Young Producers

Young Producers is a spoken word project that was first piloted at Friern Barnet School Hub. The Hub is a specialist unit that supports pupils aged 11 – 14 years who are at risk of school exclusion. They worked with a professional poet who guided them through word games and team building exercises to explore the theme of identity and their place within their school. The pupils got seriously involved in the process of creating raps, lyrics and slam poetry to eventually settle on creating a short reel where they could perform their compositions.

“Life is Like” evolved into a performance video the young people filmed and edited themselves.

“I always thought writing lyrics was hard because it usually has to rhyme and I never usually know what to talk about but this time, I was able to use the world around me and the things that I like and that represent me, to be able to write something good.” (Student)

Overall feedback was positive from both Hub staff and participants. The end of project survey was conducted online and anonymously.

100% feedback indicated the project was good to excellent
90% had taken part in a spoken word project for the first time
90% awarded maximum score to the project stating that it was ‘interesting’, ‘supportive’ and “better than normal classes”
92% felt the workshop had a positive impact on their literacy, group working and public speaking
All participants confirmed they had fun whilst learning.

“We have a child on the project who has English as an additional language. The child also has speech and language difficulties with a stutter that presents quite frequently. All prior concerns about how comfortable this child would be to engage were extinguished as they attended every week, consistently wrote poetry and were always willing to share in front of the group. Outside of the workshop, this is a tremendous achievement in all areas for this child.“ (Hub Manager)