Inja

"I’m really excited about being involved with Creating My Cambridge as it is wonderful to collaborate again with Helen Weinstein and the team at Historyworks to bring my creative practice into schools and communities.  For the project devised by Helen for 'Singing History' I've had the privilege of working alongside Michael Rosen and rapping with two hundred children inside the Fitzwilliam Museum for the launch of 'Creating My Cambridge'.  Recently, in Abbey Meadows I'm working alongside Helen and Mario and the production team at Historyworks for "Clicking to Connectivity" which is a creative project Helen has devsied to bring creative practice into the primary school and community where I'm leading a series of workshops to inspire young people to co-create poetry about their local area, to vocalise their loves and hates, to have them using their five senses to notice their neighbourhood and use it as the inspiration for their creative writing.

I love the idea of bringing the history of Cambridge areas to life, and with Helen Weinstein's team finding the real history behind and beyond the history we are often shown of the University, and instead focus on the history of working lives of people and places of the town,  a history which I am part of. I'm enjoying sharing this history not only through my own medium of rap, but with the choral melodies and background production of film and photography at Historyworks, which I feel will add ownership to the primary children and their families. I am excited to make this history more accessible to others."

I've worked with Historyworks for two years, commencing with the Cycle of Songs to mark the Tour de France coming to Cambridge when I was commissioned by Helen Weinstein to write a piece about Freedom, based on her research about the abolition of the slave trade and the connection to Cambridge.  My rap was roughly based on the story of Olaudah Equiano and Thomas Clarkson, two of the most prominent campaigners against the Transatlantic Slave Trade, who were both at one time Cambridge residents.

This source material for the rap was mixed with my history and personal experiences in Cambridge and the UK. I co-created my own composition, using the recording and edit of Historyworks and working with the choral groups at Sing! and Rev! to add a greater depth to my rap story. 

To learn more about the piece that Inja has written called FREEDOM and to hear a demo version of it you can visit the Sound Files page at Cycle of Songs.

I have been teaching rap, lyric writing and poetry for over 10 years now, in schools and youth centres across the country. I have also worked as a professional rapper since the age of 18. I write and perform my own work, as well as ghost writing and commission writing for a number of people and organisations. I founded a youth organization, Page to Performance, in 2009, in order to raise the interest of young people in poetry and words. Through this, I have been involved recently in a number of projects aimed at bringing to life, through poetry and rap, a very diverse range of subject matters; from riverside developments to world war and the joys of cycling. For each project, I have collaborated with young people to write their own poetry or raps on the subject matter. We have researched the themes together, carried out interviews and tours and finally brought together the pieces in order to share these with the wider communities around them. Sometimes we do this through live performances; sometimes online video presentations. Our final video / poetry presentation about young people’s joy of cycling can be found here:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=JsKlWaIiI7w

Commissioned rap performance on fatherhood: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=I0OmPWJIAhE

The ‘Rivers and Rhymes’ project live presentation night is documented here:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=JZ8iFZauNu8

 To enquire about commissions, performances or youth education work,

please email Oli@pagetoperformance.org.

http://pagetoperformance.org/about-us/

To hear more of my music, please see: http://inja.bandcamp.com

To view pictures of Inja's involvement with Cycle of Songs click on the slideshow below: