One year ago this week Jerry Daykin, a marketing manager at an East London charity, arranged for Sir Ian McKellen to visit the City Gateway Limehouse Youth Centre; he arrived at the centre as a well regarded actor and left as a pioneer of Hip-Hop Shakespeare. Now Jerry is launching the search for a new face to head up his next crossover project. Sir Ian, himself a local resident to the club, had come down to launch a community art competition but found the enthusiasm of the staff and young people too much to resist.
He said: “What they did there was great. Shakespeare is all based on beat, rhythm and rhyme, and all those things that rappers deal with. I don’t think you should think of places like this as just a way of keeping kids off the streets. Every young person has a right to develop their potential.”
Despite the culture clash Jerry says the Shakespearean actor felt right at home in the clubs hip-hop studio, "Our producer Randy invited him in and he was immediately encouraging the young people on the mic, he didn't take too much persuading to have a go himself! He chose a classic sonnet and it was our idea to put it to a beat. We gave him a CD to take away with him but didn't think too much more of it."
The project however snowballed, from early local coverage it was featured in a Radio 2 debate with rapper Tricky and then picked up around the world. "A Tower Hamlets councillor holidaying in India came back and told us of his huge surprise to read about his local youth club in the Calcutta Times." Jerry added.
When Mobo award winning hip-hop artist Akala and his sister Ms Dynamite wanted to start an educational Hip-Hop project they approached the City Gateway team as established experts in the field and ended up launching a national BBC Blast workshop tour together.
This week Sir Ian is back as Jerry oversees the launch of the charity's latest scheme, to encourage Canary Wharf workers to volunteer locally in their lunch breaks or straight after work. The Lord of the Rings Star felt strongly about the subject "Companies have a duty - they’re lucky to be here, in many ways they’re the outsiders in this community. They can be stuck in all of this new development and around them, if they just looked out of their windows, on the street level there are people who need help through no fault of their own. City Gateway clearly can be the link."
However whilst some people might see bankers and volunteering as chalk and cheese Jerry felt differently: "Most of the companies we work with have well established volunteering schemes and long histories of supporting their communities. I wish I could say this was my new crossover project but really we're just developing ideas that are already there - that's why I'm launching a search for the next big thing!"
Anyone with ideas of radically different ideas they'd like to see come together or who wants to support whatever the next big thing is should e-mail thepressreleased.co.uk@gmail.com, they are particularly interested in any well known personalities willing to give something new a try.
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