For four months, we at Shake! knocked about the idea of what the content for our “Social Policy seminar” should be. We rigorously discussed how it should function as a tool for change.
educators.
All of us have engaged with sessions before, where they are quite dry with speeches and some discussion. We found that by calling our sessions ‘social policy seminars’ we fell into a scripted pattern of speech and dialoguing forms that limited how Shake as a project sought to refresh discourse about the needs and voices of young people. It was Farzana who said, “we are trying to create new narratives” around how young people are provided for by including them in important conversations, where it matters. And that was it! Everything fell into place – we decided to use the term and title ‘New Narratives’ when referring Shake’s the “social policy seminar” sessions.
by being reflective and innovative.
Shake! uses creativity to take a immersive and deeply resonant journey into themes of race, class and generational inequality, power and it made sense to stick to it. We use creative tactics to unpack and reveal the underbelly of the injustice and inequality; we use memory and brainstorming to re-imagine the alternative to the systems we live by today. Through a collective artistic experience, we immerse participants in to the issues we are discussing. Why do it differently?Over a period of a week Nathaniel Chapman, Layan, Orla Price and Khafi Kareem came to the Platform office for training days with the core team, here we merely acted as sound boards for their session ideas. It was exciting for us to see how they had already thought of some very innovative techniques that involved sketching, writing, and creative prompts for discussion around the sensitive and weighty issues they picked. It was a pleasure to witness and be a part of, as they had evidently done so much work before hand, knowing this was not only an opportunity to express but to educate and lead in a way that was enabling for them.
Nathan and Layan brought an inspiring session, asking all involved to challenge their perceptions of homelessness by sketching what we thought it looked like, asking us to embody different types of homelessness sitautions and then making us budget our money in those situations accordingly.
It was interesting to see how many of us, though not all, when asked to sketch a homeless person, drew an old man with a dog. No one thought to trace out sofa-surfing, how young people relying on friends to put them up for a period of time, is a form of homelessness. No one thought to sketch those hidden in homelessness discourse because of their racial backgrounds, where domestic issues are not really generally spoken about publicly. Few of us thought to scribble images of homeless young women who were at risk on the streets because of gender based violence and abuse. Did we even consider those who had roofs but were constantly under threat of emotional and violent abuse with no support in those ‘homes’?. We had to stop, think, re-configure our consciousness.
Orla delivered a brilliant back-to-front poem about a boy who loved school finding himself ostracised by neglectful parents scorning his educational vigilence – “don’t worry, he’ll grow out of it.” Teachers were fed up with his studiousness – “why are you trying so hard?” And friends couldn’t understand why he’d prefer to do homework rather than party. Eric, The Boy Who Loved School was eventually institutionalised for doing everything right. We critiqued the story and began a discussion exploring well-being in education. How testing, exams, and job prospects are pressures creating so much anxiety and impact our well-being. We examined how societal conditions and capitalism are making us physically and mentally unwell. 
The New Narratives day proved to be very worthwhile investing in as a concept. We, as the Shake team, took a back seat and only contributed to the day with a short free-flow writing exercise to highlight our role as being bridges between the generational methods of engaging with policy making and the needs of young people. The free flow lead into an “actions list”, personal ‘to-do’s” by those attending, influenced by what had been learned on the day. Following this we had a session on direct actions, where each attendee pledged to 3 bold steps they would take in their work or practice to engage and implement what they had learnedand experienced in the sessions that day.