Building Community Change in Manchester (Part 1)
Manchester Correspondent Diana spoke with 25/26 Agents Kelisha and Christian, respective founders of Diary of Freedom and No Blade. Their projects have been funded by The Agency Manchester (Contact), who supported them to deliver a pilot of their projects in Moston and Harpurhey.
Diary of Freedom is Kelisha’s brainchild, an interactive book following the journey of a girl in search of her identity. The goal was to help girls in high school find their sense of self through creativity, without feeling they had to compromise who they are just to fit into social groups.
No Blade educates people around knife crime through workshops in Manchester Youth Zone, which includes pushing for use of amnesty bins to dispose of blades and other harmful weaponry. Christian was determined to do his part in making the streets safer and reduce knife attacks by drawing more attention to it among fellow youths. Listen to the podcast below:
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Max
The Agency of Change is a charity for 15 to 25 year olds that champions creativity as a catalyst for leadership and opportunity. The young people involved are Agents, project creators, who want to make a positive difference in their communities. Across the UK. We have groups in London, Southampton, Bolton, Belfast, Chester, and today Manchester. Four Agents were interviewed by Manchester correspondent Diana, whose role is to really show the difference Agents are making with their projects. The first Manchester agent is Kelisha, creator of Diary of Freedom, aiming to activate young girls minds and pave a path of creativity.
Kelisha
When I first, like, heard about the Agency, one of my friends did it in the cycle before me, and they were literally like “Oh, Agency is the best thing ever”. And like “I loved it. Oh, my gosh”. And about the experiences that I gave them to, you know, have all these different skills and assets, like problem solving trailblazers and all that stuff. So I was like, really intrigued. And also, you're getting paid. Why would I not go? So I'm like “Okay, fine”. So I walked because I live quite close and I'm in the community, and that's what agency is all about. I walked in through the building doors, and I just see a bunch of people that I know, and I'm like “Why are you guys here?” I don't know why I asked, but, you know, they're gonna do Agency.
I'm like “Okay, fair enough. Fine”. So we're just waiting there in the lobby and then we go in. I go in with my friend, my two friends, and they basically just ask us, like, questions about, like, what we'd like to change, our favourite hobbies, favourite type of music and stuff like that. I literally, it was so bad because I sat there and I wanted to say a song by Levy, but like, I said a lyric instead of the name of the song. So I would say from the start, but I said something in my heart, I don't know what I said, but I said the wrong name. I was like “Oh, my gosh, they're gonna search that up and they're gonna see that there's the wrong lyric”. I was just so scared. I was like, my heart was pumping on my chest.
But yeah, me and my friends were there. We left and I went home. And then a couple weeks, a couple days later, I don't know, I don't remember. But we get the call and they're like, oh, I was in KFC and I get a text and like “Oh, hi, this is Kelisha”. I'm like “What the hell?” I looked at my friend next to my friend. My friend's like “I'm not gonna text you”. I'm like, “What is going on?” And this is really unexpected for me because I really thought they were gonna be like “That song doesn't even exist. That girl was chatting a lot”. And I don't know. But yeah, I said Diary of Freedom because a diary is something that's a little bit more personal to a person.Diana
Why does this project matter to you or the community?Kelisha
This project matters to me and my community because it's to do with finding your own freedom and being yourself and being true and being new to you. It's mainly targeted towards young girls in high school because high school is definitely a place where you're trying to follow a crowd and be a lot different to who you think you are. I found myself in high school trying to follow people who just were not meant to be followed. They're meant to be left alone.
So when Josh asked us to think about something that was meaningful to us and our desires and how that may impact the community as well, I was like “Okay, so I'm definitely going to focus on the idea of peer pressure and individuality, especially in a society that's so dependent on social media in finding who they are and dependent on their friends as well”. That's not a bad thing. There's positives and good side, but positives and negatives effects to peer pressure. But because of our community, I feel like when you do give into peer pressure, you are surrounded by a lot of antisocial behavior. And so I decided that this would matter to my community because it would help a lot of young girls find who they are outside of, like, negative behaviour.Diana
Yeah. What were your initial insecurities when starting your project? How did you overcome that?Kelisha
I think my initial insecurities about starting this project in Cycle 2 was mainly my timing and my urgency. I've not got a lot. Well, I've got a lot of urgency, but because I procrastinate quite a lot, it puts me and sets me back in completing the goals I want to complete. So writing the book was one of the things I had to talk about with my producer. I might set myself back sometimes, but the people around me, they really support me in making sure I'm on point and making sure I'm hitting all those points on time and also just setting timers to remind myself that I have a book to do. But, yeah.Diana
Thank you, Kelisha.Max
The next Agent is Christian, creator of No Blade, educating schools and young people around knife crimes.Christian
No Blade is a construct of my desire for change to reduce knife crime rates in the area. Because I. Not personally, but I've witnessed people lose their lives due to knife crime. Like a person in my high school, people in the area. I just wanted to make the streets safer. And we're going to do this by holding workshops in the Manchester Youth Zone. They've also been approached to hold an amnesty bin in their location. And using that as an incentive, we call it No Blade because it's like, you say no to blades. Like, no knife crime. After I come back from a basketball training, it always feels like it's somewhat unsafe, not applicable for me to be walking there. Especially like sleeping when our friends, like, it just feels like we're gonna get attacked by some random person.
I just want everyone to feel safe, including family, friends, people I know so that they don't find themselves in the same situation as me.Diana
Why does this project matter to you or to the community?Christian
Who wouldn't want to be safe? Who would want to lose their loved ones to, like, a knife crime incident or get harmed by a knife crime incident? That won't make anyone happy in any way. I just want to feel safer. I don't want to be at fear of losing my life, cutting my life short just because I ran into the wrong person at the wrong time, holding a weapon.Diana
What were your initial insecurities and how did you overcome them?Christian
Not getting the people, the project, not starting, and like, just not having the drive for the project. But I overcame that by staying persistent, pushing through and just having support to help the project increase. But if we're to overcome everything, it would just be me pushing through, making plans and schedules and good time management, taking breaks when you need to and when I needed to.Diana
What was the most memorable moment of The Agency for you?Christian
Oh, it would most likely be, oh yeah. When. When we wonder the funding as part of the group, me and Wally, and like, it just changed everything because the project could actually happen. So that was like another path of overcoming the insecurity. So after we got the funding, it was like, unexpected. I mean, I had a feeling that the project was gonna be good because, like, of all the ideas and time dedication we put into it, and it just made sense for the community. So it was kind of expected to win, but it was very memorable because we won. Out of, like 20 groups, there's, like, just three of us.
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