The B.Life Project
Project overview
B.Life, or simply put ‘Black Life, period.’, is a project that was funded by a staff-voted donation from a commercial organisation. Over the last year we’ve co-produced creative outputs exploring the experiences of young Black people living in and/or connected to London, and their experiences with mental health and music.
The zine is now LIVE – take a look here:
Project details
Projects like this are necessary as this is an understudied area of research – we want to generate new discussions and knowledge to contribute to our growing understanding of young Black people’s lived experiences.
This project gave the YPAG (Young People’s Advisory Group) the space and freedom to co-create a creative output – they chose a zine – which represents their lived experiences of their mental health and how music plays a part in this, as well as the lived experiences of those close to them and their community/(ies) they belong to.
This is significant as the theme of the zine is 2024’s Black History Month theme ‘Reclaiming Narratives’. It’s an area of research seldom represented from the perspective of young Black people, so the B.Life project aims to enact epistemic justice, providing our young people with the space to tell their stories and perspectives.
What we’ve found is that the young people have grown in confidence to tell their stories and represent their experiences, reclaiming and challenging harmful narratives about themselves and Black people generally, as well as how Black people relate to music through aspects including its production, creation and consumption.
A potential impact of this project is further research in this area, with more partners and a bigger budget for involvement of the young people.
We are running the lived experience involvement in the project, working with a Young People’s Advisory Group (YPAG) of young Black people living in and or connected to London aged between 18-27.
We have worked with the young people to creatively explore their experiences of music and mental health. The YPAG were involved in co-developing and co-producing some creative outputs (the B.Life Zine and Podcast).
Please get in touch with [email protected] for more information on this project.
You can also view the zine at HeyZine.
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