Can Art Save Us?

Stand Up for Sit Down AJ!

AJ O’Neil is an internationally recognised West End, TV and Film performer. He’s a dancer, choreographer and long-standing teacher of the famous Pineapple Dance Studios, home to some of the world’s most famous stars. His fitness classes have been listed in British Vogue, Cosmopolitan and Timeout as their ‘Best Pics’ and viewed 100s of 1000s times online. He was the personal trainer for dancers on ITV's, Dance, Dance, Dance and he choreographed and presented Pop Up Popstar for the Irish national broadcaster RTÉ. He's choreographed television dancethons and dance virals, getting British celebrities like Olympic gold medallist Tom Daley, multi-million record selling singer, Louise Rednapp and TV and Radio presenter, Dermot O’Leary, all dancing. His has numerous TV credits and has worked on and appeared in ads including Dior, Nintendo and Puma. His theatre credits include Chicago in the West End and the European and West End Premiere of ‘A Man of No Importance,’ and he played Jamie in the Irish premier of The Last Five Years.  But, after all that glitter, here comes the real shine. AJ gets everyone dancing. He’s also known as Sit Down AJ because of his inclusive work  and his poptastic cardio sessions, are met with an outpouring of gratitude, thank yous and love from people struggling with exclusion. He’s also bringing new joy into the special educational needs space. We talk about a life changing accident, putting low self-esteem under the spotlight in more ways than one and how to flourish.
Series Audio Editor - Courtesy of Joey Quan.
Series Music - Courtesy of Barry J. Gibb
Closed Captions are added to all interviews in this series. Read only, text versions of every interview can also be found here: https://www.canartsaveus.com
Discover AJ:
https://www.movewithaj.com/
https://www.ajoneill.co.uk/home

Speak Your Excellence - The Word Came First.

Shirley May is an acclaimed poet, writer and an Honorary Fellow of the Royal Society of literature. She is also CEO and Artistic Director of Young Identity, Manchester's premier spoken word collective in the UK. In 2006, Shirley founded the Inner Voice, a voluntary Youth Arts Project that 16 dedicated years later, has become Young Identity, a literature and performance arts charity. Young Identity now has the prestigious status of being a national portfolio organisation with the UK Arts Council. In other words, Young Identity is recognized as a leader both in their field and in our collective national arts. Shirley's work is described as "blazing with emotion, challenging all the senses." We talk about her work responding to pain and pride in the experience of migration, her Jamaican heritage and in African history. We start with how one day "she woke up with a poem in her mouth," how "the word was first" and developing the "risk of excellence," in marginalised youth today. Young Identity is important legacy work that talks to truth.
Series Audio Editor - Courtesy of Joey Quan.
Series Music - Courtesy of Barry J. Gibb
Closed Captions are added to all interviews in this series. Read only, text versions of every interview can also be found here: https://www.canartsaveus.com
Discover Shirley May here:
www.youngidentity.org/   
https://www.shirleyannemay.co.uk/ 

Pain, Poetry and a Jamaican Born Nigerian Princess.

Princess Arinola Adegbite a.k.a. P. A. Bitez is a British Jamaican-born Nigerian poet, she’s a spoken word artist, a songwriter and filmmaker whose artistic expression is described as social activism and spiritual healing. At 16, she published her debut poetry collection 'Soft Tortures.' At 17, she won Slambassadors, a national poetry competition and by 2020, she was one of six finalists of the BBC Words First talent scheme, searching for the Best Spoken Word Poets in the UK. In 2021 she was awarded Manchester Creative of The Year at The Manchester Culture Awards and she has won a number of successful commissions too. Currently Princess Arinola, is a member of Young Identity, Manchester’s Premier Spoken Word Collective and in early 2023, we can look forward to her Afrofuturistic EP Vintage Destiny. We talk about self-actualisation and dysmorphia, poetry defined by proximity to blackness, page poets and spoken word artists, editing versus erasure, love and loss and whether Shakespeare and Tupac were the same.  
If you're lucky enough to be in Manchester (UK), Saturday, 18th March, 2023, head to Manchester Central Library from Midday to 2pm. FREE, Princess Arinola will be part of a live performance, 'Rehearsal Methods,' by Jade Montserrat. We support #free and #accessforall at Can Art Save Us?
Series Audio Editor - Courtesy of Joey Quan.
Series Music - Courtesy of Barry J. Gibb
Closed Captions are added to all interviews in this series. Read only, text versions of every interview can also be found here: https://www.canartsaveus.com
Discover Princess Arinola here 'On the Team': https://www.youngidentity.org/

Partition, Silence and Poetry. A British-Pakistani Poet Speaks Up.

