Below is the report report and podcast by collaborator Zak Brophy on the Strangers into Citizens Campaign, published on the Time Out blog:

 http://www.timeout.com/london/big-smoke/blog/7696/Strangers_Into_Citizens_march-report.html

We worked together to make a video diary of Halyna, an undocumented Ukranian migrant trying to make her way in the UK: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Ep9XJU_1U1I

Which was used as part of a projection reel at the Bank Holiday Monday march for the Strangers into Citizens campaign in Trafalgar Square on May 11, 2009.

“It took me a while, but the easiest answer was to make a musical based on our lives and experiences,” he says with a beaming smile.

It’s no wonder he’s in fine spirits – the first full-scale production of Scratched Out, The Urban Musical, opens this week at Hammersmith’s Riverside Studios. 

Yet catching Richard in a good mood is hardly unusual.

Slam poetry sensation Dean Atta – who has written the lyrics to Richard’s musical – said it was this fearless positivity that roped him into the project in the first place. 

The story is based on six aspiring musicians, their dreams, and not getting distracted by the hard-knock life.

“He (Richard) is not the type of guy to play it cool,” Dean, says. “He had literally decided that I was going to write the musical before I did!”

It was after a rendition of Dean’s poem Revolution at a gig in Knightsbridge nearly two years ago that Richard knew he’d found his man.

At the time Richard was studying a masters in musical theatre at Mountview Academy, Wood Green. Scratched Out was born as a humble dissertation project. 

“It began because I love theatre and musicals so much (Blood Brothers and Billy Elliot, for example) I just wanted to figure out how to share that buzz with my friends who wouldn’t naturally go see shows like that,” Richard says. 

And as soon as Dean had matched his words to Richard’s beats, the dream was in full swing. 

Casting was held at the Lyric Theatre, where Dean heads the youth writers development scheme, Lyrics @ Lyric. 

The first run – a small scale production during the Lyric’s Youth Takeover Week in July 2008 – completely sold out. 

Thanks to the success, funding from H&F Council; Thames Community and Awards for All poured in to make the present day run at the Riverside possible. 

The key to the show’s success? “There’s nothing cheesy about it,” Dean says. “Typical issues such as guns, drugs, exclusion do feature, but it’s all as real as it gets. You could take the songs out the show and drop them straight on the radio.”

Sharna Longville aka Sloozie, 20, is one such musician who was chosen to keep it real. Never having acted before, the grime singer ended up auditioning for the role of Naomi thanks to a last minute push from her cousin. 

She remembers listening to the other potential ‘Naomi’s’ swap CV stats before the audition and thinking ‘I never got As and Bs, I never went to uni, I’m not cut out for this…’ 

But Dean was so impressed by her lyrics that not only did she land the part, but went on to contribute to the development of the entire piece.

“I’d like to think I’m pretty good, but… she’s just so honest and emotional,” Dean laughs. 

Seeing such accomplished performances from members of the cast who had never acted before was the highlight of the journey for Dean.

The influence the experience has had on Sharna leaves no doubt as to why.

“I used to be so scared to be myself,” she says. “Now, after being forced to pretend to be someone else, I know that it’s ok to change. It’s made me grow up and realise I can be positive, face an audience and speak openly.”

Her new-found communication skills have also helped Sharna when coaching football training sessions near the small estate where she lives in Mitcham. 

“My mum’s very proud, I’m the only gal in a group of boys but I know how to hold my own,” she says. 

But if the music or acting career did take off, would the estates get left behind?

“It’s been hard for my parents and I do feel like I need to achieve something bigger than this,” she says. “But, at the same time, by growing up in the struggle I’m used to the knocks. Maybe if I’d grown up all nice and then trouble were to hit – I don’t know if I’d be able to deal with it.”

For Dean, the most important thing is for schools to be exposed to the show. “This is for young people, by young people,” he says. “I’m at schools doing workshops all the time, listening to what the kids tell me and how they react to what I write.”

