Thoughts about the recent shocking statistic that over 50% of young black men under 24 are unemployed - What is business doing about this - it isn't just a matter of liberal bleeding hearts is it?
What are we doing about it at Arc?
We have been making new theatre for over 25 years, with a particular emphasis on creating compelling narratives about contemporary themes. Our practice is driven by a belief that the visceral experience of powerful drama channelled through archetypal but real characters has a way of connecting with core human issues and experiences. This work is focused especially on issues directly affecting young people, communities and organisations in the 21st Century. We are led by what is happening in society, by zeitgeist and the urgency to connect with the multitude of complex challenges, and conflicts facing young people as they seek to circumnavigate an every changing landscape of experience. Many of these challenges are driven by economics and experiences of education, which so often sadly and often unintentionally reinforce low expectations and aspiration.
Over the past 25 years our attention has been drawn to issues of equality and opportunity and how these play out in terms of justice, fairness and aspiration. Drama has the potential to transport audiences to other places and times. It provokes emotional responses, which in turn elicit meaningful dialogue and new perspectives, similar in some ways to getting absorbed in a good book. The difference is that drama offers a shared experience through inviting its audience to participate in a collective journey in an altered space.
Though our experience of performing drama for young people in hundreds of schools throughout the UK, and particularly in inner city London, we have been exercised by the noticeable disaffection of young men, and in particular young black men, This is evidenced in the shocking figures recently released by The Office for National Statistics which says that unemployment for young black male jobseekers has risen from 28.8% in 2008 to 55.9% in the last three months of 2011, twice the rate for young white people.
This shocking statistic demands a response from all sectors of society, not least from business, which have influence and power in many cases sadly greater than governments to effect change. To date many have turned a blind eye to this, colluding with racial and gender stereotypes in spite of often well-intentioned and committed policies and strategies.
All too infrequently do these translate into meaningful and sustained action that remove real barriers and open new ways of doing business. This is not and issue of liberal bleeding hearts, but rather one of collective responsibility. We know that many individuals in business do all sorts of great things, mentoring, volunteering and supporting through their CSR programmes etc; but often sadly there seems to be a disconnect between this and the real business impact.
Pact by Clifford Oliver was conceived as a piece of drama, which would play out some of these themes. The play emerged from listening to many young men and women talk about their sense of exclusion, their lack of belief in the possibility of meaningful and productive work, and the knock-on effect on their future lives. At the sharp end of this we see the ever-increasing emergence of criminal gangs which appear to offer alternative lifestyles and to which young men in particular are drawn as a means of coping with fractured families and economic deprivation. The need to belong is paramount here, and we see boys and girls as young as eight groomed by “olders” to turn a fast buck through dealing drugs and weapons etc and which enables them to enjoy the material things that everyone else seems to have. Why resist the ability to earn £1000 in a day when you believe that the world has nothing to offer you but a future condemned to poverty? This issue belongs to all of us, and the future of our collective means of building wealth and well being is contingent on us doing something about it. We fail to do so at our peril.
And so Pact is a story about an intelligent young man of 19 who has achieved 3 good A levels from an inner-city “sink school” and through a supportive family and a couple of encouraging teachers has gone to university. He embraces this window of opportunity, notices that in Sheffield he is no longer regularly stopped and searched by the Police, and he can learn in a conducive and safe setting.
However, in spite of this, he still has to face the reality of coming home to his gang ridden estate during the holidays. And here he still belongs to a peer group of other young people, many of who have little hope and who spend their unemployed days dealing and engaging in inter-gang aggression, which often leads to revenge and murder. Startlingly, many young men tell us that they expect to be dead or in prison by the time they reach 25.
Pact makes a modest attempt to bring these issues into consciousness, to confront explicitly these complex realities and to offer space to open dialogue and encourage action,
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