Manchester based poet Qudsia Akhtar is already recognised as an important new voice for her generation, her debut collection of poems, 'Khamoshi' (Silence), is out now, published by Verve Poetry Press. She is also highly commended in the Forward Book of Poetry, 2023, considered the indispensable annual guide to contemporary poetry. Qudsia reflects modern Britain as a British-Pakistani writer. She talks about the noise of cultural duality as well as the silence that builds inside generations of migrant women. Her soft and gentle voice doesn't betray the histories of massacres, genocides, patriarchy, colonial legacies and Islamophobia. We talk about gruesome truths uncovered by the arts, creativity, self-expression and speaking up to demand justice for those who can't. Illustrated with readings by Qudsia throughout.
Series Audio Editor - Courtesy of Joey Quan.
Series Music - Courtesy of Barry J. Gibb
Closed Captions are added to all interviews in this series. Read only, text versions of every interview can also be found here: https://www.canartsaveus.com
Discover Qudsia Akhtar here: https://www.couldseeher.com/
 

Holding the Holocaust in a Poetic Heart.

Adam Kammerling is a former, UK slam poet champion who has since become an inter-disciplinary artist combining his innovative poetry with theatre, dance and music. He embraces collaboration, risk and experimentation and his poetry creates movement both on and off the page. His debut poetry collection, Seder, is a National Jewish Book Awards Finalist. Adam's collection explores his Jewish heritage, inter-generational trauma and his deeply personal visit to Auschwitz. Please be sure to listen to him recite the poem Orange, orange, orange, in this podcast. We talk about his creative journey from punk and metal bands to slam poetry to inter-disciplinary performances of his poems today. We talk about trauma, the holocaust, his family and memory. "It's a strange feeling to reach for memory and hold nothing." We talk about male identity distorted by violence and confused courage and his creative workshops with homeless affected people and looked after children. Adam is a compassionate soul with a very deep and "shared root." His  theatre work has been reviewed as ‘dazzling brilliance,’ his rap as 'unpretentious' and his work with young people in foster care as 'sensational.' 
Published on January 25th, 2023, Adam is headlining on January 27th at the Holocaust Memorial Day, in Wrexham and his website link is below.
Series Audio Editor - Courtesy of Joey Quan.
Series Music - Courtesy of Barry J. Gibb
Closed Captions are added to all interviews in this series. Read only, text versions of every interview can also be found here: https://www.canartsaveus.com
Discover Adam Kammerling here: https://adamkammerling.co.uk/

Irish identity, Pilgrimage, Partition, Pain and Poetry.

Cherry Smyth is an Irish writer and poet who lives in London. In 2022 Cherry was nominated as a Fellow for the Royal Society of Literature and she is Associate Professor in Creative and Critical Writing at the University of Greenwich. Critically acclaimed, Cherry has had four poetry collections published and a debut novel, Hold Still. Her current work, If the River is Hidden, is a collaboration with Craig Jordan Baker. This has also been developed for performance with the flautist Eimear McGeown, one of the world's most versatile exponents of both the classical and Irish flute. If the River is Hidden, is a shared pilgrimage, over 8 days, Cherry Smyth and Craig Jordan Baker walk the length of the River Bann, Northern Ireland’s longest river. This hybrid work of prose and poetry, is a deeply personal, journey between friends. With backgrounds from each side of the sectarian divide, they explore together their Irish identity, of belonging and not belonging, of the Troubles, trauma and truth. This is by no means an easy pilgrimage and we talk about the pain of partition, of bombings, the Irish famine, deep personal losses but also of compassion, connection and landscape as coming home.
Discover the musical composition by flautist Eimear McGeown, specially commissioned to accompany If the River is Hidden.
https://www.epoquepress.com/cherry-smyth-craig-jordan-baker-if-the-river-is-hidden
Discover Cherry Smyth here: https://www.cherrysmyth.com/
Edit - Courtesy of Katherine Wiley.
Series Music - Courtesy of Barry J. Gibb
Closed Captions are added to all interviews in this series. Read only, text versions of every interview can also be found here: https://www.canartsaveus.com

Follow the Hobo Poet for Unconditional Love.

