Shake! vs School?

Ed Lewis is part of the Shake! team, focusing in particular on political education. Here discusses the significance of the project for him and reflects on the most recent Shake! course, held at the Stephen Lawrence Centre this February.

I spend most of the working week as a teacher in a secondary school. I experience the pressures, challenges and limitations of working in compulsory education, as well as the rewards and pleasures that can come from doing so. Experiencing Shake! alongside my working life has been hugely interesting. Schooling can encourage teachers to have a restricted view of the capacities of young people – when their engagement is limited and their answers are one word long, cynicism can easily develop. Some teachers, myself included, are also disappointed when they encounter many of their students approaching their education in a fairly narrow way, seeing it ultimately as an economic investment, and the value of time in class to be judged in terms of how it will contribute to their exam results (there is a tendency for teachers to see things in these narrow terms too). There are a range of reasons why this is the case, but part of the answer is to be found in education itself. An obvious but too easily forgotten fact is that the content of formal education is overwhelmingly externally imposed – students are not encouraged to pursue their own interests, to develop intrinsic motivation around learning. And the mechanics of schooling – such as the relentless focus on target grades – and the rhetoric employed – such as the use of sports-style aspirational language – encourage the investment-oriented outlook of students.

So my first experience of Shake!, back in 2010, was a liberation. In a context devoted to thinking, learning and exploring in its own right, defined in many ways by the participants themselves, fusing political inquiry with creative activity, I saw an energy and engagement from several of my own students that I hadn’t encountered before. As an educator, it was a release to have the freedom to discuss and explore ideas without the confines of a highly prescribed curriculum. What’s more, I felt that I was able to utilise my skills – for all its problems, formal schooling does equip one with some valuable knowledge and capacities – in the service of critical political education in a way that is very difficult to achieve in school.  I’ve worked on Shake! ever since, buoyed by the energy of that week, and looked forward to re-launching the project, which we finally did this February (not that things were quiet in the interim – we did loads!).

Shake!r's Recommendation: Venus/Mars a play by Patrice Etienne

Hi,

I hope you are well and enjoying the sporadic sunshine!

The theatre company I run (New Movement Theatre) have collaborated with Act Up this year and we are proud to present Venus/Mars by Patrice Etienne. The play hits the stage from 28th May-15th June at the Old Red Lion Theatre - I have pasted all the details below for you. Venus/Mars will also have an exclusive soundtrack made for it by BBC Radio 1 DJ Dev. It is an amazing play with a very unique script. I would love to see you all there!

Please find all other info below including the trailer to the piece - enjoy!

Venus/Mars

A World Premiere from Patrice Etienne

Directed by Rikki Henry

Produced by Gemma Lloyd

Exclusive Soundtrack by BBC Radio 1 DJ Dev

28th May - 15th June 2013

Buy Tickets Online:

http://www.oldredliontheatre.co.uk/venus-mars.htm

Box Office:

0844 412 4307

Trailer:

http://youtu.be/EjBqkHGtS6M

This play has been developed with the support of Arts Council England.

@venus/mars_aplay

@actupcourses

                                                @Newmovement100
                         *Captioned performance on Thursday 13th June.

"Sexual attraction soon gives way to negotiating the complexities of a grown-up relationship; toward a definition of what it really means to share your life with someone...
 
Look forward to hearing from you,
Dershe

(*Any group bookings of 10 + people are eligible for £10.00 tickets)  

Guest Blog by Saara: Review of Riots Reframed

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Hello! My name is Saara and I’m going to be helping with the continuity workshops at Shake! Particularly with the monthly film screenings. I am really excited to get involved and learn from everybody!  I recently graduated from Leeds Uni in International Development and Spanish and am now a freelance journalist and learning to make my own documentary films. I think the film screenings will be a great opportunity to get together and share ideas, whilst also getting the chance to see really interesting films.  I look forward to meeting you all :)

Here is a review I wrote of Riots Reframed by Fahim Alam. We watched this as part of the Shake! continuity program at Platform.

Riots Reframed demonstrates the power of documentary in its true form. Raw and intelligent, it challenges the superficial mainstream analysis of the 2011 riots. We were told that a swathe of ‘mindless criminals’ took to the streets, a bunch of dangerous rebels running wild without a cause. Mainstream coverage created the impression that we as a society should point the finger at these young rioters, and that they alone should be blamed for what happened that August.

What motivates your activism?

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 So many of the conversations that take place during Shake! planning and delivery engages with the discussion of what our motivations for activism are? Is there a space for ‘feelings’? Should we be motivated by love or anger? Do they even stand in opposition? If not, then how do we find the balance?

“So often activism is based on what we are

against, what we don’t like, what we don’t

want. And yet we manifest what we focus

on. And so we are manifesting yet ever

more of what we don’t want, what we

don’t like, what we want to change.

So for me, activism is about a spiritual

practice as a way of life.

And I realized I didn’t climb the tree

because I was angry at the corporations

and the government; I climbed the tree

because when I fell in love with

the redwoods, I fell in love with the world.

So it is my feeling of ‘connection’ that

drives me, instead of my anger and feelings

of being disconnected.”

-       Julia Butterfly Hill

“Those who profess to favor freedom and yet depreciate agitation, are people who want crops without ploughing the ground; they want rain without thunder and lightning; they want the ocean without the roar of its many waters. The struggle may be a moral one, or it may be a physical one, or it may be both. But it must be a struggle. Power concedes nothing without a demand. It never did and it never will.”
―Frederick  Douglass 

What are your thoughts?

Review of Shake! @SLCT'13 in The SOAS spirit magazine

Here is what Crisitiana from The SOAS spirit magazine had to say about Shake! when she came for a visit. 

rough draft of a never-ending process

rough draft of a never-ending process1

“Our lives begin to end the day we become silent about things that matter” 2

so let us Begin:

to disbelieve in any system claiming to have a “monopoly on the truth”3

to make Noise – and to listen

to Eat great food – but not too much

to Work – but not too much

to make Art without limit

to have a place to Sleep – and someone to keep us warm

to be Untiringly Human

we refuse to be embarrassed about hope or to have dreams about checking

our email

we refuse to continue to see the world in the black and white stark contrasts of Manichean design

we refuse to confuse Education with Capital, in which:

Reframing the 'Riots' - Voices of the Unheard

We're excited about the premier of a new feature-length documentary in London today - Riots Reframed takes a look back at the 2011 UK uprising in London and reframes the mainstream media narratives of "feral youth" through voices of resistance, dramatic monologue and raw spoken word.

Film-maker Fahim Alam is keen to "emphasise the 'positive' fallout of the riots... in the aftermath, some people began talking about a section of the population that for years had been ignored helping to strip away the veil of normality that concealed entrenched social despair... Sometimes there are deep and profound opportunities within the biggest injustices and if we can use these things to speak to power then we should." [New film reveals the unheard voices of the 2011 London riots, The Guardian12/03/13]

Our event, The Unheard: Youth, the “Riots”, and the Media that took place at the Rebellious Media Conference in 2011 discussed similar issues of youth mis-representation in the corporate media in the aftermath of the 'riots'. Here's part 1 of that event below. Part 2 as well as interviews and poetry from Selina and Rotimi plus Ceasefire magazine interviews with Zena and Sai from the conference can be viewed on our videos page here:

The premiere of Riots Reframed also features a Q+A audience discussion (Akala, Prof. Paul Gilroy, Lee Jasper & our very own Zena amongst the panel). Tickets may still be available from here.
See you there!