Code1 Community Group

Art and spoken word workshops with elder residents living in sheltered accommodation and the local community

Bevali Mckenzie (Community Arts Producer with Code1) told us: Through Code1 we work hard to put back into the community that we were born into, and this project focused on working with residents age 50+ living in the Bedale House sheltered housing accommodation in Haringey. I live in this diverse community myself and my mum was from Windrush, so I know how important it is to get the stories of Windrush out there.

As part of this project we’ve delivered weekly art and spoken word workshops; hosted two Windrush Day lunches; and coordinated an immersive Windrush exhibition. Across the course of the project, residents grew in confidence to put on their own spoken word night and they all came prepared like a big theatre show - one of them even rapped! We produced a high-quality vintage newsletter as a souvenir filled with photos of the residents and anecdotes of their individual personal and collective progress. With a remaining £300 funding we took the residents to watch a public theatre show, a black celebration.

Many residents have not left their home for leisure or entertainment in years; and we supported each other to move through anxieties relating to travel and social spaces. They absolutely loved the outing, show and socialising with the audience and artists. We’ve worked closely with students aged 14-18 from Haringey Learning Partnership – they came to contribute their creativity to workshops with us, supported recording podcasts and shared their stories with the elders. They worked well together across generations and wanted to look after each other.

The young people think Windrush was hundreds of years away, they cannot believe they are talking to someone that is a Windrush person. Having the young people and the elders together took away some of that timeline, and now they can all extend the Windrush story outwards.

Through this project we have had so many informative and inspiring conversations. We were able to give people a platform to laugh, to joke, to celebrate, to feel empowered, to feel part of a community.

All the authentic voices and the stories that came out gave everyone an understanding of each other. Listening to our forgotten elders and young people is so important, and we’ve seen a really good outcome that people come out of themselves through the conversation. To have an elder person who is 80-odd say ‘you don’t want to hear what I have to say’ and to tell them ‘Yes we do’ is so validating for them. We realised that coming here on Windrush was a transition, but people have lots of transitions in life. We talked about people arriving from Ukraine, and Poland. Leaving where they’ve come from and going somewhere else. People understand that emotion.

For the young people the transition to secondary school feels like going to another country! We labelled our exhibition ‘empathy’ because we can all empathise with one another.

This project brought out that we are amazingly creative when given grassroots money. It does bring tears to my eyes that Near Neighbours wanted to fund our grassroots project. The young people and the elders that we worked with were all very diverse, but to have all of them speaking about a black issue was a joy. It was also a joy to be able to properly pay black artists, who often have barriers to face with their careers in the art world. It is important not to just disappear when you are empowering people, so now the funding is over we’ll keep powering on doing whatever we can.

We’ll keep in contact with Haringey Learning Partnership and the foodbank and St Paul’s Church. They will all be coming to our Christmas party! We are also seeking more funding to extend our voices work further.