Open University’s ‘Creating Hackney as Home’ study puts actors centre stage

Immediate Theatre founder Jo Carter (third from right) and Monet Morgan (front right) at a training session

A group of young actors and creatives have been given the green light to become researchers on a two-year urban geography project led by the Open University.

Creating Hackney as Home (CHasH), funded by the Economic and Social Research Council, is designed to discover how young people experience space and places.

Dr Melissa Butcher, a senior lecturer at The Open University who is leading the project, said: “Young people have become immersed in debates about social inclusion, crime and media representations of Hackney, but we don’t really know how they feel about the area.”

Through a collaboration with Mouth That Roars, a film production company, they will also receive skills development.

The six participants have been recruited from Immediate Theatre, an organisation working to increase youth engagement in the arts and support and promote young people.

The organisation engages with marginalised and at-risk young people in a variety of youth theatre groups on a weekly basis with the possibility for participants to perform as well as earn qualifications.

The Peer Mentor strand of Immediate’s work strives to redefine the experience of its participants, turning young victims into advocates for change.

Through CHasH, Immediate hopes for that knowledge and experience to not only be valued by younger actors in the group but by local policy makers.

Jo Carter, who founded Immediate 1996, said: “For more than 16 years we have been working on housing estates in Hackney to engage young people creatively in the world around them.

“This unique project enables the work we do with young people to be shared with a national and international audience.”

Immediate also offers young people the chance of working towards a BTEC National Level 2 qualification as a youth worker as well as the Arts Award Gold.

They employ six young people every year with the view to propelling them into further employment.

Recent success stories have seen participants go on to further training at Goldsmith’s as well as employment at The Arcola Theatre and Hackney Play Association.

CHasH participant Monet Morgan, 18,, said: “This project makes me feel liberated.

“I am proving people wrong who thought that the most I could do would be to work at MacDonald’s.

“A few years ago I dropped out of college – now I have my foot in the door of University. I feel appreciated – I am really doing something worthwhile.”