On the cusp of taking PGCE training to become a qualified teacher, Dean’s got adapting the national curriculum in sight. To see what all the fuss is about, better catch Scratched Out sooner rather than later. 

• Scratched Out is at the Riverside Studios, Crisp Road, Hammersmith on April 17-18 and 27-30. £12/6. 7.30pm. Call 020 8237 1111. See www.riversidestudios.co.uk
• Fundraiser Gala with performance, auction, dinner, drinks and after-show music by Ayanna Witter-Johnson, Daley and Sloozie is Saturday April 18. £25. Proceeds go to African-Caribbean Leukemia Trust.

Hammersmith has a new cultural heavyweight on its hands. 

Just round the corner from the Apollo and the Riverside Studios is a an unassuming pub where one of London’s finest collectives performs every two months. 

Known for musical and spoken word innovation, the OneTaste Collective had a fairy-tale year in 2008, touring the festivals to rave reviews and selling out Camden’s Jazz Cafe three times in a row. 

Better known names in their 25-strong roster are Portico Quartet and Polarbear, but don’t think for a second the buck stops there. 

“It’s a mind-blowing environment,” says Kate AKA Excentral Tempest, a phenomenal spoken word poet performing on the night. “It pushes you harder when you’re surrounded by people that are more talented than you are.”

She will be joined by equally modest a cappella singer Stacey AKA Stac, who has seen her songs remixed by Bonobo and is currently finishing an EP with Polarbear. 

“There’s a real family atmosphere to our events,” she says, “No pretensions, that’s the best thing about playing in little rooms above pubs.” Catch ‘em here while you can, this incerdible intimacy can’t last forever.

• OneTaste West is at The Distillers, 64 Fulham Palace Rd, on Tuesday April 7. 7.30pm. £8/6 in adv. Call 0208 748 2834. See www.onetaste.co.uk

Intimidating; intoxicating; terrifying – people have tried to put their reactions into words, but nothing compares to standing in the room with the photographs.

Taken by Leah Gordon in Jacmel, southern Haiti, over a period of 13 years, the snapshots feel like a key-hole view to another way of life.

“Haiti is an antidote to the apathy in our society,” Leah says. “There’s a nationwide participation in culture, rather than an elite creating it for it to be consumed.”

TO VIEW A FULL PDF CLICK HERE:

The power of the pictures shows a grassroots performance which effortlessly eclipses so many of London’s big-budget shows.

Taken during pre-Lenten Mardi Gras street carnival, their simplicity makes a mockery of highfalutin’ shows such as Alexander McQueen’s latest collaboration at Sadler’s Wells.

“Performance is not allocated to actors, it’s a way of life,” Leah, an aspiring photographer since the age of seven, explains.

From the politicians to the poorest, in Haiti there isn’t an exclusive hierarchy when it comes to self expression.”

Tied in with the influence of the Vodou religion, carnival is a particular time of transformation. 

Take Madame Lasiren, for example. She is a he (Andre Ferner, 59 years old) who wears a dress; hat; mask; necklace and gloves to carnival because Lasiren is a fish and ‘she has to disguise herself as a woman to be at Mardi Gras’.

All the text which accompanies the photographs defy expectations, especially in a country which is generally associated with images of destitution.

“In Creole they call it ‘monte chwal’, which translates as ‘the spirit is riding you like a horse’,” Leah says.

“Fiction becomes as strong as reality and the stories that arise are wonderful.”

From Ellesmere Port, Merseyside, Leah, 47, says she didn’t chose photography for the adventures it would bring, but that encountering Haiti has been the best thing to have come from following her craft.

Shot on black and white negatives with a Rollieflex medium format camera, Leah refuses to be a part of the digital revolution.

“The universe is built on spherical shapes, not squares. Film, at its most minute, is spherical in shape, whereas pixels are square,” she says.

Whichever way you see the world, make sure you take a glimpse through Leah’s eyes when looking for inspiration.