Tom Delahunt, the hobo poet, is an award-winning academic and an advanced nurse practitioner with years of experience in intensive and emergency care. In 2019 he was awarded Most Innovative Teacher of the Year, by the prestigious Times Higher Education Awards, this was in recognition of his use of poetry to support nursing students dealing with trauma. Tom created the blog Poetic Nursing Heart and he also advocates creating a safe space for neurodiversity in education. He says “poetry fuels my hopes and aspirations for inclusion and a rise in educational wonder.” Tom’s complex dyslexia was diagnosed as an adult and he attributes his survival at school to his autistic tendencies navigating what he describes as the ‘mechanistic and impersonal system that is school.’ We talk about, trauma, addiction, neuro-diversity, philosophies of serenity and pessimism and ultimately love. His new children’s book, The Wandering Lamb, is about unconditional love and acceptance. And then, there's The Butterfly Farmer... Ready to fly?
Series Audio Editor - Courtesy of Joey Quan.
Series Music - Courtesy of Barry J. Gibb
Closed Captions are added to all interviews in this series. Read only, text versions of every interview can also be found here: https://www.canartsaveus.com
Discover Tom Delahunt here: https://www.linkedin.com/in/tom-delahunt-71a1559a/
 

The Courage and Craft of Two Poets.

Both BBC Words First Finalists, Billie Meredith is a poet and performer and Saf-S2E is a poet and rapper and they are active members of Young Identity. Recognised as some of the UK’s best emerging talent, they are involved in the Cities Untold project, a partnership between Young Identity, the Manchester Literature Festival and Danish literature festivals. Their commissions will be inspired by the secrets and untold narratives of a city. Saf-S2E also has an album out now, Ink is Blood and Billie's theatre work has been reviewed as brilliant in the Adhesion of Love, written by multi-award winning playwright Stephen Hornby. Billie played Walt Whitman, America's 'father of free verse.' We talk about destiny, poverty, fear, developing craft, Manchester and Africa and ask whose industrial revolution was it? With so much creative and innovative work coming out of Young Identity, this is their cultural revolution and we should probably take Saf-S2E's poetic advice, ‘Expect the Unexpected.’
Series Audio Editor - Courtesy of Joey Quan.
Series Music - Courtesy of Barry J. Gibb
Closed Captions are added to all interviews in this series. Read only, text versions of every interview can also be found here: https://www.canartsaveus.com
Discover Billie Meredith and Saf-S2E here: www.youngidentity.org/ 
Discover Saf-S2E's album, Ink is Blood, here: https://open.spotify.com/album/08GlLcmCeC4arevzbtDZhW

From the Caribbean to Hackney, from Struggle to the Stage.

Dr Michael McMillan is an artist, author, playwright and curator. His plays and performance pieces have been produced by the Royal Court Theatre, Channel 4, BBC Radio 4 Drama and across the UK. He’s a Visiting Professor of Creative Writing at the University of the Arts, London and an Associate Lecturer, teaching Cultural & Historical Studies at the London College of Fashion. Michael was born to immigrant parents from St Vincent and the Grenadines and his work explores family, identity and generation in a migrant context. His curation and installation of a 1970s West Indian Front Room at the Geffrye Museum had more than 35, 000 visitors and has since become a permanent exhibition at the now Museum of the Home. A new iteration of this 1970s interior was recently included at Tate Britain’s landmark exhibition; “Life Between Islands,” exploring Caribbean-British art over four generations. Amongst the 5 star reviews, The Guardian described the exhibition as ”a mind-altering portrait of British Caribbean life through art.”  We talk about the significance of the Windrush generation, the struggle behind rich cultural exchange, the political fear of art, the vital integrity of an artist, courage when your identity is made a target and the experience that changed Michael's life when he was only 16. Michael is a true educator.
Series Audio Editor - Courtesy of Joey Quan.
Series Music - Courtesy of Barry J. Gibb
Images: The Museum of the Home
Closed Captions are added to all interviews in this series. Read only, text versions of every interview can also be found here: https://www.canartsaveus.com
Discover Dr. Michael McMillan's Front Room here: 
https://www.museumofthehome.org.uk/whats-on/rooms-through-time/a-front-room-in-1976/
 
 
 

Mischief, merriment and inclusive movement.

Daryl Beeton is a kind of acrobatic superhero. He flies on top of sway poles which includes 25 meters across London's Olympic Stadium. H’s trekked 228 miles across Nicaragua, filmed by the BBC, requiring armed soldiers due to the dangers of bandits and kidnappers. He also performs with the trapeze and could probably hang upside down longer than Batman and he's the creator of joyful and highly imaginative, inclusive theatre. Daryl Beeton creates accessible theater for everyone. He's a performer with a disability and he shows the joy of creating alternative and imaginative ways of performing. If you want to see how many ways a wheelchair can spin, striking, acrobatic shapes, and unexpected choreographies, he's your man. We talk about social disability, taking risks as part of exploring friendship and self-development, owning your identity and not being mis-represented, pushing boundaries and expectations, with plenty of mischief, merriment and fun.
Assistant Audio Editor - Enric Thier
Series Music - Courtesy of Barry J. Gibb
Closed Captions are added to all interviews in this series. Read only, text versions of every interview can also be found here: https://canartsaveus.com/
Discover Daryl Beeton: https://www.darylandco.com/