It was unexpectedly therapeutic

I can remember this building being a nightclub that I think was called The Old Fire Station still, and it was kind of the place you would go if you couldn't get in anywhere else! Maybe there's parallels to be drawn there! At some point, I guess it changed from being a nightclub into an art centre. My first memories of doing anything here would be when I first started getting into youth work around 2009. When I was running the music project at Ark-T centre, I remember coming to a couple of workshops or training sessions run by a music organisation called Readipop, that was around music facilitation, working with youth and community. Ark-T used to do a quarterly showcase and every other one was here at the theatre, and the OFS ones were always the ones I looked forward to. I always felt I had support with them, 'cos I'd never put on gigs in a professional setting like that before. My first experience of performing in a theatre show was also at OFS when I was working for the Leys Community Development Initiative, doing a project called The Journey. We'd work with young people to write and rehearse this theatre show. We wanted a central Oxford venue, and I think we did two or three nights of that show here? Again, all the staff were super supportive and welcoming.

It was maybe the only place in the centre of Oxford that had a real community focus, and the only space in the centre of town I felt was safe to bring young people to do creative stuff. Most of my life I've felt like an outsider, particularly in the city centre. I grew up in the Leys, and I've lived in the Leys for 30 years or so, so the vast majority of my life in Oxford, I felt like an outsider in the city centre. I guess in my early career as an artist, probably those feelings extended somewhat to OFS as well, it was maybe a place that didn't want me? I guess as an artist, I maybe felt that I wasn't good enough, or I wasn't seen as good enough to be an artist involved with OFS. I can't really speak about how it is outside of Oxford, but here the community sector has a white, middle-class vibe, you know?

Maybe the artists I saw being embraced were of a particular taste or were in a particular niche that I felt wasn't my niche - maybe it was my perception - it felt like there's only room for one minority artist at a time, you know?! There's definitely a period of time where I felt like OFS being that kind of place. I don't feel like that anymore. A key moment would have been when I got my first ever commission from OFS as part of the response to COVID and a story that had been collected through the volunteer networks at Oxford Together. I saw that open call go out to respond to a story, I think on social media, and it was a time where I was beginning to be more conscious about getting myself out there more as an artist and pursue it as a career. My proposal was that I was gonna write a piece of spoken word, compose a soundscape and film a video to go with that, that would interpret the story. Looking back now I think I over promised for the fee that was on offer, but I’m still glad I did it. After I got that OFS commission, and the feedback I got from the audience and comments on YouTube, I felt valued as an artist. It gave me the confidence to think 'Okay, there's an organisation like OFS that is interested in what I want to do and what I want to say.’ It's still part of my portfolio today, so it's been a valuable piece of work for me and I’ll always be thankful that OFS gave me that first opportunity. So somewhere between me feeling like it wasn't a place for me, and me getting that commission, something changed.

I always had this creative streak, but never really saw myself as an artist. Music was a big part of my household growing up but not Hip Hop particularly, which was the genre I really found myself being drawn to. I taught myself through listening to CDs and learning by copying and figuring out my own style. I left school without qualifications and went into unskilled manual work, but I was always writing. One of my mates used to make mix CDs, and one day he borrowed a microphone from his neighbour, and I picked it up and started to rhyme over it. Quite quickly, we formed a group and got quite a local following making our own CDs and putting them out on the Leys. A local youth worker heard them and asked me and a couple of mates to get involved in their youth project at the Leys CDI. That was where I started to see 'Oh, you don't have to be Eminem to have a career in music. You can get paid to do this through youth and community work.' Not long after that I started my own business, Urban Music Foundation, and not long after I had my first involvement with OFS.

It's interesting being a Hip Hop artist from Oxford. People have a certain perception of Oxford and the kind of art that comes from Oxford, and definitely earlier on in my career, it was difficult to be taken seriously as a Hip Hop artist from Oxford. Again, I guess that contributed to those feelings of being an outsider and not being understood, not having a place in Oxford's art scene.

The next thing I remember with OFS was the Forgotten Stories of Oxford Tour and that's a project I'm still getting work through today. OFS, Alex and TORCH co-produced the project with me, so every six weeks I’d have a check in and they helped me to shape the project, I also had the opportunity to launch it with an exhibition in the gallery space. Then there was the Hidden Spire Collective Writing project. I can remember the first day of Hidden Spires was also the last day of the Forgotten Stories exhibition. I should rewind, because I'm missing out the Epoch project which was funded by the university, and was the first exhibition I'd ever done. It came from a project I did with the university looking at music technology through time, and how that influences the music that's produced. We made music with the technology of different times, starting off in the 50s, and as close as we could, replicating that process for every decade going up into the near future. We created a seven track album and launched the exhibition at OFS in the basement, where we turned the dressing rooms into the different time periods. There was a bit of last minute confusion just before our get in around using the basement and how that would work for Crisis, but in the end it worked perfectly - as if the venue was designed for it.

I was part of Offbeat Festival last year. I applied to do a 20-minute spoken word set and was really pleased that I got accepted. Less than three weeks before Offbeat I got a phone call from Antonia who was like “You're actually going to be headlining, and we need it to be at least 45-minutes long!" I blocked out the next two weeks to write this narrative basically telling my life story to fit in between my poems, and had this idea that I could incorporate images and video as well. It ended up being an hour and 15-minute show. It all came together really nicely and was the first theatre show I'd written and performed by myself! I got really good feedback, and was proud of how it came together. It was unexpectedly therapeutic and satisfying. For this year’s Offbeat I wanted to polish up the show, so I put in an application and got a call saying, "Our policy is that we don't do the same show two years in a row. Could you re-work your application and highlight what's going to be different." I was glad to have the opportunity to revise my application. I said that I was gonna re-work the entire show, keeping only some key elements. I got the opportunity to be a supported artist, which I was really pleased about.

I really focused on re-writing and re-working the show, but that meant that I didn't really have time for anything else as part of the supported artist thing. That was disappointing, and partly my fault for underestimating the work involved and my capacity. I try and base everything on artist union rates, which is roughly £300-£350 a day, so this £1500 gives me five days. It's not enough time, it ended up being 10 or 12 days that I actually spent on it. I don't wanna give the impression that being involved in Offbeat this year was a negative experience, because it wasn't, but it was hard work and it came at the end of an extremely busy 16 day period in my work schedule and I had injured my back. It was really difficult but I pushed through and the show went well. I can remember finishing that performance and just feeling like I had nothing left after such an intense period of work. The positive is that I've got this show that is much more polished. I would like to develop it further, taking it elsewhere and seeing how it lands outside of Oxford. As a direct result of doing that show I was invited to meet with the CEO of Oxfordshire County Council to discuss the inequalities addressed in my work.

It's been really nice to reflect on my journey and see that, definitely, OFS has been a touchstone and a constant in various ways which I hadn't quite recognised before. I do feel there are probably some people who still feel like outsiders and don't feel that this is a space that would welcome them for various reasons. I guess it's a wider societal issue: Who is an artist? What does an artist look like? Why don't people feel welcome in town, and what is it that makes this city so divided? It's something a lot of my work is based around. OFS has provided a platform for a lot of it and helped me to expand my range and be a more diverse artist. It still feels to me one of the most welcoming, accessible and community-minded spaces in the city centre, by quite a long way.