● Leah Gordon, Kanaval, runs at Photofusion 17A Electric Lane, Brixton, until April 24. Free. Tues-Sat 10am-6pm. See www.photo fusion.org and www.leahgordon.co.uk

● Leah Gordon talk and screening with John Cussans, author of Voodo Terror: (mis)representations of voodoo and western cultural anxieties, is Tuesday, April 21, at 7.15pm.

● The Book of Vodou: Charms and Rituals to Empower Your Life, by Leah Gordon, is available from Barron’s Educational Series

Trapped.

Not free to return home, nor free to make a new one. It’s the situation that hundreds of thousands of undocumented migrants face in the UK today.

If ever you were tempted to discount their claims as bogus attempts to sponge off the state, a photography exhibition now on at the Host Gallery in Islington could change your mind.

“It’s been the most emotionally draining project of my life,” says ex-Telegraph photojournalist Abbie Trayler-Smith, who has reported in disaster zones from Haiti to Zimbabwe.

TO VIEW A FULL PDF CLICK HERE: 2009_03_20_li_asylum

Working for the past twelve months with journalist Diane Taylor, they are now ready to reveal dozens of untold stories from the men and women who live in a legal limbo here in the UK.

“Even after a day or two listening to some of their stories I felt like I had nothing left in me,” Abbie says, “To imagine that this is what they have gone through for years is incredible, it’s amazing that they haven’t given up on life.”

One such story is that of 20-yaer-old Thania, from the Democratic Republic of Congo.

She spent a year sleeping rough Euston Station when she arrived in the UK in September 2004. Her poverty became so unbearable that she turned to begging and prostitution. “I couldn’t think properly because I was so hungry,” she told Abbie and Diane. What she was running from was worse.

Congolese soldiers had murdered her parents and after being raped she was forced to watch her brother burned to death by having a tyre set alight around his neck.

Thania escaped, but her asylum claim upon arrival in the UK was refused (denying her the right to work) until two months ago – nearly five years later.

“It’s been a dark journey of discovery for me,” says Abbie. “But moments such as Thania being granted ‘leave to remain’ are pockets of joy.”

Now Thania has the right to work; power to avoid exploitation by unscrupulous employees; access to medical care and the ability to pay tax.

Abbie is the first to acknowledge that not all asylum claims are genuine, but when faced with stories such as Thania’s she says: “It’s written in the scars on their bodies and you can see it in their eyes.”

London Mayor Boris Johnson told BBC’s Panorama last week that ‘If it does look as though they (illegal immigrants) could make a contribution to society, we should regularize their status,” confirming the changing tide in re-evaluating the laws which govern the 300,000-750,000 undocumented migrants estimated to be living in the UK.

Proposals led by community-based campaign groups such as Strangers into Citizens are pushing the possibility of granting a one-off amnesty for undocumented migrants who have lived in the UK for more than four years.

Criteria include a two-year probation period; an English test; a clean criminal record and references from employers and members of the community.

The details are in the balance, but the main aim is to deal with an issue which is not going away.

All parties accept it would cost billions of pounds and take decades to successfully prosecute and deport all of the UKs undocumented migrants.

So far 93 MPs are backing the Strangers into Citizens-led re-think and an awareness march is organised for Trafalgar Square on May 4.

“We claim to be a civilized society, but if we don’t take care of the vulnerable among us, how can we?” Abbie asks. If you want to find out more, this is the time.

Still Human, Still Here, photographs by Abbie Trayler-Smith, text by Diane Taylor, is at the Host Gallery, 1 Honduras Street, Islington, until April 4. Free. Mon-Fri 10am-6pm, Sat 11am-4pm. Call 020 7253 2770. See www.hostgallery.co.uk

For the Host Gallery’s sister photojournalism publication and website see www.foto8.com

To donate and/or see Nick Broomfield’s film on asylum in the UK see www.amnesty.org.uk/asylum

To help lobby the government to review asylum policy see www.strangerintocitizens.co.uk

To see the BBC’s March 17 Panorama report on asylum see www.bbc.co.uk/programmes/b006t14n

For the Home Ofiice’s stated policy see www.ukba.homeoffice.gov.uk/asylum/

DVDs are never the best format in which to experience live music gigs.

