carnival is like, as well as going into the lore behind some of the recurring character costumes like Jab Jab and Midnight Robber.

“We had music from the Ebony Steel Band, different troupes from Derby, Leicester and Nottingham, and Northampton provided the amazing narrator for the day,” Donna says. “We all collaborate really well as a network, and choosing the Albert Hall was about trying to get into a new space that we wouldn’t normally be seen in to reach audiences that we wouldn’t normally reach.”

On the cusp of Carnival season, EMCCAN also hosts

- By Jamie Morris

a Regional Costume Competition, which was held in Leicester this year. The contest sees a panel of judges assess the queens, kings, princes and princesses of Carnival on their outfits, performances and overall themes, building confidence and excitement for the upcoming events.

Through projects like these, Donna hopes to broaden people’s perceptions of what Carnival is and its importance to the community, to ensure that it is valued and maintained for generations to come.

“For Carnival, most of the costumes aren’t stored in a way that you could come back to and have a historical moment to say, ‘I remember when this was created,’ because we have to either recycle them or throw them away,” she says. “When I started working with EMCCAN, I was asked to help move some costumes, and that was when I realised what happens, which was quite hard. For me it’s not just a party in the street – blood, sweat and tears have gone into this, quite literally. I’ve seen it.”

Carnival is a day of visibility for Caribbean culture: the attire, the music, the flags, the food and of course the people and their history – but Donna says that for all of this to remain visible, organisations like EMCCAN need support.

“The hope is that we will build it into an academy, where there will be the training elements and opportunities for marketers, costume makers or designers,” she adds. “So keep on believing in us – we’re just trying to ensure that we stay as professional, well-rounded and brilliant as we’ve always been.”

Derby Caribbean Carnival takes place on Sunday 16th July and will travel from the City Centre to Osmaston Park

IS GRIME REALLY DEAD?

By Jack Dixon

At first glance, things do not look good for Grime. It seems to have lost the momentum and widespread appeal it enjoyed in the mid-late 2010’s. In the wake of the explosion in popularity of drill and ‘chill’ UK rap, it has struggled to draw in the same crowds it once used to.

Its most popular voices continue to be legends from older generations like Skepta, JME and Kano, while many of these voices have left the genre either to pursue different sounds, pursue careers outside of music, or in the case of Wiley, completely self-destruct what he had left of a career.

The genre has gone from drawing in figures like Kanye and Drake to openly embracing the Grime sound, to younger artists who once came up in the Grime scene now looking to other genres to find commercial success. Figures like Aitch even argue that ‘no one younger than me’s bothered about Grime’.

In its over 20 years of existence, Grime has had to deal with being labeled ‘dead’ and irrelevant’ multiple times, and every time the resilience of the genre has demonstrated its consistent appeal across musical generations. While it may seem a foregone conclusion at the moment, I believe that this dip in popularity is no exception and Grime will continue to have a strong underground scene at the very least and may even be able to break into the mainstream once again.

Throughout 2022, dance music has been growing steadily in popularity with major artists like Drake and Beyonce making explicitly dance-music records. Whilst I can’t claim that both these massive artists did this because of our shared love for Grime, what it does show is a wider cultural shift towards dance music and similar genres.

At its core, Grime derives its sound from the UK dance and rave scenes of Jungle, Garage and Dancehall and, as a result, it translates well into this new renaissance of dance music. Increasingly popular DJs and artists take explicit inspiration from the sound of Grime: Mall Grab and Nia archives are two glaring examples of this.

Mall Grab has had a meteoric rise over the last few years, garnering tens of millions of streams on some of his songs. His most recent album sports a single featuring none other than Novelist and D Double E, not to mention one of his earlier tracks being named ‘I’ve always liked grime’.

Nia archives has also carved out for herself a strong niche within the dance music scene that has won her an NME award for her production. She combines smooth neo-soul vocals with old sounds of Jungle, Garage and Grime music; sampling songs like Wiley’s Jam Pie and citing in interviews that figures like ‘Dizzie rascal was a big production influence on me’.

Before anyone points out this does not fully assure Grime’s continued existence as a genre and instead just shows its influence on newer, more popular genres; the underground grime scene gives us even greater hope that Grime is far from dying.

Ultimately, Grime is a genre with strong foundations that have consistently proved difficult to fully remove from public consciousness. Even when it does not capture the mainstream eye like it once did, it will continue on in the underground.

We have a lot to thank Grime for inventing and influencing, for now it seems that it will continue to make its mark on the underground scene whilst influencing major elements of the emerging musical world.

Those ready to write Grime off as totally irrelevant today are not only ignoring the continuing influence the genre has across the musical spectrum, but also missing out massively on the scores of new talents coming out of the underground scene.

MUSIC’S CLASS DIVIDE IS ONLY GETTING WORSE -

By Jack Dixon

Twenty years ago, music was one of Britain’s proudest exports. Since as early as the 1960s British acts have been shaping global music trends, artists like the Beatles, David Bowie and Oasis have consistently made their mark on global music culture. This had been done with remarkable representation among the UK’s working class, for years the music industry gave working class people the opportunity to have their voices heard across the country, and the world.

These opportunities have now all but disappeared in the last 20 years, and with it the level of relevance on global music culture the UK once enjoyed. What’s left is a music industry that suffers from systematic exclusion of working-class acts as a result of a lack of educational resources, rampant nepotism, lack of financial support and collapse of small independent venues that working class acts once relied on to start their career.

As early as 2010, people have begun to point out that those who were privately educated were beginning to dominate the charts. There had been a major shift since the mid-1990s where charts were dominated by working class acts like the Stone Roses, Oasis and Blur to today where the biggest names like Coldplay, Mumford and sons and Dua Lipa were all privately educated or from wealthy and connected backgrounds. What little remains of working-class representation in UK music comes almost entirely from a single school - The BRIT school, where acts like Amy Winehouse, Adele and Rizzle Kicks all studied. The success of acts from this school should not be the exception to the rule when looking at which socio-economic backgrounds are represented in the industry. I’m not arguing that this necessarily undermines the merit of the music produced by welloff/privately educated acts, but it’s undeniable that they have had opportunities afforded to them that many equally talented artists wouldn’t have. Successive governments under both major parties have consistently failed to recognise the importance of promoting accessibility within the arts and much of the crisis can be attributed to governments’ simply not viewing music education as a priority.

When I began researching how funding for music education has changed over the last 20/30 years, I was genuinely taken by surprise at the extent of cuts made. First, local authority funding for music education fell by half between 1990 and 2010, then central government funding was put through a round of cuts due to austerity policies under the Cameron government and most recently, the education secretary proposed cutting higher education music subsidies by half which was labelled as ‘catastrophic’ by representatives of the Musicians’ Union. Over the last twenty years successive governments have continually stripped music education funding to its bare bones. It has actually reached the point that A-level music may disappear as a qualification by 2033 if funding continues to decline in the way it has. If government policy continues in this direction, it will almost certainly prove disastrous for any remaining working/lower middle-class representation within the industry. Ordinary children as a whole will have limited access to any quality musical education through the state sector and will have to rely on self-funding throughout their musical education.

The need to self-fund doesn’t even end with artists’ education if anything it worsens when acts leave education. Without a label to help fund touring, producing an album and promotion, artists are often required to selffund or apply for grants, this naturally gives those from welloff backgrounds an advantage. Though this would have also been true 30 years ago, what has changed is that the cost of self-funding has increased dramatically, with no action taken by the government or the industry to alleviate the pressures on struggling artists. In the last 10 years there have been huge waves of closures of small independent venues which were traditionally a lifeline for small acts trying to grow their audience. Between 2004-2019 around 20% of all small venues closed, now consider the impact of the COVID pandemic and the current inflation crisis we are facing and it does not bode well for many of the remaining small venues that we have left.

Read more https://tinyurl. com/2ypfupas

WHAT YOU NEED TO KNOW ABOUT WEIGHT LOSS & GAIN

By Tristan Best

Here are some tips about managing your weight…

Gaining and losing weight, and how to accomplish your best self, is never as easy as it seems. For each individual, many factors can chime in to play their own roles – especially when it comes down to each individual’s metabolism and lifestyle.

Men need to consume between 2,500- 3,400 calories per day to certainly gain weight. A fully grown man will need to consume at least 500 calories less per day to see a change, if they are looking to lose weight, with some men having to cut up to 750 calories. It’s important to mention that what you eat also contributes to the results you receive.

Women need to consume between 1,800- 2,500 calories per day to maintain or gain weight. A fully grown woman will need to consume roughly 500 calories less than their average daily calorie intake if they are looking to lose between 1-2 lbs per week. An optimum intake of calories varies depending on age, metabolism – how quickly your body is able to digest and deal with the products you consume –and the levels of physical activity you may be taking part in. Someone with a much higher-intensity lifestyle – which may include sport – will find that they will initially consume more than the average person, and they’ll have to consume even more calories if they have a fast metabolism.

A person who might be ‘bulking’ will have to drastically increase their calorie intake, whereas someone who is trying to lose weight will drastically decrease their daily intake. It is important to note that each individual has their own personal journey when it comes to building their idealistic body. Some may find the process harder than others, but that’s the beauty of life. Building yourself, for yourself.

Fun facts about the human body:

• It’s estimated that every human blinks at least 20 times every minute, which would mean each human would blink at least 28,800 times a day. No wonder your eyes are tired at night.

• If you walked for 12 hours a day, it would take you 690 days to walk around the earth i tself – but it’d be much quicker if you had roller skates.

• Spread across their lives, each person spends around a year using the toilet. You could say, “What a waste of time!”