Magic Me

Magic Me are one of Mulberry’s longest-standing creative partners: we are proud to have worked with this fantastic charity for more than a decade. Magic Me bring together older and younger people from communities across London, and get them working together on creative projects. These projects help to break down stereotypes about what older people are like, or what younger people are like; and help to bring communities together. Mulberry carries out a project with Magic Me every year, in the course of which 10 Year 9 students meet every week with 10 older women from Tower Hamlets and Hackney, lead artist Sue Mayo, and other artists, to write and perform a piece of creative art.

This year, the group worked with Sue Mayo and choreographer Ellie Sikorski to put together a performance called ‘Decorum’. The performance explored the rules of behaviour, looking in particular at where these rules come from, whether they have changed over the years, and whether there are differences in rules of behaviour between religious, ethnic, cultural, gender and age groups. Decorum combined song, dance, movement, stand up comedy, elements of spoken word, creative writing, collage art, and lots and lots of laughing. Through working together, the group found that their experiences vary quite a lot, but that they all share common experiences of being told how to behave, not knowing how to behave, and doing the wrong thing at the wrong time!

The group performed Decorum at the Southbank Centre’s Women of the World (WOW) Festival on 12th March at the Riverside Terrace, and again at Mulberry’s International Women’s Day celebration on 15th March.

Thank you to Magic Me for another fantastic year of creative collaboration! Huge congratulations to our Year 9 performers: Sahra Said, Samia Chowdhury, Sonya Rahman, Naima Atia, Maryam Uddin, Janna Begum, Samanta Ahmed, Umaiyah Alam and Ishitha Islam.