Even extraordinarily beautiful touring films such as Sigur Ros’s Heima struggle to do the sound justice.

The problem is, the better the music, the harder it is for the filmic experience to live up to it. 

TO VIEW FULL PDF CLICK HERE

Simon Green, aka Bonobo, therefore suffers from the DVD music/film problem more than most.

In the Bonobo – Live@Koko DVD, he takes his drifting, electronic melodies one step further by assembling live drums; keyboard; guitar; sampler; singer; saxophonist; himself on bass and a three-piece string section.

The resulting sound is majestic, and the interview footage spliced in gives a glimpse into Simon’s personal and professional life.

But unless you are a die-hard fan, perhaps best to seek it out live – the way any gig worth its salt should be seen.

•  Fancy a road trip? Bonobo will play live at Exeter Phoenix, Bradninch Place, Gandy Street, Exeter, on Saturday, March 21. 8.30pm–1am. £13. Over 14s only.
• Call 01392 667 080. See www.2020vibraphonic.co.uk and www.myspace.com/sibonobo
• Bonobo Live @ Koko – DVD out March 24, £12.99. See www.ninjatune.net

Every year some of the capitals best cultural initiatives slip through the net – don’t let this be one of them.

The 11th International Human Rights Festival is at cinemas all over town, pick your favourite and get ready to face up to some of the world’s most pressing news. With the directors of the films present at most screenings for Q&A sessions too, there’s no better chance to find out how to fight for the cause.

 TO VIEW A FULL PDF CLICK HERE

Reza was just 16-years-old, but he had already hit a crossroads. For taking a picture and telling the story of an exploited market worker in his school magazine, the Savak - Iran’s equivalent of the KGB - decided to pay him a visit. He was told that if he were to publish another magazine, both his life and that of his parents would be over. 

TO VIEW A FULL PDF CLICK HERE

“My father’s words we’re what motivated me to carry on,” the 57-year-old father of two now says. “I knew I would be in trouble, but I just had to take care not to be caught to soon,” he says. 

Fortunately he only lost three years of his life to his next encounter with the law, while studying architecture (photography wasn’t an option) at the University of Tehran. Anonymous photographs of impoverished people living on the outskirts of the city kept popping up overnight on the university walls. It didn’t take long to deduce the culprit and six months of solitary confinement with ‘days and nights of torture’ set the pace for the only three years in Reza’s life spent without a camera. 

“It did not break me,” he says. But the French lilt on his pan-Middle Eastern accent gives away the next punishment for his passion.

Once freed from prison in 1978 Reza faced Iran on the cusp of revolution. He returned to study, but while looking out of his university window he saw tanks open fire on students protesting in the street. “In amongst them was a student with a camera, running,” he says. “I spent the next  three days photographing and after thirty years I still haven’t been back.” Back to an office, nor back to Iran. Commissioned by Newsweek to cover the insurgency from the inside, Reza fell from popularity with the Ayatollah - who overthrew the Shah in 1979 - and has not seen his native land since 1981.  

Afghanistan, Armenia, Azerbaijan, Lebanon, France and countries all over Asia and Africa have become his second home. A new book, Reza War + Peace, has been released to commemorate 30 years of the journey, but Reza assures there are at least twenty more years to come. “I have never felt nothing, every moment is full of passion and love,” he says of his life behind the lens. His ability to empathise with exile, for example, has helped him cover life in the Rwandan refugee camps of the mid 1990s.  Yet despite his exposure to the greatest disasters, his style is far from sensationalist. “A mother’s eyes say more than the body of a dead son,” he explains, adding that his projects also aim to look at both sides of the coin. “Dancing, playing and relaxing can be happening in the same city, at the same time.” 

