speed anti-hate crime songwriting sessions
The ‘It’s Not On’ Hate Crime conference
Hove 26th Nov ’13
‘It’s Not On’ was a conference organised by a group of organisations all committed to supporting people with learning disabilities to be aware of, and combat, disability hate crime. Here’s an outline from the organisers:
“It’s not on! Stop hate crime towards people with Learning Disabilities” – campaign and conference are run collaboratively by many learning disability organisations and non-learning disability organisations in Brighton & Hove. Our aim is to ensure awareness about hate crime against people with learning disabilities is embedded in all mainstream organisations as well as learning disability organisations in the future.”
Lyric writing discussion 1
Hey – it’s Jimmy from Heavy Load!
More thoughtful discussion
Sharing ideas for lyrics with the group
For our contribution we were offered to lead a couple of workshops to enable people with and without learning disabilities to collaboratively write a punk song about hate crime on the spot. The format of the workshops took the form of three short discussions – which formed the basis for each verse:
Verse 1) What would a perfect world without hate crime look like?
Verse 2) What is disability hate crime? What does it look like?
Verse 3) What can we do to stop disability hate crime?
After a lively and fun workshop, where participants were actively encouraged to get things off their chests, these are the two songs we came up with:
Song 1 – It’s Not On You’re Taking The Piss
Everyone laughing, everyone smiling
Talking laughing, playing the harmonica
Be cool, be who you wanna be
We are all special needs, come on and get a grip
We are all special needs, come on and get a grip
Do it do it do it yeah
Do it do it do it yeah
Stop it back off and get a grip
Chorus
It’s not on you’re taking the piss
It’s not on you’re taking the piss
It’s not on you’re taking the piss
It’s not on you’re taking the piss
Go away we don’t want you
Go away we don’t want you
Make a fuss and phone the fuzz
Hate will not be tolerated
It has to stop
Hate will not be tolerated
It has to stop
A smile makes the world go round
So keep on smiling
STOP STOP HATING!
Oi! Oi! Oi!
Chorus
It’s not on you’re taking the piss
It’s not on you’re taking the piss
It’s not on you’re taking the piss
It’s not on you’re taking the piss
Go away we don’t want you
Go away we don’t want you
Song 2 – ‘No worries, no fears’
A world without hate crime
An awesome, smiley paradise
No loneliness, just happiness
Friendly, safe and free!
Chorus
No worries, no fears, no cares in the world
It’s not on you’ve been told
I feel uncomfortable being me
It makes me feel sick like throwing my pint
Nasty looks and stares
Controlling me
Using me
Robbing me because I’m vulnerable
Someone not believing me
That I have a disability.
Chorus
No worries, no fears, no cares in the world
It’s not on you’ve been told
We’re gonna get rid of hate crime first
Stand up, speak out
Stand up, speak out
Bad boy, bad boy, bad boy,
You’re gonna be in a white van
Cuz we’ll call the police, we’ll call 999
Bad girl, bad girl
Get out of the club
We’ll get our voice heard
Chorus
No worries, no fears, no cares in the world
It’s not on you’ve been told
And here we are feeding back the songs in the plenary session at the end of the day…
Feeding back at the plenary
