What happens when you get a group of 15-17 year olds to research a hidden history of Reggae Dancehall Culture in London during the 1970s and 1980s? Nu-Beyond ran a summer project in which they gave 10 young people the opportunity to find out about their past in a local context. The young people received training at Goldsmiths College, University Of London, in research methods, interviewing techniques, documentary script writing and film making techniques. For the documentary and the other cultural artefacts they produced, they interviewed 32 people, most of whom were artists on reggae sound systems during this era. They then used this information along with research from secondary sources to create a ground breaking documentary, CD rom and website. Please contact info@nubeyond.com for further information and copies of the DVD available from the Merachandise page.

The research project was funded by The Heritage Lottery Fund and raises awareness of the importance of the Reggae-dancehall scene in the late 1970s to late 1980s and its role in shaping the cultural practices of Caribbean migrants and their subsequent generations.

It also details how the Reggae scene has had a significant, yet seldomly acknowledged, influence on contemporary popular culture. It focuses on personal testimonies, photographic evidence, music, fashion, and the cultural politics of the time, to locate its worth to our contemporary national heritage.

The research detailed how particular black identities in Britain were developed and expressed through the utilisation of Creolised languages in an urban context, and how these languages, when performed in the Reggae-dancehall, presented more realistic accounts of the experiences of the black or minority ethnic communities in post war Britain.

Click here to witness the trailer