Book contents
- Frontmatter
- Contents
- Acknowledgements
- Foreword
- Introduction
- PART I The Inconvenient Truth: Poverty is Real
- PART II Turning the screw on poor people: shame, stigma and cementing of a toxic poverty narrative
- PART III Flipping the Script: Challenging the Narrative war on the Poor
- Notes
- Selected Further Reading
- Index
9 - New Generation: Young People Writing Their own Script
Published online by Cambridge University Press: 03 March 2021
- Frontmatter
- Contents
- Acknowledgements
- Foreword
- Introduction
- PART I The Inconvenient Truth: Poverty is Real
- PART II Turning the screw on poor people: shame, stigma and cementing of a toxic poverty narrative
- PART III Flipping the Script: Challenging the Narrative war on the Poor
- Notes
- Selected Further Reading
- Index
Summary
“When you’re poor, you don't see yourself as poor, until you realise there are many more people much more privileged than you.”
Young apprentice, 16, LondonLost and confused
Having to find my own way growing up
I was told I was equal to everyone else
But soon realising my upbringing was a little bit messed up
Because of this I have a lot to prove
I’ve been born into disadvantage
But I’m determined to take what I have
And turn it into an ad-vantage
The only way is up from here
I can only win
I can only succeed
And if I fall down, I’ll get up and fight back again
Hard times prepare you for a tough world
I’ll get rid of all the labels
The ones society puts on people who grow up on benefits
And the ones that I’ve given myself in my head
The only way is up
I’ve got only one life
Extract: by young beatboxer, Luke, Battersea Arts Centre,
London, 2018, original beatbox composition about growing
up with poverty stigma for Project Twist-It
Pushing open the heavy soundproof doors to the auditorium at the Gulbenkian Theatre in Canterbury, England, in December 2018, it took a moment for me to register through the thick darkness that there were people on stage. A rehearsal was under way and a group of young beatboxers from London, the Battersea Arts Centre's Beatbox Academy, were running through a soundcheck for a performance they were to give that evening. Mics were being tapped, levels and lighting checked, and physical positions on stage mapped out.
Like scores of other young teenagers scattered around the theatre building that day, they had given up their Saturday to work together to explore ways to ‘smash poverty stigma’.
From 9am, as part of a PTI collaboration with the youth tech organisation ThinkNation, teams of young people had been beavering away with volunteer mentors from across business, technology and the arts in workshops to come up with their own ideas for how to challenge the stigma and shame that comes with being poor – and especially the sort of shaming that impacts on young people from families that might be struggling.
- Type
- Chapter
- Information
- The Shame GameOverturning the Toxic Poverty Narrative, pp. 251 - 271Publisher: Bristol University PressPrint publication year: 2020