The results have moved many who have seen the exhibition which accompanies the book-launch to tears. Currently in Caens, France, we can get a sneak preview at Paddington’s Frontline Club next week where Reza will be reading from his book. 

“So many times I have taken the photo without knowing if it is properly focussed or not because of the tears in my eyes,” he says. This impact he manages to share with viewers, as well as Aina - his multi-media training agency for women and children in countries where freedom of press is under threat - are Reza’s greatest professional pride.

Personally, however, it is his and his wife Rachel’s 15-year-old son Delazad and 11-year-old daughter Djanan that are top of the tree. 

Currently all together in Sicily for French spring holidays (Paris is home), it’s by no means your average beach holiday. 

Rachel is a novelist, who combines her skill to compliment Reza’s images with text. Reza is working on a community photo project in Librino, one of the island’s poorest new town-style developments. Delazad is working out a way to get to General Secretary of the UN and Djanan her path to be an actress and humanitarian.

With all that he’s witnessed, Reza still believes a bright day might yet await our children. “One day I am sure students of the future will look back and marvel at what barbarians we were,” he says. “If one part of the human body is suffering, then all the body will suffer. We need to wake up and remember that the history of humanity is progress.”

Reza, War and Peace - 30 Years on the Front Lines is at The Frontline Club, 13 Norfolk Place, Paddington, on Tuesday, March 2. £10. 7pm. Call 020 7479 8950. See www.frontlineclub.com

www.ainaworld.org

www.webistan.com

www.memorial-caen.fr/portail/index.php

Revealing passages from his upcoming fourth album, A Special Kind of Fool – and any range of thoughts from his verbal variations – the Mercury Award nominated rapper will be taking to the stage for one night only. 

To view the full pdf click here

A veteran of the spoken word circuit, ‘rapping translates easily’,he has teamed up with consistently superb poetry-pushers Apples and Snakes to take over the top floor of the Soho Theatre.  “All my stuff is just honesty,” says the Camberwell-based Londoner of Nigerian descent. But beware of expectations. 

“It’s not a brutal,put-your-nose-out- of-joint honesty. If you’re looking for that angry rapper,that political one,or the softly-spoken PM Dawn type, you’re not going to find it.” 

It’s a zero tolerance for stereotypes that’s drawn fans from all walks of life. His primary purpose is to  entertain, but the desire to shift the boundaries,little by little,that black artists face in the mainstream UK music industry is never far from his lips. 

Supported by hip-hop/poetry crossover upstarts Ben Mellor,MC Angel,Michael Frearson and host Saran Green,one thing you can expect is to get more connected to each other. 

“Our parents wouldn’t have known each other,” says Ty. “It’s the power of words and music that have brought us together.”   

Ty performs at the Soho Theatre, 21 Dean Street on Wednesday, February 25. 8pm. £8/6. Call 0870 4296 883. See www.sohotheatre.com

“The concept form this film began with two moments of beauty. During a phone interview with Deanna – the UK’s new Ferrago Slam Poetry Champion – in spring 2008, I asked if she would recite one of her poems to me down the phone. Love Ambitions came unashamedly down the wire from her university in Birmingham and a wave of emotion broke on the back of my neck. Months later, during a Tiata Fahodzi play at Islington’s Almeida Theatre, I was distracted by a shadow-boxer stuck out on the far right of the stage. I’d seen captioned performances before, but nothing like this. Jacqui was in tears by the end, so deeply had she fallen into the characters she was interpreting for the deaf members of the audience. Static words could never do either talent justice, so I enrolled on a two-week intensive course at the Documentary Film Makers Group in Dalston and approached Deanna to write a poem about misunderstanding for Jacqui to interpret. Only when Jacqui hands moved would Deanna’s words be heard, putting us all in the position of a deaf person. The rest would be captioned.

Camera: Amanda McDowell
Lighting: Charlie Cattrall
Online editor: Danny Naldrett
Music: Luca Marziale
With thanks to: Simon Aeppli, Dylan Howitt, The Riverside Studios, De
and Jacqui.