Projects
Keeping it Real? BBC Outreach Project
Keeping It Real? An overview of the BBC Outreach project in one video
What are Keeping it Real? the BBC Outreach Project
The MEaP consortium partnered with BBC Outreach and the BBC Philharmonic for a community project an event part of the AHRC-funded “Being Human” 2015 festival, the UK’s only national festival of the humanities; and BPS Community Psychology Festivals, 2015. The project was led by Dr Ornette D Clennon.
This initiative was designed to raise educational aspirations and engage young people from Black, Asian, and minority ethnic (BAME) communities in Manchester, with a specific focus on cultural identity and media representation.
Using music and video, Keeping it Real? explores young people’s attitudes towards the representation of BAME communities in the media and popular culture and how this representation shapes wider attitudes towards crime.
Contextual Partnership
Manchester Metropolitan University (MMU) in partnership with BBC Outreach hosted Keeping it Real? The event involved working with young people from the community organisations CLR James Community Trust and Making Education a Priority (MEaP), members from the BBC Philharmonic and wider staff from the BBC. The project addressed themes from Dr. Ornette Clennon’s research on youth cultural representation, helping participants gain confidence and skills in media production. The BBC was heavily engaged in digital skills training through its “Make it Digital” initiative, which included partnerships to help young people gain employment skills and led to this particular initiative. This collaboration bridged local community education with regional media production, providing unique opportunities for youth engagement.
Young people from the CLR James Community Action Trust performing their song from a Manchester Metro show more
What the participants gain
Participants gain skills from receiving extensive creative Mentoring, as well as media Skills. Young people were mentored by BBC staff and members from the CLR James Community Action Trust to compose a musical track (grime/hip hop/drum’n’bass fusion) with members of the BBC Philharmonic that explored their perceptions of BAME youth cultural representation (themes taken from Dr Clennon’s book Urban Dialectics, the Market and Youth Engagement: The ‘Black’ Face of Eurocentrism?), The young people were also mentored in filming and photography to make a documentary of the project to be shown alongside the performance at the final event. The project consisted of creative sessions that were held on campus at MMU on October 27th 2015, November 5th 2015 and November 11th, 2015. The event culminated in a live performance and documentary screening at BBC Media City in Salford on November 20, 2015. The event was selected to be part of Being Human by the festival organisers, the School of Advanced Study, University of London, the Arts & Humanities Research Council (AHRC), and the British Academy (BA) with support from the Wellcome Trust.
