BEATFREEKS #teambeatfreeks

A day with #TeamBeatfreeks at the Birmingham Youth Arts Summit

Hello peoples!

On Friday, #TeamBeatFreeks took part in the Birmingham Youth Arts Summit or BYAS, It was also the last day of mine and Marian's work experience placement so it was an overwhelmingly emotional day.

In the morning, BeatFreeks ran workshops for primary school kids about the importance of Arts and what they mean to us. Anisa and Laura performed the poem 'Birmingham' for the group and proceeded to have a rap/ poetry battle (which Anisa won) before really getting to grips with how the arts has shaped peoples lives and what the children most liked about it. It would be an understatement to say that the whole team was shocked by what these year 3 & 5 children came up with. Their ideas were truly inspiring and demonstrated a raw passion for the arts. 

One quote that stuck with me was a year 5 boy who said that 'art is immortal' and I was further impressed and truly gobsmacked when a girl in year 3 said 'art is beautiful even when it's ugly'. So as you can see they got pretty deep. So whenever we heard their light bulb moments we ushered them to the graffiti wall to jot down their ideas.

BeatFreek Grafitti wall at from our workshop sessions.

After a truly eye opening morning all of team Beatfreeks (Anisa, Laura, Aysha, Marian and myself) took a break to prepare before we received the Secondary school pupils. Whilst on break Anisa took the time out to learn how to play the ukulele, which was pretty entertaining, when she was playing it the right way round.  

In the secondary school workshop we created an idea of 'Arts City Central' a Utopian city focusing on arts in any and every way. We got the pupils to build and brainstorm their ideal city that was largely fueled by the arts. When the city was created without including some of the more morose ideas of I quote 'eating dead people everyday', we got Amerah or SoulPoet, dressed as a fed, to come and tell the kids that this no longer existed and the world was now 'bland land'. For this Amerah had to square up to a kid who was literally twice her size, which had the whole room in stitches. But she won so kudos to her. 

Anisa and Laura chillin' at Art City Central 

After, a quick break and twitter reboot we entered to pupils into the 'tigers lare'  

(our ghetto knock off version of dragons den), this got them thinking like entrepreneurs but also as social entrepreneurs as most wanted to create something positive that fed back into the community. Which I think was truly refreshing especially from teens, who are largely regarded and stereotyped as being negative within society and local communities. It just shows how wrong the news is. The groups then pitched their ideas to the rest of the group (which is obviously more nerve racking and intimidating then the real dragons den, seen as there were loads of us). Their ideas were fresh and innovative and later had the whole summit laughing and pulling out their skanking fingers!

Although, before we let them leave, we made them write down a #Change1Thing about Birmingham, and hang it on our washing line, the ideas ranged from wacky and wonderful to gross and inspirational. 

#Change1Thing, What would you change? comment below.

When all workshops were over it was time to wait for the nights debate to start. When in the hall, we sabotaged all the tables by writing #TeamBeatFreeks on all of them, very discretely may I add.

As the evening began we were once again bombarded with the amazing talent that Birmingham has, BOA students took centre stage, SeaSickSoul and Carl Sealeaf performed a news piece and Call Me Unique skatted and sang like her life depended on it, amongst other truly amazing   performances. Then it was time for debating and we were coincidently sat next to a Birmingham City Council representative and strangely enough someone who had contacted BeatFreeks earlier that day for a volunteering opportunity. I know, nuts right!

Throughout the debate many interesting topics and ideas were shared on how Birmingham needs to address issues with how the Arts are dealt with but also the positives of a community that is ever growing. It was so educational but also entertaining to hear from so many people and their different views. I really loved it, a total highlight of the night. Anisa also took to the panel for the final debate, and may I add totally killed it with a speech that had all of us applauding mid sentence, and of course a cheeky BeatFreeks plug or two were involved. 

But all in all, the whole day at Birmingham Youth Arts Summit was a success and truly made for some unforgettable memories, BeatFreeks ruled of course and we met the amazing PolarBear, Brummie poet extraordinaire, who we are now super happy to announce is a Beatfreeks champion, so whoop whoop, and check him out on YouTube if you don't know who he is. I gotta admit he's pretty awesome!

Team Beatfreeks, left to right, Aysha, PolarBear, Zack &Spoz

Anywho, I will have to love you and leave you at that. Don't forget to subscribe to BeatFreeks TV on YouTube to watch our vlogs of the Young Arts Summit and more.

Till Next Time,

PEACE

Aliyah 

#TeamBeatFreeks