NICOLE & BILLIE: YOUNG IDENTITY.

Tell us about yourselves?

Nicole: Hi, I’m Nicole, I’m from Manchester, a Northern girl born and bred. I started Young Identity as a participant and now I am the Executive Director.

Billie: Hi, my name’s Billie and I’m from Manchester, born not quite bred. I currently work as the Marketing Manager, Producer and Facilitator at Young Identity and similar to Nicole, I was a participant for 10 years. I went away, started other careers, before eventually coming back. 

What is Young Identity?

Nicole: Wow, where do we begin… Young Identity is a poetry and performance literature charity working with combined arts. We work with young people aged 13-25, giving them the voice and the tools to have the confidence to write and perform poetry, ultimately equipping them to go on and do other things within their career. 

What does a typical day inside Young Identity look like?

Nicole: A day in Young Identity consists of so much, we provide well being support, career development opportunities, commissions for young writers, artist development and references. 

In terms of our programme of activities, we have several strands and programmes. Our first one is called ‘Creating Connections’ which are our weekly writing and performance workshops where anybody can drop in across our four sites. 

Billie: We have four workshops a week, every week. On Mondays we have one based in Nelson which is a partnership with Respect and Dignity Arts and we also work out of HOME, which is a group of 20 young people who meet weekly. On Tuesdays we are at Central Library in partnership with Ahmed Iqbal Ullah Education Trust and on Wednesdays we are based in Trafford which is in partnership with Limelight. They all run throughout the year and are completely free. 

The workshops explore lots of different artists’ canons. At HOME we respond to different artists, at Central Library we respond to the Black and Asian Race Archives, at Old Trafford its really honing in on writing techniques and our branch with Dignity Arts is about starting the writing process. Our catch phrase at Young Identity is that we ‘redefine the parameters of poetry’ and what that looks like. Shirley, our founder and Artistic Director, is so passionate about poetry and has really instilled that within our team and we’ve seen over the years how poetry can change lives.

We also have ‘Creating Pathways’, which is our on-stage and off-stage development.

Billie: This strand is all about looking at career development, we have a variety of participants from Masters students to young teenagers. 

Nicole: We also have our facilitator group. When you’ve been a member at Young Identity for a while, you are able to become a facilitator which means you can help out in schools or assist at our workshops. 

And then we also have our young publishers group. Billie, who is an amazing graphic and brand designer, leads on our yearly anthologies which are a culmination of all the work the young people have written and created at our weekly workshops. Billie works with producers and young people who are really interested in editing and design. 

Billie: Our press is called ‘No Disclaimers’. It’s all in-house, all the work in it is from participants, all the editors are past participants or editors who have come onto the programme. It’s lovely to see the progression within YI, now the people who are creating some of the work or helping the young people were once those young people themselves. 

Nicole: And that’s the beautiful thing we do at Young Identity, it’s all about that peer mentorship. Shirley has always said that “iron sharpens iron”, which supports the idea of helping each other collectively. 

We also have a youth steering group which is very active and they basically tell us what to do! With lots of projects and partnerships, we bring our ideas to the group who then discuss it with the rest of YI. It ensures that we have a really active voice within the group.

‘Creating Exchange’ is all about international work and partnerships. We’ve done performances at the Schaubühne in Berlin before and we’re currently working on an exchange residency product with three literature organizations; two in Denmark and one in Manchester with Aarhus Literature Exchange and Manchester Literature Festival called ‘Cities Untold’. 

And the last branch of Young Identity is, ‘Creating Wordsmiths’, which is our schools programme that’s been going for years, it’s absolutely phenomenal. We do a lot of slams within schools, so we would get a cohort of schools and do inter-school slams around a theme. We’ll visit the schools for about six weeks with a workshop a week, taking the students from writing for the first time through to performing. 

We also do live events where our young people get the opportunity to create a company who then develop poetry into a script and a poetic production and they have been showcased at HOME, Contact Theatre and Manchester International Festival. One of our premier shows, which I am really proud of, was called Alphabus and that was with collaborators from New York. 

The productions have been really transformational, especially the one we did with Factory International and Manchester International Festival. We were able to bring poetry to an international stage and the scale of it was absolutely phenomenal. 

How did you find yourself at YI?

Billie: Young Identity has always been in the community, starting as an after school group in 2006 with Shirley May. I wrote a prose blog post about growing up in the Caribbean which Shirley May read and convinced me that I should be a poet and come down to a session. At 15 I brushed off the idea but for ages she was telling me to just come and try, so in the end I did. It was really nice, we were given exercises and I thought it was quite fun, so I went to a second one and a third one and then you blink and it’s been four years! You end up having friends and colleagues there, you go every week without fail and that’s really how it is for a lot of the young people. It’s a great way to build community. I think a lot of young people are feeling really lonely and I found that having a session every week with the same people at the same time really makes a difference. 

Nicole: Within our workshops we have guest artists working alongside our facilitation team so we’ll have really big names come in. 

Billie: Last month we did a session with the National Youth Theatre and the caveat was that the young people who attended our workshops got a free audition. There are so many young people who are actors first, so it was amazing. 

Nicole: Sometimes people feel that ultimately poetry isn’t for them to pursue but regardless they pick up so many skills from the workshops that aid their careers in medicine, law, teaching and TV.

Is there one stand out story form your time here?

Nicole: There are so many great stories from Young Identity. Stories of people who never once thought about voting but because they were in a room with people who were passionate about voting that now they’re voting. Stories of people who dropped out of school who are now teachers. People who, before Young Identity didn’t want to go to University, that are now doing a Masters in comparative literature. And there’s such a strong alumni who will continue to support our young people which creates such a great network for opportunities. 

Where can people see you? How can people get involved?

We are on all social media, we are at YoungIdentity.org where you can find information about our strands and our programmes, the commissions and the work we’ve done in the past. We have our flagship event One Mic Stand Poetry Slam coming up on the 3rd May, tickets are available via our Eventbrite.

To find out more about Young Identity follow @youngidentitymcr

Manchester Stories is an ongoing passion project by Blossom Manchester.

For more information or to get involved email: ruby@blossommanchester.co.uk