Mapping 'the Streets': young women, music, creatives and violence in East London

Bass Youth Club is a creative youth space situated in East London, making available free programmes for young people to attend six days a week. Between June 2019 and March 2020, I conducted ethnographic research as part of my PhD to explore the ways in which working-class young people used music, particularly rap music, to narrate their lived experiences of violence. Over a period of 10 months, I spent time in the youth club’s music studio, and my conversations with young people in this space became integral to my research.

Soon after starting my fieldwork, I became acutely aware of the lack of young women in these sessions, reinforcing the music studio as what was described as a “boy heavy” artistic space. This shaped the questions I began to ask: Where were the young women rappers? What kind of music were they producing? What were we at risk of losing because of their absence in these music sessions?

Mapping ‘the Streets’ (2024) is a project that emerged from the invisibility and silencing of young women music artists and their stories in the studio. It involved five young women of colour, aged 14-21 years old, from East London; their names are LirJane, Clarissa, Ruby, Maria, and Scarlett. At Bass Youth Club, where they have or are currently attending music sessions, they produce, rap, sing, and create. Across four weeks between November and December 2023, the young women were encouraged to take the lead in directing conversations, mind-mapping activities and a young-person led walking interview. Their exchanges of stories contributed to the making of a short film, as well as a collaborative music track titled, ‘Voices’.

In an exploration of how power works in urban space, the young women co-produced knowledge of gendered everyday urban violence. Against the backdrop of structural inequalities, they expressed the ways in which they are removed and restricted from occupying public space. The coping strategies employed when navigating ‘the streets’ additionally demonstrated the way in which neoliberal ideas of individual responsibility for their safety, insinuates itself into the ‘nooks and crannies of everyday life’ (Littler 2017: xx).

Nonetheless, these young women embody and articulate their bold resistance to a society that perpetuates a patriarchal system of power, control, and fear. As Maria articulates, ‘if one person was to step up and take the risk, then a lot of people follow’.