Voices that Shake!

Voices That Shake! brings together young people, activists, educators and artists to challenge social and climate injustice, with a focus on addressing racial inequality. 

Using a model of personal transformation and structural change, to challenge established imbalanced power-bases and re-imagine new infrastructures in opposition to capitalism and colonialism.

We build holistic decolonial educational programmes and creative campaigns to foster a catalytic and self-determined community of creative organisers/leaders embedded in and  led by the grassroots. Together we work towards and cultivate transformative justice, systemic change and community accountability.

We work collectively to centre the leadership and solutions of the marginalised, to uplift and politicise the role that young people of colour have, to prefigure the world we would like to live in: diverse, just, sustainable, community-led and resilient.

This Theory of Change was written as a collective effort with the core team, our long-term collaborators and Shake! Participants.

Voices that Shake! was initiated by the London-based arts-activist group Platform in 2010 to intervene in white-dominated NGOs and cultural organisations such as Platform at that time. Shake!’s direction has been steered by Shake!’s young people and facilitators throughout. Platform hosts Shake! in this spirit and through these politics.

Work supported by Act for Change Fund

Shake! The System publications and launch season, Autumn 2021

After over 10 years of youth-led intensive courses, showcases, mentoring, workshops, teach-ins and one-off events, Shake! wants to celebrate its work and share learning. We have a powerful legacy to disseminate to others, to inspire practices and social movements. Young people’s realities and insights of being in this work will be at the centre.

In Autumn 2021, Voices that Shake! Is launching three publications: 

• Shake! The System Anthology of Creative Movements – a full-colour 320-page book of Shake! young people’s creative writing, original artwork, photographs and essays; also pieces by artists, facilitators and elders involved in Shake! With AR to video and audio.
• Shake! the System Research Report: A Decade of Shaping Change 2010-2020 – a 120-page full colour youth-led research report into the impacts of Shake! on young people. 
• Shake! the System: Rituals, Tools and Practices – a 90-page guide to Shake!’s methods to inspire, amplify the work, strengthen movements. 

The launch is through a four-city tour of live/online youth-led showcases, workshops for young people, NGOs, funders & changemakers. The cities are those significant to Shake!: London, Manchester, Leeds, Nottingham. Also there will be standalone events such as bookfairs, festivals.